Camino De Santiago - Day 3

Time of Visit: October 2, 2022

I woke up at 6:30 to a cold draft from the dorm window flowing over my face. It might have also been flowing over the rest of my body, but I couldn't tell because the rest of my body was numb. The 8€ albergue provided neither bedsheets nor a blanket, and my sleeping bag liner was no match for the early-morning cold seeping into the room. I didn’t want to fall ill so early on, so I decided to warm up my body and get an early start climbing the hill ahead.

Night mode did too much work here.

I swear it was way darker than this!

After trudging uphill in the dark for an hour or so, I felt a tingling warmth on my neck and looked back. The sun had barely climbed over the horizon but remained hidden behind a streak of distant clouds, filtering the colors of dawn into a diffuse kaleidoscope of pink and orange scattered across the sky.

Some of my most memorable moments of the Camino took place amidst the backdrop of silent twilight. Unlike America, where the birds begin chirping at the first crack of daylight, the birds in Spain seemed to hold their breaths - waiting for the sun to reveal itself in its full radiant splendor before heralding the start of a new day with their bright chorus.

I stopped for some juice in the hilltop town of Foncebagón. Every Spanish café is endowed with an orange juicing machine filled to the brim with bruised oranges, even in tiny Foncebagón, and I gave my legs a rest while teasing a gray and white tabby that was circling the cafe tables.

The remainder of the day was downhill on loose gravel, and it was the hottest day of my Camino, about 84 degrees. By midday, the sun was unbearable even with a sunhat, but I didn't want to waste my hotel reservation so I had no choice but to keep moving.

Going downhill on this terrain while carrying a backpack was awful on the knees.

A 12 euro 'Texas chili'.

The charming villages kept my spirits high in spite of the knee-shattering terrain and hot sun.

I walked with an Italian guy who had just graduated from medical school. His English wasn’t very good, but with crude Spanish on my end and crudely Spanishified Italian on his end, we held a surprisingly substantive conversation about corrupt politicians in his home city of Bari and his predilection for Asian women. When I mentioned that I had been to Japan, he asked me about brothel pricing. I admitted I didn’t know their rates. “There are three things you must enjoy when traveling: nature, food, and women. Your trip was incomplete.” He looked at me with genuine pity. I thanked him for his wisdom and company and went to my hotel. Never had privacy felt so good.

The town of the night was a beautiful medieval village called Molinaseca, hemmed in by a mountain on one side and a river on the other. Locals and pilgrims alike crowded the bars overlooking the river for a late-afternoon beer while kids splashed about in the clear water below.

On the descent into Molinaseca.

After massaging my poor feet for an hour, I went out and enjoyed a crappy burger with a Heineken and talked to a German girl who had sat down across from me and refused to make eye contact until I said hello, at which point she brightened up and spoke to me in rapid fire German. I attempted to respond with the only German phrase I knew: “Ich sprieche kein Deutsch”. Regardless of whether she understood my sentence, she understood that I didn’t speak German and switched to perfect English. I still have no idea why she would lead with German. After dinner, we enjoyed 3€ glasses of sangria with finger-sized bowls of salmorejo, my favorite soup in the world.

song of the day: Lamp - 誰も知らない - buttery smooth "composer-pop" by my favorite band. Lamp is the king of several Shibuya-kei inspired groups that specialize in technical, jazzy pop - also check out ブルー・ペパーズ and the wonderful Indonesian singer-songwriter Vira Talisa.