We are staying in a hotel that was originally a Monastery about 1,000 years about when it was originally built.

http://www.hotelrealcolegiata.es/en/hotel

That’s why I don’t get too upset that the internet is sketchy; it must have been a nightmare to retrofit this building the way they did.  The exterior walls are about 3 feet thick alone.  The sound proofing is surprisingly bad; I’m listening to the people upstairs taking a shower right now, but overall it’s nice.  I SCORED today because the owner of the company worked her magic to get me a room with a bigger bed so I have ended up in a palatial room.  I’m too tired to try and photograph it and post the photo with the glacial internet speeds we have here, but it’s got a main bedroom, a “matrimonio” bed (I’d say about a double bed) and another alcove with a single bed.  Based on what we’ve stayed in so far, and we aren’t always in small towns, this is a gigantic room by Spanish standards.  It’s even bigger than the room at the hotel in Barcelona and that is a solid 5 star hotel.

The best part is that we are here for 3 nights.  We arrived Sunday and spent last night.  Got up and did a short walk today then I spent the rest of the day running errands (that is a Blog post all it’s own but I’m too tired to do it now), and we’re supposed to do another short walk tomorrow and take tomorrow afternoon off as well but everybody is blowing off the walk and just sleeping in.  We have a guided tour of “something” at 10am that I might attend, but 3 days without having to pack and unpack the suitcase and ending up in a gigantic room by myself is more than enough.  The owner of this Tour company has done this trip countless times and walked it herself countless times so she knows that we need a break.  Everything they do is pretty carefully choreographed and for that I am grateful.  This could be much worse but Lu and Judy and Juan Carlos and Jorge (before he went to Turkey) take good care of us.

For those of you that have followed this story, you know that I had a hard time the first few weeks.  I was talking to the owner’s husband, Juan Carlos, and he told me that the Camino generally has three parts.  Part 1 is the first 10 days where you are always tired.  Part II is the second 10 days when you are so homesick you cry all the time, then part III the last 10+ days when you can finally see the light of day.  Today is day 20 so we have 12 more days of walking, a bus ride to the coast which was considered the end of the world when a lot of Spain was rocking, then I have an additional night in Santiago before I fly to Barcelona, an additional night in Barcelona, and then I finally fly home.  Actually I fly to the Bay Area to meet up with Tim for a CrossFit event in San Jose, but being back with my Partner will be enough until we both manage to get home.

I am still homesick but it’s a gnawing pain that only rears its’ head from time to time.  Sometimes we laugh, a lot of the time we are just trudging through what seems like an endless landscape of……depending on where we are, either nothing, or trees, and the rest of the time we are trying to pack or unpack or wash our days clothes in the sink before we pass out and do it all over again.  My old website used to have an excerpt from a Grateful Dead song “…..what a long strange trip it’s been”.  Well, I assure everybody that it has indeed and will be a long and strange trip.

I had an epiphany the other day.  The group had gone out for a walk but I simply needed a day off so I stayed back at the hotel.  As is common on the Camino, I struck up a conversation with a woman in the breakfast room.  Thankfully she spoke English because, even though my Spanish has gotten unbelievably better, it gives me a headache if I have to use it too much.  Anyway, the one question that usually comes up is “why are you doing the Camino”.  The answers are all over the place and she did ask me but when I asked her back she just got VERY quiet.  That too is not  uncommon.

So many people out here are walking something off.  It suddenly struck me that I cannot post the stories I am hearing here.  I can’t take pictures of the people and I can’t expose what I hear to the world; it would be a violation.  Weird huh?  The Camino is a lot more than just a long assed walk.  Don’t ask me yet to fully explain it but there’s something about being in this very old place where it’s not uncommon to see buildings that were here when Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World, and that is just so common.  The pueblos where people are living are  basically unchanged from how they lived centuries ago, and then the massive expanses of just open space.  As I write this I am remembering several conversations that I have had; a cancer survivor, some very old people that are doing what will probably be their last big trip, people hurting from divorce, it’s no wonder that sometimes you just start crying; this is not the happiest place on earth.  But spending day after day after day just listening to your thoughts does something to you.  I really wish I could put it into words and, maybe, when I get home I will be able to, or maybe not.  I do believe I am going to come home changed.  Again, don’t ask me to explain; we will all just have to wait and see.

I can say that this is fucking hard.  My feet hurt, I’m lonely, I’m homesick, my head hurts from speaking Spanish all the time, we get up too early, the food is crap, we’ve been deluged on and we are trudging head on into winter so we might even end up in snow or certainly more rain before this is all over.  We are in Leon now which is the last City we are in on the Camino then it’s mostly Pueblos and a few minor towns.  The days blur together, the pain blurs together, the loneliness blurs together, the ONLY thing I can hold onto is my daily phone calls to Tim, the occasional comment I get on here, and that’s it.  My email has dried up, I don’t check my stocks, I don’t check anything, I’m about as far away from my reality as I can get and stay on this planet and frankly I am scared but I’m too far into it to quit; I was too far into it from the time I got on that plane in Los Angeles so 14 more days in bumfuck, a rest night in Barcelona, then back to my Man and eventually back to my home. Wait til I write the list of things I want to do when I get home.  Number 1, at least Number 1 that I can write about, is a 90 minute foot massage.  LOL.  Actually, I don’t think about home much; Tim and I talk about mostly banal things but that tiny little thread keeps me sane and everything else I will just power through.  That’s basically the only choice we have in life anyway.  If you believe otherwise then you are sadly delusional.

Well, I wanted to write something so you would know I hadn’t jumped off  of a cliff.  Truth be told, it’s been a long time since we passed a cliff up here on the Mesa, but we are heading into the hills in the next few days.  Woo Hoo, uphills and downhills, my knees can’t wait.  You are all in my thoughts and it will be interesting to see you again.  Until then,

Buen Camino.

Joe Jeter   October 20, 2014