Camino De Santiago - Day 9

Time of Visit: October 8, 2022

The Camino before the 100km mark is not the same as the Camino after the 100km mark. The former feels like a quiet backpacking trail; the latter is more like a carnival, with Bluetooth speakers blasting reggaeton, groups of reluctant schoolchildren kicking up rocks, and large groups of pensioners day-drinking and enjoying their hard-earned freedom. In addition to the flood of people who begin in Sarria to receive the certificate, it is also at this point that the Camino Frances, Camino Primitivo, and Camino del Norte all merge into a single road enmeshed in a permanent human traffic jam.

I was accompanied this morning by Olga, a Spanish lady from Alicante in her early 30s. She had recently left her government accounting job after complaining to her boss that her subordinates weren't doing any work and that she had no recourse for discipline. Her boss responded: "if you want efficiency, go to the private sector." So she quit.

I asked Olga what she believed to be Spain's biggest issues.

1. A mediocre higher education system that causes massive brain drain to the UK, US, and Germany.
2. Plummeting birth rates caused by low wages. Most young adults work in tourism and hospitality, and their earnings are hardly enough to support themselves, let alone children. Most young adults outside of prosperous Catalonia and Madrid simply continue living at home.
3. An aging population that will eventually become unable to support the bloated Spanish welfare state.

Today's landscape was quite boring in comparison to previous days, so I was glad for the company. Olga taught me some regional Spanish swears. In return, I taught her swears in Chinese and Japanese. (Despite hardly speaking any English, she was already proficient in English swears.)

It's fake...I think.

Olga and I parted ways around lunchtime as she had to tend to a foot cramp. The rest of the day was a mostly flat walk through a boring, semi-rural environment, so I put on my jazz playlist and tuned out the din of the other pilgrims.

Ugly horreo.

Pretty horreo.

Picnic area in a village.

Large stretches of the last 100km are shaded.

song of the day: Pat Metheny - Bright Size Life - Pat's jazz guitar noodling is magical. You can pay close attention and scrutinize the creative improvisations or turn your brain off and let the notes flow over you and it's wonderful either way.