Camino de Santiago No. 4: Hobbling to Akerreta
I left Zubiri in the morning in better spirits, determined to do what I could as far as the Camino was concerned.
Having spent the previous night nursing both my ankle and my psyche, I had decided that the injury happening so soon was perhaps a blessing in disguise.
From the very start of the Camino, I had been really surprised by all the rushing around to be the fastest, the best, and so on. Maybe this was because although I just spent a week in the States before arriving in Spain, I´m still living by Central American time and values. I have to admit a certain amount of culture shock upon arrival to Spain, which seemed to have only worsened with the start of the Camino.
But I think it is also that here I am in one of the most beautiful places I´ve ever seen-and, I want to see it. I don´t just want to get thru it. I want to experience it, I want to savor it.
So I began to see the injury as a gift, really. It´s forcing me to create my own Camino, to go my own way-which is slower and perhaps more interested in the journey than in the arriving at any particular destination. In fact, I realized that I may never arrive in Santiago at all-and if and when I do, the Compostella(the paper saying you walked the last 100 km) may end up not being terribly important to me.
So, this new revelation in mind, I dawdled over a breakfast of apples and granola, and then hobbled out to meet a new day on the Camino.
With this more enlightened(for me, anyway) and relaxed approach, the next few hours were heavenly. Every old building I passed, I touched. Every pasture of cows and sheep, I stood and watched. Rounding a corner and hearing the tinkling of cowbells sounded like a beautiful eerie song to my ears. Stopping at makers along the Camino, I made time to pick a few flowers and place them on the gravestones. Another walker, a man from Australia, walked with me for a bit and told me about his divorce and his spiritual reasons for walking the Camino, and then disappeared on ahead of me. A woman watering her flowers outside her enormous stone cottage stopped and shook my hand, wiping her muddy hand on her housedress first. A man with an enormous dog- which came lumbering towards me down the path and scared me to death-apologized and invited me for coffee and eggs with his wife.
Meanwhile, other walkers walked by me, poles and walking sticks clanking into the earth.
I arrived in Larrasona, a tiny hamlet, just as the sun was coming out in all its glory. I walked around a bit, hoping the refugio would open soon. However, it was too early, and so I decided I could make it to Trinidad de Arre, the next stop in my booklet.
I didn´t quite make it…I ended up stopping in front of this absolutely beautiful hotel in Akerreta, a tiny vilage. I was struck by the beauty of the building before I realized it was a hotel.
A group of tourists were in front of it, waiting for a taxi. Actually, they were walking the Camino as well, but doing it in high-style, walking only the parts they chose, staying at hotels, and sending taxis on with their bags the entire way. One of them was a doctor, who insisted on looking at my ankle.
A chair was brought out and my poor ankle was shown to the doctor, as well as his wife and all of their friends, the owner of the hotel, and a man walking by with his dog.
¨You need to stop. You can´t possibly walk on this ankle.¨, he said. Great. Unfortunately, I was far from Tinidad de Arre-actually, 12.5 kilometers!
The owner of the hotel offered a room. Someone had cancelled, so it was a huge double room, but he would give it to me for the single price. With breakfast. And dinner, all organic, from his garden. I gasped at the price, but-what was I to do?
The room he gave me was magnificent. I can safely say that it was the nicest room, the nicest view, the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in in my life.
The hotel has been a real labor of love for the owner and his wife, who only opened it four years ago, after many years of work. It is classic for the region-a kind of 3/4 story house, which was divided into sections. The animals lived on the bottom floors, with the familiy in the secons story, and the dovecote above on the third story. My room looked out onto the entire Basque valley, and was actually an original bedroom, with the original hand hewn wood, original tiny shuttered windows, and even original furniture.
The owner gave me a tour of the place, and it was so beautiful. He said he wasn´t in it for the money-he was doing it because he loved his part of Spain, he did it as a labor of love. He said that most people just let these old buildings fall down now, and then move the rubble away to build new ugly apartment buildings. How sad.
Best of all, the hotel had one of the only surviving original ovens in the Navarra region-the only other one is in a monastery-and it was in incredible condition. You could actually walk into it, and the ovens were enormous. The chimney alone was two stories tall.
Everyone else staying at the place were either doing the Camino or they were locals, visiting families as it was First Communion time for kids of that age in the area.
Dinner was a luxurious affair, with my own solitary table, my own bottle of wine(!), a fanatastic soup of salted cod; lamb; and salad of white asparagus(famous in this area of Spain) and a creamy dessert made of sheeps milk that you ate drizzled with honey.
I have to say, it was worth it. My ankle and mind well rested, I blissfully fell asleep, and awoke the next day ready for Trinidad de Arre.
gigi
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