After a night of questionable rest I had the longest stage ahead of me, which is said to be one of the hardest of the whole French way because of a couple of sustained climbs to be faced. When I woke up I noticed a slight discomfort in my right knee. The previous days I had noticed it a little more loaded and swollen but it is normal, I’m not used to walks of this magnitude. In some of the thousands of steps you step on a stone or lean wrong and the ankle, knee or foot suffers a little bit. But as they are warm, you don’t even notice it at the time. The big dilemma was whether I could do the whole stage or I would have to stop in Melide, which is a large town halfway through the stage where another branch of the Camino meets. The decision had to be made in the morning because I was going to use the backpack delivery service, and I had to indicate where I wanted it to be sent. Decision: to Arzua, with a pair. If we avoid the challenges in front of us we will never know how capable we are.
The day began with a friendly chat with the breakfast lady in charge of the hostel. Well, in charge of the breakfast and then later cleaning the hostel with 4 floors plus basement. The attitude of the girl, a Maghrebi immigrant, was absolutely huge: in addition to the maintenance work at the hostel, she had a farm where she raised animals that she later slaughtered seasonally and sent to various parts of the country on request. She said that it was not hard for her to work, that she wanted to make a future for herself. She had arrived in Galicia more than 10 years ago, with a troubled family history that she was overcoming. A delightful woman, and a life story that gives hope and relativizes the difficulties that one may have gone through.
Along the Camino you meet people from different backgrounds, with different motivations and contexts. Interactions tend to be more or less brief, as the pace is not always the same, or the stops to have a drink or rest do not coincide. With the same naturalness that one said hello, one says goodbye.
The pilgrims form a community of friendships that are ephemeral in the moment, but can last long afterward, too. A couple of friends of mine who did the walk separately in 2023 told me that they still have some whatssap group with the group of pilgrims they built up along the way, and some of them have made it a point to see each other even when they live far apart.
The Camino is not easy for everyone, but you will always find someone who cares about you if you find yourself in difficulty.
Sometimes the connection becomes much deeper and more interesting, and one takes advantage of the ephemeral and distant in time and space: if you will most likely never see someone again in your life, why not talk without a filter about the things that matter to you? So many hours of walking give you many and varied topics of conversation, and suddenly you find yourself talking about the human and the divine with someone with whom you have connected spontaneously and unexpectedly. That surprises by its beauty and that touches inside, that stimulates and transcends; sometimes something wonderful happens without expecting it. Magic.
Along the Camino you walk at a pace that may – or may not – resemble that of the people around you. For some reason the walking pace at which I felt comfortable was above average, so I usually overtook many more pilgrims than they overtook me. When passing it is customary to wish “Buen camino” (“Have a good way”) to the pilgrim with whom you share that moment, as a greeting. The response is “Buen camino” back or, if it is a more definitive farewell, “Buen camino y buena vida” (“Have a good way and a good life”)
In earlier times it was said “Ultreia et Suseia”, an expression that can already be found in the Codex Calixtinus. “Ultreia” comes from the Latin root ‘ultra’ and comes to mean ‘beyond’, or ‘further on’. It is used as a support among pilgrims, referring to the fact that there is still more Camino to go, more physical – or spiritual – challenges to overcome, but that Santiago, that shared goal, must be reached. “Suseia” means ‘higher’, which also refers to the slopes -also spiritual- that must be overcome successively until reaching the last mountain from where you can already see the Cathedral of Santiago, Monte do Gozo.
My knee was already bothering me a little more than usual, but up to that point the walking pace had not been very demanding.
Melide is a very lively and colorful village, with a very nice bridge, where the French Way and the Primitive Way meet. The streets were full of pilgrims, with minstrels and musicians playing the guitar. There was also a little tourist train whose passengers greeted the pilgrims as they passed.
A fitting place to bid farewell to the star of my Camino and move on in search of my own challenges. -“Buen camino y buena vida”. Not without sadness, I continued advancing.
; as I drank a good beer on a terrace I recovered my breath and was determined, not without great doubts, to face the most complicated part of the route.
At the exit of Melide there is a good slope to overcome and I thought about turning back. But I continued anyway. I noticed a group of Scandinavians advancing at a good pace and I thought about doing with them as in cycling: “the rubber”. That is to say, that they would take me using them as a hare, keeping them in sight. Not in my dreams. What a great pace those guys had going up. I overtook them once they stopped to have a drink and when they overtook me again I noticed the calves of their legs: flask bricks. Where was I going lmao, how deluded I am xD .
In Galicia they say that meigas (witches) do not exist, yet there are some. And I believe so, because otherwise there is no explanation for the fierce rottweiler of the warning tile to become an affable hound who seemed fed up with watching pilgrims pass by. He must have bitten some of them meigas and got a spell back. Or maybe it is a Rottweiler purchased in Aliexpress.
The cruceiro in Boente next to the Salaeta fountain -of miraculous properties, they say-.
Church of Santiago de Boente with its fallen bell.
The last stretch until arriving to Arzúa is hard to deal with. It is a long sustained upward slope, which after turning corner in the dirt road to the right, continues on asphalt / sidewalk until it meets the national road N-547. The legs were noticing the kilometers already marched on. At this point, I did not even notice my right knee: it had its own dimensional plane of existence alternative to mine.
¡Challenge achieved!
They had left my backpack in a restaurant. So once I got it back, I looked for a private hostel where, according to the reviews on Booking, they heavily criticized the owner/manager. Travelers complained about the strictness of the silence requirement, and that after 11 pm the door of the hostel was closed! Even if you had paid and having your luggage inside, you would remain outside if you didn’t come back before that time. And I thought to myself: “considering how exhausted I am today that’s just what I need”: a Taliban of silence, a gladiator of rest, a merciless fanatic with the noisy guys, The first of its name, The king of the melatonin and The protector of sleepers 😂
I witnessed the reprimand he gave to a client of the hostel for wanting to go out to smoke the last cigarette at 10:50 pm. He told him to hurry too much, that the door was closed with a button that he pressed and he will stay outside 😮
It was a good choice, although considering my history of nocturnal behavior, it was only for that day and under those circumstances 😉
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