The Macz: Halfway happenings

In a few days’ time we’ll be at Burgos, a city near the top of Spain and halfway across. It’s also approximately our halfway mark. We’ll have walked for 28 days (+ four rest days), and have maybe three weeks of walking + a few days’ time out until we reach Santiago by mid-May. We’ve already walked about 500 km.

So what’s happened since our last blog post?

We took a rest day at Logrono, a vibrant city, and the capital of a small province. It reminded us of a mini –Melbourne, with stately buildings, parks and lots of eating places. It was here that Bob chose stewed pigs ears for one of his meal options, and thoroughly enjoyed them.

It’s actually been a lot more straight-forward and predictable since our route joined the French Way (Camino Frances) at Puento la Reina. Our travel days have been shorter – though sometimes more exhausting – and the whole notion of ‘pilgrimage’ has become just all so much more structured and commercialised. This is all of necessity, since hundreds of pilgrims pass through the route each day, each needing accommodation, food, and for some, back-up transport, first aid and more.

For us, there is still the satisfaction of doing it slow through the changing landscapes, with the added dimension of social interaction with fellow-travellers – some of whom we meet up with again after a few days journey. That’s quite nice, and is often written up in the Camino books. The varying landscapes can be seen in the photos – changing from almond orchards to vineyards, cereal crops, beans and peas. We guess that much of the agricultural production is for ‘invisible’ pigs, sheep and cattle. Invisible because they seem to be housed in industrial style sheds, and rarely if ever let out to graze. Indeed, if ever we see a paddock fenced it’s something to remark on!

The rural landscapes are punctuated by villages (just the European name for towns). The villages are invariably very old, complete with cathedral and narrow streets. It can be a bit disconcerting to enter a village: usually our pilgrim path enters through the back door, with no signage to indicate which village it actually is. Then there’s no street signage to indicate where shops are, or indeed any other services. We now ask – in our expert Spanish – if there is a small shop or supermarket anywhere in town. That doesn’t mean that the shop is open. Trading hours are often say 10:00 till 2:00 and again from 6:00 till 8:00 pm. Not so handy when we arrive at 3:00 and want to buy food to cook and eat by 7:00 pm.

Toilet talk. There are no public toilets. We get around this situation along the way, firstly not drinking to excess, and secondly by noting and using where necessary, isolated places. In villages, one can go to the local bar/café where for the courtesy of a token purchase of coffee, you get to use their toilets.

We’ve been a little surprised that we notice nothing overtly pilgrimage-like among the many people we now meet each day. Indeed, the only hint that the walk has religious significance for our fellow-travellers was the exclamation from one exhausted lady upon entering her destination village ‘Thank God I’ve made it!’ (Actually her words – expressing somewhat more devotion – were: Thank you Lord, thank you Jesus!).

Indeed, many of our fellow pilgrims experience and endure considerable physical pain in the weeks of their journey. We’ve met an English lady whose severe tendonitis in her calf ligaments had her hobbling painfully for many km. Yet she persisted in continuing. X#*! Pom! Many others sport bandaged, blistered toes and feet. One chap developed an eye problem and has had to fly back to the US one week into his five week trek.

For our part, we are in good shape. A real blessing. Our health, energy and strength are supported as often as possible with Anne’s cooking – about 70% of the time – or with three-course meals ‘pilgrim’ available everywhere along this main pilgrim route. A bottle of wine is supplied with every pilgrim meal, and we try hard to keep up our refreshment needs. I wonder what one bottle of wine per day X sixty pilgrimage days come to?

Thank you to those who have responded to our blog postings. As it’s a somewhat complicated process for us to access and respond to these, we suggest that if you would like to comment –a little less publicly than on the blog site – you could use either of our email addresses; rimacz@gmail.com or annemacz@gmail.com. Also, let us know if there are things you would like to hear about that we haven’t yet covered.

The following photos are a taste of what we see: