Day 15: Burgos to Hontanas

May 21: Walking distance: 31km

The next morning, I just couldn’t wait to get away from Andrew the creepy Australian. Andrew and his two German friends were talking about calling a hotel in the 20-kilometer distanced Hornillos del Camino to reserve two hotel rooms for us four. They were obviously thinking I would stick around. I always thought I would give very clear signals to people, but these people did not even realize that I did not like them very much. I made it crystal clear that I wanted to be alone again from now on. And so, while they had another coffee in Burgos, I started out on my own again right after breakfast.

I have had two resting days and so I expected my cold and knee pain to be gone. Strangely enough, it didn’t take very long for my knee pain to come back. I did not understand at all. Even funnier, the pain seemed to be stronger than ever.  After eight kilometers of walking, in the middle of nowhere, I had to sit down. I thought my knee was going to explode any minute and I had a little cry to help me deal with this physical challenge. Then the psychological pain hit me as well. My two resting days haven’t cured my knee pain. There obviously seems to be a bigger problem. Would I ever manage to get to Santiago? Right now, I doubted making it to the next village on my own. I tried getting up, but a sudden pain hit me again, so that I cried out loud and quickly sat down again. So, what now?

I got out some cooling cream and then I just sat, with eyes closed, went into a light meditation and asked the spirit world for help. I believe in spiritual healing. I believe in energy work and I have experienced different kinds of healing many times in my life. It has always been good and so I am convinced that it heals and helps. I used to go to a Reiki practitioner regularly, but then I discovered spiritual healing and feel very drawn to it – as a patient, not as a healer. I also believe that we can ask for healing ourselves. So when I went into meditation, I just prayed to God, if you will, and the spirits that I feel around me, for example my late grandmother, to send me some healing and energy so that I can make it at least to the next village. 20 minutes later I was ready to go and completely pain-free. Of course you can argue that it was the cooling cream or psychology. But it doesn’t matter – I could walk again and at the end of the day, that is what is important.

This is a graffiti that I saw that day. I found it very fitting and even though it is written in a very poor English, it touched me deeply: “Nothing is going to stop me. Even if my body falls broken, my mind and spirit will carry me on.”

I got to the next village at noon. By that time I was doing fine and I felt silly stopping now. There was not much going on in this village and I would have been so bored for half a day being stuck there. I also thought I needed some catching up to do, since I wasn’t the fastest pilgrim. Looking back at it now, I don’t understand why I was in such a hurry anyway. So I had totally forgotten about my knee pain and pushed on. Not the wisest thing to do, I know.

A few kilometers later the landscape totally changed. I was finally on the Meseta. Wow. It is a vast plateau reaching from Burgos to Leon about 400 to 1000 meters high. Some people skip this part of the camino. There are two reasons for it. Some people think the Meseta is very boring, because there are just fields and fields and fields. It is quite flat and all you do the whole day is go straight and you can see for many miles. Another reason to skip the Meseta is that it can be unbearably hot and due to the lack of trees, you might not be able to find any cooling shadow for a whole day. For women this becomes a much bigger problem. Because there are no trees or bushes, there is also nowhere to hide when you need a pee. Very quickly you become very simple-minded and pee when you need a pee – yes, in front of your fellow camino mates. It’s either that or bladder explosion.

This following video clip shows a part of the film “The Way”, which portrays some Meseta moments nicely (especially the loo-problem for women!):

By the way, if you are following this blog and you still haven’t watched “The Way”, I’d recommend it very highly. It is one of the best films I have ever seen. It is a feature film about four very different people walking the camino for various reasons and becoming amazing friends along the way. An amazing film about grief, forgiveness, friendship and the brotherhood of man.

The next town, Hornillos del Camino was still still eight kilometers away and it was getting later and later. I wasn’t the quickest as I tried to be good to my knee by walking slowly. A lot of people passed by and one said: “Oh I hope there are still some beds left for us in Hornillos.” You hear this a lot. So many people are stressing about a place to sleep. I guess it’s instincts. The camino is full of decisions. If you walk until noon, you can get to an albergue early and pick a nice bed. But then you might sit around for the rest of the day being bored. Or you walk further until late afternoon and risk not getting a bed, because the albergues are full. Tough decision. Of course no one wants to sleep outside. So people stress about getting a place to sleep. That day, I was so close to panic as well and for a minute I tried to walk faster. Every person who was quicker than me and passed by, was another person taking yet another bed that I wasn’t going to have. I greeted people nicely and then started to hate them for taking my bed. I stopped. What’s wrong with you, Anika? I suddenly thought. What is this camino doing to you? You suddenly start to hate people, because they are faster, because they are looking for a place to sleep. I realized that I started to become very primitive in my thinking and was shocked. Then I heard a voice in my head saying: “Let’s cross the bridge when we come to it.” It got later and later, but instead of stressing, I actually sat down in the mud, got a pen and a paper out and wrote:

Don’t worry my child

It will all be fine

Don’t worry about rain

When the sun does shine

Live in the here and now

It’s the right thing to do

Don’t worry about rain

When the sky is blue

For the next kilometres I enjoyed the moment and was confident that there was a bed waiting for me, wherever I would decide to call it a walking day. I regained my positivity and was quietly singing to myself when just two kilometres before Hornillos the knee pain kicked in again, so hard that I couldn’t walk once again. I sat down next to some stone formations that must have been put together by other pilgrims. Once again I asked for healing, but didn’t feel any relief. So I sat and waited.  Suddenly, an old man in his seventies approached me. He had been sitting close-by with four  younger women and had seen that I was in pain. “Can I help you? I have some cream that you can put on your knee.” “No, thank you, I have cream as well. It’s very kind of you, but I think I’ll manage,” I refused politely. For the past two weeks I had been the limping German and was offered creams and pills from so many people. I got tired of it and wasn’t ready for yet another experiment. The man returned to his little travel group and I got up and did some stretches to relax my knee. Two minutes later, a woman from the same group came over and said: “Look, are you sure that you don’t want any help? We have been walking behind you all day and we saw you limp. We are physiotherapists and can have a look what’s the problem.” Mh, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all. In the end, I have had two resting days and the knee pain still was around, so maybe there was something really wrong. Something that a physiotherapist might spot. So I went to this little group and the man, who introduced himself as Jean-Pierre from the French speaking part of Switzerland, rolled out a yoga mat. Why was he carrying a yoga mat? He asked me to lie down and then he observed my leg. He told me to relax and for the next five minutes he was just holding my knee in silence. Everyone was silent, even the women. It did not take me long to feel a familiar energy spreading in my body and I realized that this man wasn’t a physiotherapist at all, he was a healer.

Little stone formations, where the healer Jean-Pierre approached me. He said that these stone formations have a North-American tradition. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know.

Inuksuks?

How amazing is that? I had asked for healing and suddenly I was approached by a healer giving me healing. When I got up, the knee pain was gone. Wow. The girl that had approached me introduced herself as Chiara from Italy. She was in the company of two other Italian women, all in her thirties, but her two Italian friends couldn’t speak one word of English, so I found it very hard to communicate with them other than with smiles. The fourth woman was the beautiful, ginger-haired Cora from the Netherlands. The healer Jean-Pierre, who looked like DJ Bobo, insisted on me walking the last kilometres with the group and also ordered me to give him my bag. I tried to refuse, but he just took my bag and carried it as well. “You just got healing, but your knee needs rest. The healing helped, but you also need to take care of yourself so that the pain doesn’t come back.” So, Jean-Pierre carried two bags, which judging his huge bag, equals about 22-25 kilogrammes. Insane.

On the way to Hornillos the group talked about a lot of spiritual stuff, energy and the need for forgiveness. I was amazed and thought: “What took me so long to find these people?” Have I finally found my camino family, the spiritual gang, my soul mates? I decided to stick around. We got to Hornillos by 3 p.m. We bought a few things in a shop and I was ready to look for a place to stay, when, to my horror, the group wanted to continue five more kilometres to the next albergue. They were so curious about it,  because it is supposed to be a very spiritual place. I felt like letting them down, if I didn’t join them. They had helped me so much and I felt like I would be selfish not continuing with them. Writing these lines now, I realize how dangerous my thinking had become. I was already starting to become dependent of these people.

So, I got up and continued walking. It was just 5 more kilometres to the next albergue. A piece of cake. After two kilometres however, the knee pain kicked in once again. Why was I acting so irrational? I kept on walking, even though it was the third time I had such an immense pain in my knee that I couldn’t walk any further. Jean-Pierre got his yoga mat out once again. This time, as soon as I laid down, he started making weird noises. It sounded like singing, but his voice suddenly became very very deep and I got a bit scared. He then started shaking all over and looked like he was in a lot of pain. It freaked me out, but the women said that everything is fine. After 10 minutes Jean-Pierre came back to his old self and explained to me that he just did some Tibetian mantras. It was spooky, even for me – and believe me I have seen quite a lot! – but it helped. The knee pain was gone.

So, we pushed on and after another hour of walking we got to San Bol. I expected a little village, but far from it. It was a tiny little house in the middle of nothing. There were fields and fields and fields, a river and this tiny house.

During my research I found this video on youtube that shows the spirit of San Bol:

It used to be a very party-like albergue with a campsite to it, as the video shows. However, camping is no longer allowed and there is space for 12 people to sleep. By now I had walked more than 25 kilometres, much more than usual and I was starting to feel weak and hungry. I supposed that no one had wanted to stay in this deserted place in the middle of absolutely nowhere and was looking forward to my bed in this seemingly very cozy place. But when we arrived they told us that there was only one free bed. They also said that the next albergue was another five kilometres away. I nearly broke down in tears as I so badly needed a rest and was close to starving. I was tired of eating my cookies and needed a warm meal. A delicious smell of cooked food came out of the albergue and I so wanted to stay. I thought: “This one free bed is meant to be yours. Take it, just take it.” But I felt so disloyal. I thought that by taking this bed, I would betray these lovely people who had given me healing and helped me out. So , feeling very weak, I suppressed my tears and my survival instinct and followed Jean-Pierre and the girls. I had later heard that San Bol was such a great place, without any electricity and only cold water – very primitive, but to me at that time it sounded amazing. As it was very much back to the roots.

By now, Jean-Pierre was nearly running, because it was getting really late now and even he started to panic about a sleeping place. I could feel that there was something wrong with my foot and I couldn’t keep up. The path was very difficult to walk on, as it was only a small path for tractors that work on the fields. The soil was uneven as it had been muddy the previous days and that mud had dried up. Very often I stumbled and nearly fell. Chiara walked with me, while the others nearly ran. She tried to motivate me, but I was just so close to faint due to weakness. In the end she took my bag – this tiny woman, about the same size as me, carrying two heavy bags after having walked nearly 30 kilometres. I was too exhausted to be impressed. All became a blur and mentally I wasn’t really there anymore. I just walked and tried not to fall. I remember that I slowed down so much that by the end of it all even a turtle would have been faster than me. I realized that something was going on in my brain, that I couldn’t think straight anymore and that scared me.

In the end, we finally made it to the lovely village of Hontanas. I had walked 31 kilometres. Jean-Pierre had already paid for six beds and all I had to do was pick one and lie down. When I got rid of my heavy walking boots, I saw this massive blister on my right foot. No wonder I couldn’t walk anymore. I had a little nap, while Jean-Pierre cooked dinner for the six of us. I have no idea where this old man took all the energy from…..walking more than 31 kilometres, taking care of five women, carrying two bags, doing healing, and at the end of the day cooking dinner without any rest. However, I was in desperate need of some rest and after I got back to my old self, I walked up the street to meet old friends. My dear Italian friend Stefano was sitting outside a bar, with his legs up on one chair. I have met Stefano on my second walking day and lost him after Pamplona, because he too had a lot of knee problems. And still here, after Day 15, he complained about his knee. I felt very close to him, because we happened to go through the same struggle. I was somehow surprised to see him. The last I have seen of him was in Santo Domingo, where a doctor had told him to take three rest days as he had hurt his meniscus. After a resting day he had apparently taken a few buses to follow his Italian friends and was now sitting in this bar on the Meseta, drinking a cold beer being in great spirit. I also met Santi, the cute little dog that I had met in Belorado. He seemed to be very happy to see me too and he cheered me up big time. Back in the albergue, I also met the Korean guitar guy. I had seen him a lot in the first two days of my camino. It is amazing who you end up meeting again, once you get out of your comfort zone. I was very proud of myself to have walked so far in one day, despite all the pain and struggles. It certainly was a very emotional day with a lot of ups and downs. I had come very close to my limits and was surprised how strong I really am. However, I wasn’t quite sure if I had been brave or just plain stupid. Looking back at it now, I still don’t know the right answer to that.