El Camino, translation: The Camino

Even before I graduated this past December, I have been looking for an opportunity to travel abroad for an extended period of time. One of my good friends and I had tossed around the idea of backpacking through Australia and New Zealand but when his job started in February, this was no longer possible. Since then I´ve spent some time volunteering at Shortridge Middle School downtown and doing a great deal of sitting around, still interested in travel but no opportunities presented themselves. That is, until one night I got a text from one of my teammates from this past summer´s bike ride. He had some free time and was looking for a hiking partner to trek across Spain. I was very interested and less than a week later had booked tickets to Madrid for 5 weeks in Spain.

Jeremy sold me on the traveling "El Camino de Santiago" or The Way of Saint James. It´s primarily a Catholic pilgrimage from the French/Spanish border to the far northwest corner of Spain in Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of Jesus´apostle Saint James are rumored to lie. The trail has a pretty interesting history. It has been traveled by pilgrims off and on since the 10th century. It is an established route that has hostels or albergues in every town for peregrinos (hikers) to stay. I have always been interested in seeing Spain since taking a few years of Spanish in high school and the camino travels through small villages, large cities, and some pretty spectacular scenery.

The flight to Madrid was pretty uneventful. I got to see NYC for the first time via the airplane which was pretty cool. The route then backtracked to Philly where I made the most of my 3 hour layover by drinking Yuengling and watching spring training baseball in the airport bar. That made the trans-Atlantic flight to Madrid seem effortless. Once there, Jeremy met me with a scribbled sign that said POOLBOY and and 3 week beard that made him look homeless, more on that later. We only planned on spending a day in Madrid so that afternoon we took a foot tour that covered most of the major monuments, cathedrals, etc in town. Along the way we witnessed some of the world´s worst street performers. Ever. My favorite was a noticably overweight man dressed in a homemade form fitting Spiderman outfit who would strut a few steps, strike a majestic pose while pretending to shoot webs, and then call out people watching and ask for money. Naturally, we took a picture with him.

That night we met up with one of Jeremy´s good friends from Duke who lived in the city. Inigo was a great host who met us at a pub for a Real Madrid game then took us to a hole on the wall restaurant for platter after platter of delicious tapas. By the way people in Spain take their jamon (ham) seriously. It´s definitely not the stuff you find at a grocer in America. It´s cut in thin slices from the original hunk of meat, heavily salted, and delicious. Inigo told us the top of the line jamon could go for well over 150 euro/kilo. I can´t possibly justify laying out that kind of cash for some ham but the lower end stuff we had was still delicious. When Jeremy and I asked where we could find cheap, warm clothes since we both didn´t prepare for the unseasonably cold weather, Inigo took us to his place and let us borrow some of his gear for the month. Great guy.

That night on the walk back from Inigo´s to our hostel, I had what can only be described as a naive American tourist moment. It went something like this... Me: "Jeremy, see that girl over there? No not her, the one with too much makeup who's agressively pursuing any man that walks by. It's freezing out, what's she doing wearin a skirt that short in this freezing weath- ooooooooohhhhhhhhh." Yep, Jeremy picked our hostel that was right next to a prostitute hotspot. Way to pick em Julio.

The next day we left for San Sebastian, a town on the northern coast of Spain less than an hour from the French border. On the six hour bus ride (on a suprisingly nice bus, made Greyhound look like a schoolbus) Jeremy put his Spanish skills to good use and made friends with a local who was staying in San Sebastian for the night as well and traveling right near St. Jean Pied de Port (start of our journey in France) the next day. She offered to give us a ride there which saved us four hours on various trains. I´ve also been trying to brush up on my Spanish and been having short conversations with locals to mixed results. I guess that´s what happens when the most I did to prepare for the language in advance was to watch this video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEoHz56jWGY
Gets me every time. Rest in peace Chris Farley. That night Jeremy and I took another foot tour of the town and had American sized helpings of tapas that night, all of which were delicious but one. Jeremy decided to try what can best be described as fish sausage which tastes as bad as it probably sounds. Tastes kind of like finely ground fish mixed with sawdust for consistency. And it´s wrapped in a white casing with blue veins. To say the least I would not recommend it.

The next morning we rode with Jeremy´s new friend and her other friend who drove us to St. Jean in his beautiful new Jag. Unfortunately he was an older guy driving an extremely responsive car and we jerked and lurched all over the road as he was apparently unable to adjust to his new ride. Now I know what a driver´s ed instructor feels like when taking a new 16 year old out for their first spin. I spent my first half hour in France trying to keep down my lunch. We arrived in a small village in the foothills of the Pyrenees, said our thanks and goodbyes, and set up shop in the hostel. The next day marked out first day of 30 on the trail so we briefly enjoyed the nightlife then went to bed.