Capitalism on the Camino de Santiago

Back in The Day when pilgrims were darn likely to die en route of disease, bandits, exhaustion, exposure, drowning, falling off the Pyrenees, or (my own closest hazard) sneezing until their brains liquefy and leak out the ears (I believe the Latin term is Mortis Supersneezus) their devotion and Calling to their faith was rewarded and assisted by a spirit of charity that ranged from locals giving water and food, to organizations like the Knights Templar which risked their own wellbeing to patrol the Camino.

Nowadays most locals don’t seem to notice pilgrims anymore, moving around them the way you unconsciously move around puddles after a month of rain, and the Guardia Civil (Spanish police) only interacts with you if you look Moroccan.  (I know, that’s inflammatory, but shit man, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a police force more given to racial profiling.  It‘s worse than Arizona.)

Anyway, what I was getting at is that the spirit of charity for pilgrims has generally dissolved.  This is entirely logical, given that instead of death, we only risk physical discomfort, and instead of a few devout/crazy individuals, today you find everything from students on a cheap holiday to retirees proving their mettle (far more of the latter, and still all varying degrees of crazy).  With ATMs and guidebooks we don’t have that same level of dependency on the goodwill of others.  Plus there’s 150,000 of us annually.

The problem I see is the speed with which a certain dearth of charity is evolving into outright exploitation.  

Up until a few years ago all the accommodation was based on donations by pilgrims.  Apparently their numbers outpaced their generosity, so a modest fee of a couple euro became standard.  Now it is pretty much just the religious shelters, “parroquial” albergues, that are donativo, and not surprisingly they conserve a very different feel and attitude than the private ones.

Guide books from even last year advise typical prices for lodging as 3 Euro, a bocadillo sandwich is 2, and a pilgrim menu 7.  I found few incidences of any of those three that were less than 2 euros higher than those prices, with a lot of the private albergues charging 12.  (Just in case, bocadillo is the Spanish sandwich whose predictability has kept me alive and utterly bored flavor-wise for the past month, and menu is in the European sense of a two course meal plus wine, bread, and usually dessert.  That sounds luxurious, and fairly is, but pilgrim menus are a standardized, almost fast-food version of a two course meal, served on the cheap, and you burn something like 5,000 calories a day walking.)

Some of these albergues, especially those that combine lodging with food service, are making an absolute killing off of pilgrims.  5 euro for every body in a bunk bed in a 100 bed room where you don’t even provide sheets, and 9 euro for every cheap dish of meat and French fries, and I am starting to look for a Knight Templar to protect me from the bandit, you know?

Now, I don’t want to bitch and moan about 2 euro…and I’m not.  I’m bitching and moaning about 2 euro for everything, every time, and around something that is supposed to be about high-falootin‘ stuff like personal transformation, spirituality, and the goodness of mankind.  And it is seemingly increasing dramatically in only a year or so; what is the future?

Capitalism is infiltrating the Camino de Santiago.

Now, I know it is all relative.  If you were to go for a personally transformative experience in a New Age center like Sedona, I don’t know but I expect you would be paying exponentially higher amounts.  But damnit, that’s their problem, they’re even farther off-track.  (We can talk about the psychology of humans and how they only value things they pay for another time.)

This being said, there is a flip side, but these columns, though narrow, look intimidatingly long so I will put that in a separate post…

Oh, and this is the town from the other post that is growing so quickly...Hontanas, hidden in the plains of the meseta a day past Burgos.  The albergue was in the ?th century pilgrim hospital.

Entrepreneurship on the Camino de Santiago

There is a massive amount of business opportunity being wasted on the Camino de Santiago.

Pilgrims generally start walking between 5:00 and 7:00 AM.  They are going to be walking all day, burning well over twice as many calories as in normal life, and are generally hungry.  Spanish bars, the standard (and often only) eating establishment in most of the towns, rarely open before 10:00 and when they do open, they pretty much only serve coffee.  And white white white bread.  (In the town in the picture there was no bar or cafe, and one little store, no sandwiches or prepared food, only that airy dry white bread.)

The Spanish siesta is still very much in force, especially in the small towns, and as pilgrims arrive at their day’s destination around 1:00 or 2:00 PM they often have to wait for things to open again at 5:00.

I was happy to see people sticking to their traditional ways, without regard for accommodating us interlopers, buuuut…

Particularly for that morning period, if you opened a little waffle, pancake, crepe, or whatever cart along the side of the camino and sold them for 50 cents each?  You would sell out every day.  You could take a giant vat of pancake batter down there and pilgrims would be licking it clean for you within two hours.  That’s actually kind of a gross and post-Apocalyptic image, sorry.

Sandwiches in the afternoon, especially if they actually have any flavor, and especially especially if you added a couple fans and shade to sit in, and it would be the same story.  Only without any licking.

I know I was just ranting about how business is tainting the Camino de Santiago (sometimes don’t you wish you could kick Big Business right in the taint?) and that may seem at odds with this, but it’s not, as long as the cart/stand is run with the right mentality.  Charge enough to cover costs and pay your rent, and provide for the pilgrims without exploiting them.  We are hungry, man!

All the way across Spain, 1,000 kilometers of walking and I saw one guy doing this, selling drinks and snacks out of the back of his tiny pickup truck at the ferociously windy peak of Alto de Perdon above Pamplona.

All this being said, I am going to rather contradict myself, as usual, and say that there is also something essential about pilgrims NOT having their needs met.  We SHOULD be hungry a lot of the time.  We SHOULD be thirsty and footsore and smelly.  It’s part of the experience.

This opportunity is glaring, and I know I am not the only one to notice it, and to be honest I am a little scared to see what will happen to the Camino de Santiago over the next few years.  I met an Italian guy, Graziano, who had been in one of the tiny towns the year before.  Last year there was one albergue, and one café.  This year there were two albergues, three restaurants, a tiny store, and at least three more buildings under construction.

So don’t open too many stands, but maybe one at the top of that one hill before Santo Domingo…

Serendipity baby

This Universe is just too flippin amazing sometimes.  Of course things don’t always go well, but when they just fall into place…it’s a trippy sense of the Divine, no?

Last night was the World Cup Final, and my recent case of Spanish Futbol Fever had me stoked (if I can reveal my continuing low-grade case of California surfer slang).  Watching a soccer game alone is okay, but oh-so-much-better with friends.  The problem was, in this entire city I knew two people, and since they are always together, effectively count as one person with regards to likelihood of random encounters.

I wandered around the city all afternoon people watching, reading, and making a ginormous sandwich in the park with sharp sheep-milk cheese, fresh tomato, and red bell pepper while sitting across the path from a bench loaded with four nuns in beige robes eating ice cream.  It was beautiful.

But I didn’t see my friends.  It was getting kind of chilly, and since the game wouldn’t end until 11:00ish, I headed back to the place I’m staying to get my long-sleeve shirt.  Since the world is a beautiful and amazing place, on the way I ran into, yup, the couple I know.  They had a table with an extra chair in view of the screen, their Spanish couch surfing host was on the way, and suffice to say, I never made it back for that shirt and am absolutely fine with that.

I may have shivered a bit, but I had good Galician beer to drink, octopus to eat, and great company to keep me happy.  An entire city and I happen to walk right past their table.  Serendipitous, no?

And it gets better.  They were couch surfing, their host came by, he is fantastic, I need a place from tomorrow on, they are leaving today…  So now I am meeting the host, Juan, in the park tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 to move my stuff to his place.

I am adding Serendipity to my list of names of the Divine.

Acabo de peregrinar.

Well shucks, man, I finished.  No more walking.  That is, no more Walking, no more pilgrimage.  This morning I woke up at 9:00.  9:00!  On a typical Camino day I was up at 6:00 or 6:30 and walking within about 20 minutes, or earlier if it was going to be a really hot day.  By 9:00 I’d be a couple towns down the road.

And I took a shower…in the morning!  Camino showers were in the afternoon, partially because by the time I reached the albergue (pronounced “al-bear-gay” by the way) I was in desperate need of a shower but also because showering makes your feet all wet and soggy and soft, and  more vulnerable to blisters, so inadvisable in the morning.

And today I expect to only wear my sandals.  My shoes are on vacation.  Smelly, smelly vacation.  On the outside windowsill.

Sleeping in, showering when I want, and wearing only sandals are three things I enjoy…but it is really tempting to give them all up for the sweat and blisters and uncertainty of walking.  Maybe there’s a shaded little beach next to a river just beyond that hill…  Maybe a really interesting person from who-knows-where is in the next albergue.

But I am done.  And it’s weird.  And it’s good.  Tonight I will go to bed in the same place I woke up.  (Well, same city anyway, I am still day-to-day on accommodations…if anyone knows of a couch I could sleep on tonight, let me know.)  I know where the nearest store is, and a good bar, and a bench in the shade.

When I was here before, three hundred kilometers ago, I was surrounded by the energy of finishing.  My pack of five-ish fellow walkers counted down the kilometers to Santiago, and up arriving it was satisfaction, celebration, and farewells.  I was the only one not done, not going home.

Then I walked to Finisterra, and the albergue and town were saturated with that same sense of completion.  People burned their hiking boots and threw their walking sticks into the sea.  It is a tiny town and buses back to the city leave every couple hours.

Then on to Muxia, where it was the same, everyone was finishing.  And back to Finisterra, same same.  Back to Muxia.  Again.  Including the Dutch couple who walked all the way from the Netherlands, three thousand km or something like that.  Oy vey!

I bused to A Coruna, where I joined up with a fantastic Scotsman named Charlie to walk the Camino Ingles back down to Santiago.  Again, arriving in the city had a culmination feel.  Same same, but different.

This time I was actually finishing.  And because the Universe has a sense of humor, Charlie was not.  He stayed overnight and took a bus south the next day to start the last section of the Camino Portuges.  I was on the other side of the fence now.

So now I am finished.  I can sleep in, let my blisters heal, and maybe finally tell you about Manjarin.  I stayed up late reading last night.  I bought a heavier bag of groceries today.

I’m sure there are more things I would like to say about this, but right now I am going to go for a walk.  No, a stroll.  I am going to go for a stroll around town.  Slowly.  My backpack stays here.

Futbolista

Blech, I was trying to write a post about how business is contaminating the Camino, and it is just too wordy, so instead here’s a note about soccer.

I don’t know if you have been watching the World Cup, or were already aware of this, but Spanish soccer fans are lunatics.  I watched the last game (sorry Germany, it surprised me too) in a town whose name I can never remember and whose size confuses me (why is it so big?  There is nothing there!) and our table of three pilgrims stood out as the only people not wearing jerseys.

You could feel everyone holding their breath off and on until Spain finally scored.  Everyone jumped up and we were all yelling and screaming and bedlam and I felt something hit my feet and looked down into the glazed and confused eyes of the guy wearing the Spanish flag as a cape who had been sitting next to me and was now passed out on the floor.

He was so excited by the goal he literally fainted dead away.  It was only after a couple more rounds of high fives and finishing the song-chant that anyone could control their enthusiasm long enough to pick him up.

Poor guy probably lost all memory of the goal.  The good thing for him though is that since then they have replayed the game and goal about forty-seven thousand times.  Yesterday there was a pack of a dozen jersey-wearing fans walking around Santiago and they saw a TV showing the game again.  They were headed to the Cathedral, but since it was minute 64 and they all knew the goal comes in minute 72, they decided to stand in the street and wait for it.

Eight smiling minutes later we had cheers and a song, and then they were back on their way to church.

The Company We Keep

The formal Camino ends at the Cathedral in Santiago, but you can extend it to Finisterre.  From there you can further continue to the other side of the peninsula to a small town called Muxia, which has its own legends, a striking sanctuary church, and a sea that was stormy and gray.

I am still a couple hundred kilometers short of my 1,000 km goal, so two days ago I walked the 30 km up to Muxia, then yesterday walked back.  On the way up I walked with Michael from Denmark, on the way back with Yoshino from Japan.  The path was the same but the experience totally different.

Michael has been homeless for years.  He has been addicted to hard drugs, served time in prison for a bank robbery, and been hunted by Middle Eastern gangsters.  He served in the French Foreign Legion to escape for awhile, and the military left its stamp on him.  He wears camouflage pants and a sleeveless olive T-shirt, and has the quick, firm-bodied movements of someone familiar with violence.  He walks with two dogs on short chain leashes, has buzz-cut hair and sun-weathered skin.

Though not overtly aggressive, he has that “problem with authority” and frequently gets into arguments with albergue owners.  Unable to find a place to stay with his dogs in Santiago he slept in an abandoned building on the fringes where rats ate his last remaining money.  With two bags on and the dogs, he moves like a compact tank, despite only being around 5’6”.

When we were walking through a tiny farming town and stopped in some shade to eat our bread and cheese lunches, an old woman kept a suspicious eye on us from inside the house opposite and all the neighborhood dogs barked at us without pause for the entire time we were there.

Yoshino is a petite Japanese woman with a ready smile, open pretty features, and a willingness to talk to anyone.  She speaks excellent Spanish and I think everyone in between Muxia and Finisterre yesterday learned that it was her birthday.  Everyone enthusiastically wished her a happy birthday.

When we stopped for a break we chatted with a local lady who made very sure we knew how to get where we were going; people she said hello to called out tips from upstairs windows.  Sitting on the beach in Finisterre we made friends with a local fisherman who guided her throughout the town looking for a salon to get her hair cut, his plastic bag of fresh calamari on hold until she had an appointment.  (The locals here, as in most places with heavy tourist flow, are somewhat separate, and though friendly, they are not overly quick to engage you in conversation).  The dogs we passed all approached, wagging their tails, and sometimes paced us for a while in friendly companionship.

Now, obviously the presence of Michael’s dogs has a lot to do with at least the last one, but the disparity of experience on the two walks was glaring.  Their physical appearances and demeanors heavily determine the lives they experience.  They are also both great people, and I am thankful to have met each of them.

One of Michael’s dogs, Keisha, he found beaten with a bat and shot with a pellet gun.  He nursed her back to health and has taken care of her for five years; she still get upset when people take pictures of her, mistaking cameras pointed at her for guns.  He carries a second pack in front, heavy with dog food, and does not leave them alone even when that means he has to sleep outside too.

Nevertheless, when we got lost in the woods I was aware that it was just me and Michael and his dogs, with no one else around.  And to my shame, I passed a beautiful scene that day and did not take a picture of it because I didn’t want him to see my camera.  To be honest, this is mostly because of my own fear of being perceived as spoiled and privileged, but I have to suspect that there was also an element that I didn’t want him to know I was carrying anything expensive.

He is very open about his mistakes in his past, but is trying to turn his life around.  He was happy to get his certificate of having completed the route to Muxia, which he will send with his Compostela (the certificate for completion of the Camino) to his son who he has not seen in 11 years.  His son is 13.  He wants his son to “know that his dad is capable of something.”

But people don’t see that, they see someone who has lived a hard-bitten life, and who has done whatever it takes to get what he wants.  And they are cautious around that.  The police question him regularly and shopkeepers keep an eye on him.  I was not surprised to hear that he has spent time in prison.  I met and very much liked people he reported as being intolerable assholes.

Michael and Yoshino will never be perceived the same (at least until age has blurred them both to innocuousness).  Yoshino’s generosity of spirit shows through and people immediately trust her.  Michael’s bad choices have left their marks, but hopefully his good ones will show up too.

For me, I have poorly patched battered jeans (which I love), but a ready smile.  I am an unknown (and usually scruffy) young male, but a greeting for everyone.  I guess we all make our own caminos.

The End of the World

I have seen the End of the World.

And to be honest…it’s actually pretty nice.  Pretty severe, even harsh at times.  I was surprised by the number of tourists and the tables selling bric-a-brac souvenir kitsch.

The symbol of Santiago (i.e. Saint James) is the scallop shell, and it has also become the symbol of the Camino de Santiago and its pilgrims in general.  There are plenty of local legends of Saint James showing up to save dying pilgrims with water from his scallop shell, and back in The Day, pilgrims would take home a shell to prove that they had completed the Camino.

The problem is that the city of Santiago is about 100 kilometers from the coast.  The word Compostela derives from Camino de la Estrella that is “Path of the Star” with the legend regarding the rediscovery of Saint James’ body involving a vision-blessed shepherd following a star to the west to find the tomb (which may sound familiar if you didn’t nap through the entire Christmas service).

Pilgrims are an intense lot (kind of the original Extreme Sports crowd, only with less Gatorade and more diphtheria) so many pilgrims continued to follow the path of the star onward past Santiago to the farthest western point in the (medieval) world, a town called Finisterre, as in Fin de Terra, as in “End of the World.”

I, despite my lack of either Gatorade or diphtheria, did likewise, and so found myself one bright June day, sitting on the fiercely hot, jagged rocks below the lighthouse that caps the peninsula about 4 kilometers west of Finisterre (the End of the World is actually not quite at the end).  It is a drastic place, and you can feel the weight of all the powerful moments pilgrims have had here over the years.

(This is despite the busloads of tourist who manage to walk all the way from their buses to the tables selling souvenirs.  I don’t mean to scorn them, it’s cool that they want to come here, but the folding tables piled with mass produced crap seem profane in such a place.  As an example, the Spanish word for any shell is concha, though Santiago’s symbol is specifically the scallop shell.  The tables however were piled with conch shells, despite their irrelevance to Santiago and this area entirely.)

One of the traditions for Finisterre is to burn something, usually some of your clothes.  I suspect the irritation of a month of the same two shirts and the relationship between the perseverance of sweat and the effectiveness of hand-washing have something to do with it, but it is at heart a purification ritual.

Purification is a recurring element on the Camino.  You bring a stone from home to leave at the Iron Cross in the mountains of Leon, and/or one in Santiago, and/or you burn your clothes in Finisterre.  The idea is always to leave behind something from your life that you want to get rid of.  Destroy it, purify yourself.

I thought about it for a whole slew of kilometers, and not that my life is perfect by any means, but to be honest there isn’t really anything I feel like burning out of my life.  So I reversed it, cuz I’m just Mr. Unique like that, and took something from The End of the World instead.  A little piece of quartz, fits between two fingers and kind of hangs there by itself.

It is a reminder of the lengths humans have gone to to try and rid themselves of their mistakes.  Of the unthinkable vastness of human experiences and this chapter of my own.  Of the temporary nature of reality, from a place that was considered for centuries to be the westernmost point in the world, and here I was sitting, a guy who had spent his entire life up until a couple years before, far far west of there.

So greetings from the End of the World, the beginning of some, and the continuance of mine.