Camino de Santiago Day 10: Santo Domingo to Belorado
Although I'm trying to be an independently-minded traveller, my head is turned by a swimming pool - just like everyone else. The subsequent afternoon would mark a very clear turning point in my Camino
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The chickens wake me at 6 but it’s 8 by the time I leave, after the usual breakfast outside a café in a a narrow street. I may never get the chance again.
The walk out of Santo Domingo is methodically exciting, a long slow walk alongside a straight motorway juxtaposed with a brilliant surrounding: slow-release burning orange sunrise over purple skies, a series of hot air balloons rising as if casually commuting to work, an expansive plain unrolling outwards to distant mountains like scenes from the grand old wild west. We can slag America all we want, but we invite nostalgic images of its natural grandeur into our everyday lives, everywhere we go.
In Grañon there’s a wonderful converted food truck that everyone stops at – you couldn’t not, its location entering the village, overlooking the plains and about 7km from Santo Domingo is the most perfect thing about it – and I get notions about running a nice little Camino café in the summers. I certainly wouldn’t be the only one.
I’m still getting notions about busting out big days – my notes read:
“If I do 25km today then I can do 30km again tomorrow”.
Still dreaming of going beyond, of transcendence, of ultreia. Is walking really far the only way I can think of achieving this?
On the way into the intriguingly-named town of Belorado I pass an albergue with a swimming pool, which turns my head, though I continue walking into the town – the name conjures up images of El Dorado, some fabled Mexican land of gold and riches – to see what’s up – it’s only 2pm in the day.
The town is alive, tons of locals hanging out in and around bars, kids chasing balloons across the central plaza – it’s Sunday afternoon. Reminded of Pamplona, it seems like people come out to live on early Sunday afternoons.
I like it.
The calm before the storm.
I finally remember to find a newsagent’s so I can replace my red pen – I’ve somehow lost mine, and writing the date at the top of the page, or numbered lists, with the same blue pen I use to write in longhand in my notebook devastates me mildly each day it continues.
I grab a couple of pintxos at one of those delightful neighbourhood bars with a ‘locals first’ attitude where they really couldn’t give a damn if you (the tourist) never came back for a second order – I feel much more at home not being pandered to with politeness – and head back to check into the albergue with the pool.
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It turns out the pool attracts a large crowd – I’m not the only one who likes to swim. It seems like everyone I’ve come to know in more than passing over the last week and a half is staying at this place, plus some new faces who I would get to know very well over the coming weeks.
It all begins as I walk down the patio and hear the yell – that fateful call of recognition, from 20 yards behind, which can only ever mean one thing – “Are you Irish, are ya?!
So it begins
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In many ways that was the start of my Camino, that afternoon spent on a sunny terrace in Belorado,
Knocking back drink after drink.
Making new friendships and consolidating the old ones.
It was certainly a pivotal moment, once again measured in comparing stories.
For many of us stories are visual things that we ‘see’ in a sense in our heads, in our mind’s eye.
And recounting the story of my Camino day by day here, through poring over pictures, videos, words and handwritten notes, I’m able to retrace not just the details of memories of each day, or even each section of each day with attention drawn to particular moments – the process retraces also the deep psychological trajectory I underwent as I walked each day of the Camino, each step taken to each town, each person I met.
Comparing these mental images side by side there really are just two times: before and after
Who I was before the trip
And who I was after
Naturally the journey follows a trajectory, and you couldn’t say there was some sort of overnight transformation – I am not a substantially different person to the one who left Ireland several weeks ago.
But at some point in the story of the journey, if you pay attention, you can discern a dividing line where your image of yourself – your story – changes. The way you recall how you acted, how you spoke, how you carried yourself – there’s a shift.
I don’t know if there shift changed me in reality or just in my own head, but whereas I can draw a direct line between the journey that took me from Belorado – from Day 10 of the Camino – to where I’m sitting right now, back at home, the line does not neatly join up to the story that preceded it – that one only runs backwards, to where I was sitting at Home before I left.
I have a feeling it was the strengthening of connections that day and the forming of new ones. I have noticed over the years that my memories of solo trips are terrible compared to ones I’ve done with people, regardless of the recall potential of sharing stories on subsequent meetups – it seems that the very act of experiencing the event with someone else, or many people, is enough to make the memories imprint much more strongly in you.
And maybe we all carried some of that human energetic potential – of that absolute thirst for shared experiences – with us after the sunny day, spent drinking on the terrace, or beside the pool, wherever or however we walked thereafter.
There is a shift, and the two pieces don’t fit together perfectly, like a torn page or shorn sheet of glass, even though it still works perfectly and you wouldn’t really notice it unless you squinted. And I’m not sure there’s a demonstrable difference in real life.
The memories are sharper after. Even though the days segued into each other in the usual fashion – before Belorado feels like a lifetime ago – last year’s holiday at least – and after was just a few weeks ago, it runs neatly up to the present moment.
Just a glitch in the timeline, a shift in the trajectory of the story.
It seems to have happened some time that day.
This seems to the result of walking 200km. Of being a stranger in a foreign land, rendered a simply idiot unable to communicate in the simplest words. Of removing yourself from your routine and throwing yourself into the chaos of the unknown. Of diving straight into conversations with deep questions about your existence and your life’s story. Of walking for six hours straight with strangers, and sharing food, drinks and rest with each other. Of removing yourself from the scaffolding of your culture, propped up by deadwood, and immersing yourself in a new one, which is built only on empathy, solidarity, compassion and purpose. Of letting go and embracing the alternate reality of the trip as fully as you can.
At some point you will feel a shift.
You have sunk into the trip and the trip has sunk into you; you have opened yourself to the road and the road has opened up to you; The deadwood is burned, and all that remains is what’s really you. For better or worse.
There is a definite before and after that only exists in your ability to inhabit the spirit of yourself in each respective time – one fits, the other doesn’t.
Before and after, all it took was time on the road.
An unmerciful scatter of pints doesn’t hurt either – it might loosen you up a bit.
Sure you’re on holidays.
You have no home and no attachment to anywhere, only the trail itself.
For better or worse.
And you’re Irish.
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