El Camino Aragones

We were already tired of the word camino before we started this camino-- a residual psychic pain from the 800 km we walked on the Camino de Santiago two years ago. A medieval pilgrimage route across northern Spain that arose in the 11th century in honor of the apostle St. James and helped fund the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela is a now popular hiking route for "pilgrims" of all denominations. We had already hiked the major route, the Camino Frances, in its entirety from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela out of a heathen piety for frugal and challenging adventure.

On the whole, it was a wonderful experience, and we had been seduced by the act of traveling on foot. Not only did it prevent the ennui that is endemic to other forms of tourism, it was also cheap! Of course, you have to be willing to get up obscenely early to walk 15 miles before noon in hopes of getting one of the last remaining bunk beds only then to wait in line for the shower behind smelly old people with horrifying foot lesions; and some nights, instead of sleeping, you may lie in bed listening to a chorus of lumberjacks slowly suffocating themselves on their own soul-destroying snores. And after a few days on the camino, even though you found it charming at first, you may start to cringe at the 300th utterance of the phrase, "buen camino, peregrino." But the camino gives one both an immediate sense of purpose and accomplishment, not easy things to come by these days, especially in the height of summer vacation idleness. So it was decided that while we were in Spain this summer, ostensibly working on projects but feeling ever dissolute, we would walk the auxiliary route of the Camino de Santiago across the Pyrenees, the Camino Aragones.

We started from Oleron St. Marie, in the green foothills of the Alps, about 70km from the Spanish border. We hiked in France for two days, seeing only one pilgrim, a toothy Barcelonan named Paco, with whom we shared drinks and conversation in the tiny gray medieval hamlets that broke up the long stretches of green hill pastures and shady forest paths. The first day was wonderful and memorable, mostly because that morning, upon crossing the medieval bridge into the village of Eysus, we were welcomed by a giant white Pyrennean mountain dog, Le Patou.

I have never seen a dog like this in my life--like a snow white Newfoundland, but with the majestic bearing of a lion and the expressive eyes of a chimpanzee. Le Patou, whom we alternatingly named Excelsior, Seltzer, and Dunder, became our guide for the next two hours, even stopping to wait for us when we fell into conversation on the side of the road with a man from Zaragossa. This man was ecstatic to meet us upon learning we were from San Francisco because he was planning a trip to there in the fall but he had heard so many stories about the hills of our fair city (and had, like every other Spaniard I´ve met, seen the movie Bullitt, apparently the SF equivalent of The Wizard of Oz for Kansas) and had a wife who was not keen on walking up hills. After we assured him there were taxis and his wife would survive, he shook my hand, kissed Marissa, said it was settled, he was going to San Francisco, and hoped to see us in October at the Hotel Donatelo. We continued on the road only to find our shepherd waiting for us around the bend.

After about 10k and two towns later, Dunder finally deserted us for a romp in the creek. We were relieved, thinking we had marched off with a Eysusian villager's prized chien. But when we arrived at the Auberge in Bedous that afternoon, we found a brochure with a picture of our dog, titled 'Le Petou'. It read: 'Important Notice to Walkers and Hikers: In the course of your walk, you may encounter the local guarding dogs. These are large white dogs whose task is to guard the flocks.... Keep yor distance: beware of acting in ways that may seem harmless to you-- trying to feed, pet or photograph a 'pastous' (all of which we did). The guarding dogs may interpret this as an attack.' Clearly we had met a pastou in search of a flock, and perhaps one constitutionally unfit to maintain one, given that he responded to our 'threats' with panting affection.

Day two was perhaps the worst hiking day of our lives, though fairly vivid, and in retrospect, pleasant. We ascended the French side of the Pyrenees, a supposedly 35 km hike, all up hill. This would have not been a problem if that is what had happened. But unfortunately, the signs were terribly marked on the French side of the camino, especially in this section what with the dense forest and ever imposing mountains. We ended up getting off-trail at least 5 times that day, once which took us on a route through a militant-looking flock of mountain goats and back to the same town we had departed an hour before.

The day got hotter. The camino kept dumping us onto the highway, which was often shoulderless and, needless to say, curvy. There were signs for long stretches assuring us that the camino in fact followed the highway at this point, so on the highway we stayed. Then somehow we missed the turn-off (as we were later told in Spain, like everyone does) and stayed on the highway until we reached the car tunnel through to Spain not open to pedestrians. A border guard filled our water (which had just run out) and pointed us in the direction of the road to take us to the mountain top border town of Somport just on the Spanish side, our destination. What he didn't tell us was that it was another 8-9 km up a steep mountain. But I suppose we were to learn that anyway. Just as we were nearing the peak, with only a few km left to go, thunder began to rumble and, only minutes afer Marissa had speculated that the trip could have been worse, it started to pour. We arrived in Somport soaked, nearly incoherent, and full of black bile for the French and their "c'est la vie" signage.

Things got much better the next day as we were back on Spanish soil, where the yellow arrows were abundant, even gratuitous, as though Spain were drunk on its own superior sign-making abilities and did not want to forego any sign-placing opportunities-- rock, tree, or idle pilgrim-- to shame France. We hiked down the mountains into the rocky foothills and arrived in Jaca, a handsome ski resort town with a huge pentagonal star-shaped fortress. We ate well in Jaca that night, probing such Aragonese novelties as deep fried hard boiled egg with bechamel, and caviar-coated sheep's milk cheese.

Day four was grueling, hardly any towns, very hot, with a stunning arid landscape reminiscient of northern Arizona. Giant rippled gray sand dunes called 'margas'- the remnants of a shallow sea that had covered Aragon some 25 million years ago. I hadn't gotten much sleep, thanks to a pack of Spanish ladies who snored like wild pigs. Instead I spent the night lying in bed, sharpening my walking stick and dreaming of pilgrim murder. My mood that day seemed to match the environment. We were in a land of ghost towns. Literally. They had been abandoned since the 60s, and had been repopulated with boar and elks. We ended the day in Artieda, which technically was a town, but it hardly seems fair to other towns to call it that. A set of brown medeival buildings clustered high up on a tiny meseta, overlooking a milky turquoise lake in the distance, Artieda could have been charming if only it had life. Aside from the Albergue--the only source for bed or food in town-- the only thing that showed a sign of life was the ancient widow in the abandoned street whose 'buenas tardes' sounded more like a death rattle than a greeting.

It was at this point in the hike that my accumulated blisters had rendered my left foot virtually unusable. The ball of my foot had become an open wound. No bandages would stay on. A strange stroke of bad luck, considering my right foot was more or less intact, as were Marissa's two feet. She had been plagued by debilitating blister on the first Camino and now it was my turn. But Marissa is tough, and we were dead set on Santiago then. I am not tough and this time we didn't really care if we arrived in a town (Puente la Reina) that we had already hiked to a mere two years ago. So we decided the next morning, as I was limping some distance behind Marissa, that the camino would be better if it ended for us that day, in Sanguesa. We hiked/hobbled the last 30km into the rather unimpressive town of Sanguesa, which struck us as a paradise because it had a restaurant, a bar, and a pharmacy. And the next morning we caught a bus to Pamplona and a train from there to San Sebastian, the pearl of the Spanish North, where we healed ourselves beachside by day and by night found redemption in heaping plates of pintxos and a steady stream of rosado.

In 5 days, we had logged about 180 km or 110 miles, a little over 20 miles a day. No Catholic absolution or fancy latin certificates for us this time, but enough exercise to feel like excorcism. Surely we're better people now, right?