Day 12 or The Middleberry Sisterhood

Notes on Day 12, March 7th, Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Belorado



Stephanie had to stay behind today because her knees have officially rebelled. I was sorry to leave her; I would like to have gotten to know her better.



But about 9km outside of Santo Domingo I met up with Carlos the Argentine on the trail. Carlos has tendinitis in his heels, so he told me he was taking it easy today, which is funny because I can barely keep up with his little Speedy Gonzales self.

We walked together to Belorado through several more small towns. Each of these towns generally has it´s own ridiculous Romanesque church. Even if the town consists of three houses, there is most absolutely a church. Being the studious and observant pilgrim that I am, I usually take a few moments to walk to these iglesias and gawp like Homer Simpson looking in wide-eyed wonder at a can of beer. But not with Carlos. With Carlos you don´t stop at the church in each little town to admire it´s simple sandstone facade, it´s antique wooden doors, it´s pale alabaster windows. Instead you stop at the bar. ¨Where the fuck is the bar in this place?¨ he would ask (you´d be surprised how hard they can be to find in a five building town. They are tucked away sometimes. You have to be persistent). So here we were trekking past ancient wonders so we could find the bar.



But I kind of like this way of doing The Camino. Aside from the midday boozing, my feet were very appreciative of the frequent rests, the chance to take off my shoes and rub the soles of my feet on a bar stool leg (I know, it sounds a little like something a horny dog does, doesn´t it?).

The albergue in Belorado was another venerable old townhouse just off the main square. But there was no hot water, so the shower was a distinctly military effort: get wet fast, soap up fast, rinse fast, exhale repeatedly while saying ¨ah, ah, ah, fuck!¨ and shiver the entire time.

In the afternoon when I was taking my siesta (which really means I was collapsed in exhausted oblivion on my bunk), I heard the sounds of a group of girls enter the dormitory. They were giggling, and speaking Spanish, but not with any Spanish accent I´d ever heard. I knew almost immediately they were from the American, because this is how a group of American girls enters a room. My first thought was ¨fuck, here come the high school cheerleaders on their extra credit tour of Spain.¨ But I was very wrong, and happily so.

This was a crew of very funny and charming young ladies (and one token gent), who were doing a two day stretch of the trail as part of a graduate course on the Camino which they are taking for their master´s degrees in Spanish. Their course is on the history, geography, iconography, art and political and religious significance of the Camino. The group consisted of Stinky Julie (nicknamed so because in true Camino spirit she had not showered that morning), Ally (who is a dead ringer for Kirsten Dunst - tres adorable), Adrienne (who plans to retire after school unless the world is so cruel as to force her to support herself), and the others. They are studying in Madrid for the year. They asked me if I wanted to go for drink before dinner. At the bar I introduced them to pacharan, tee hee.

They asked me questions about my camino, why I was doing it, where I was from, etc. And I must say I felt a tad like a mini celebrity. They also committed a Cardinal Sin for my benefit. While in Madrid their professor imposed a strict ¨no English¨ rule. But they took pity on me and relented for my sorry monolingual ass. They reminded me of my own group of school friends from my Agnes Scott Master´s program. I think we should all have gone to Spain for a year dammit.

Back at the Albergue a very large and ruddy faced Spanish guy cooked us a dinner of pollo con ajo (garlic chicken). Me and the ya ya sisterhood from Middleberry College in Vermont sat and talked, ate, drank. Adrienne showed me some pictures of her trip to Istanbul over Christmas. The one of the Blue Mosque lit up at night had me salivating like a Pavlovian dog and I added yet another location to the 1000 places to see before I die.



Burgos is now 51.2km away. That´s two days walk for me, but it kills me dead to know that it is only 40 minutes by car from here. Throughout this Camino, Burgos has held a symbolic importance for me. Somehow I feel like if I can make it to Burgos, I can make it to Santiago.

And my feet are still hurting at the end of each day, but they are improving. The shooting pains in my heels have not completely gone, but they are duller than they were. Pok says that when I get to Santiago I will have lost weight and then hiking will be easy on my feet. Then he laughed at his funny Korean podiatrist joke.