September 18, 2017

Day 17

Why on earth do people like sleeping in stuffy rooms? It feels as if they wouldn’t agree to sleep with a window even half-open, even if their lives depended on it. Does everyone feel like this or is it just my karma – the lifeof albergues? Linda laughed and said that my Venus in Leo is in coma.

The morning freshness of mountain air swiftly sates my hunger for oxygen in my body, I breathe in deeply. The veils of fog are especially generous today, they are so thick that I could cut them up. The road leads through towns, mainly, so the first 6kilometres pass unnoticed. The fog slowly disappears and it starts drizzling, my mood follows the weather. It’s cold, I hide my fingers in my sleeves. I look around – I am not alone. I wonder if some villain has sucked out our collective energy.

Next 18 kilometres are hard, rain switches with short, hot moments of sun, there are no grapes nor blackberries, legs are like tree trunks, but there is a smile on the inside. I guess this is the famous part of the road with no road signs – there are no names of towns/villages, no kilometre signs, just a shy shell and a yellow arrow here and there.

I often pause, I am simply falling asleep. An elderly lady approaches me and asks:

‘Are you also falling asleep, tired?’

I nod. She gives me something in a shiny paper.

‘Drink this. I’ve already had two. It will help.’

I open up the paper, yuck! I haven’t had anything this disgustingly sweet in ages! It’s impolite to spit it out; the lady is smiling and happily keeps nodding her head. I return her smile, thank her and continue walking. At some point I catch up with some companies who had siesta, and they catch up with me. With a pure-bred Latvian joy I realise that the younger guys are no better than me. And so we continue walking in a geese-like manner. At one point I realise that we’d need some beer in our hands, then we could sing some dirty Latvian song…it would be appropriate.

I have chosen an albergue mere 21kilometres away from Santiago. What a mistake! I should have stayed in Saint Iren – a village away from the road, another half a kilometre in the morning, but darkness is never completely black. I get a real bed with white, fragrant sheets.

As I am falling asleep, I finally ask myself the question that everyone back home and around me asks me-

‘Why are you walking?’

There is no answer…

The Way sent me an invitation…