You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning, feeling all Olympic, and you only have 30 km ahead of you? You don’t, do you. 🙂 When I had already done 18 km, I told myself the last 12 would be just a walk in the park. And it really was—until the last 4.5 km. That was my final stop, time to recharge, and I went for a beer. In the meantime, Gro messaged me that she managed to get herself lost and fucked up the path by 3 km. Since she didn’t want to turn back, she decided to cut across a field to get back on the Way. I didn’t even want to know what happened to make her miss it. Probably fell into a trance. But I get it.
I had that beer in a village where most hikers call it a day. My legs got a bit of rest with the cold beer, my body cooled down, and it was time to head to the accommodation. The first 3 km were flat and in the sun, doable, but just around the corner a brutal hill was waiting for me—nothing if you tackle it for breakfast or a late dinner. But as a lunch course after 26 km, I was asking myself why the fuck I didn’t bring a gun to the Camino. That would’ve been the perfect moment to shoot myself in the head.
I thought about calling my mom to come pick me up in her Toyota, but then remembered I have razors and could just slit my wrists instead—spare my mom the trouble. But that’d be too much of a mess for the locals to clean up, so I decided I’d rather try to reach the finish line even if I looked like a zombie. The last kilometre and a half went like this: I’d walk to the next bit of shade and wait there for my body to recover from just 20 metres under the scorching sun. At that hour, only fools walk this path. That last 1.5 km took me nearly an hour—I was fried from the heat and incline.
You know that joy when you’ve beat the weather and yourself, when you realise you’ve made it to the finish and not to the final finish line (read: the morgue)? When I saw the accommodation, I was marinated, roasted, and ready to be sliced. Gro and two other guys were sitting at a table, dead from the hill, unable to even crawl to their beds, let alone take a shower from the heat and exhaustion. It was brutal. I didn’t go inside either—I felt like someone had wrung me out. Everything was flashing before my eyes. I could only order a beer.
Half an hour later, the owner came out and asked if we were ready for the tour of the place and our beds. We all said no in unison and asked for another beer each to get back on our feet. She laughed. She spoke English, which meant we hikers didn’t have to waste extra energy. She told us the shop and pharmacy opened at 17:30, so we had an hour to rest with our drinks before heading to the store.
I told Gro I’d love tomato soup with toasted bread for dinner and eggs with ham for breakfast, since there was a kitchen at the accommodation where we could cook. She thought it was a great idea, so at 18:00 we headed off to the shop. Just before the entrance, we bumped into the shop owner, who told us—in Spanish—that he’d forgotten the keys and would be right back. At least that’s what we understood. He looked about 70. As he walked off towards home—or wherever the keys were—he stopped to take a piss on a tree, leaning on it like it was his last day on earth.
In front of the store, he left a huge sack of baguettes. They could’ve been from yesterday, the day before, or last month. Who knows. Since we were in a tiny village and the guy was nowhere to be found for half an hour, I asked Gro if maybe the dude had dementia and forgot what he was doing. She said it was so fucking hot that when he got home, he just couldn’t be arsed to go back to work. He’d counted the hikers in front of the store, thought there weren’t enough to bother, and figured he’d earned enough for the day.
Two more guys showed up, ones we’d had beers with earlier, and in total, we all just WAIIITED for another good hour and finally gave up. Starving, we walked back to the accommodation. We could’ve been pissed and annoyed, but instead we made up stories about which movie the shop owner had been in. When we got back, I asked the lady what the deal was with him and if she had his number. And you know it’s not going to end well when she starts the sentence with: “I know a guy who knows a guy.” At that point, you just know you’re screwed and there’ll be no dinner and no breakfast. I had such nice plans.
We found out the guy decided to just call it a day because he couldn’t be bothered—just like Gro said. The owner offered us dinner, which of course we didn’t refuse. I was starving and basically shoved the food into my mouth. I ordered salad and a pork steak with fries. Of course, I forgot that in Spain you eat the salad first, then the main course. I could’ve stopped at the salad—it was massive, and my stomach was already shrunk. The owner just laughed at my face when the main course and then dessert arrived. “This much food lasts me two days,” I told her. She just looked at me like a confused owl. She couldn’t understand how someone could eat so little.
Bottom line: the question isn’t whether there’s a shop in the village you’re heading to—it’s whether the person in charge is willing to work that day. It was a Monday.
Sure, we didn’t get any food from the shop in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, but I did catch a whiff of weed and ended up having a business meeting.
