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It is six o’clock
on July the ninth. Dawn is breaking. Light clouds quickly descend from the
valleys over the Abbey. It does not look like a summer's morning. The
day inspires respect.
Paca and I are on
our route at half past six, we finally begin! We have never experienced such
a wonderful, but weird, feeling. It is a mixture of happiness and fear.
The countryside is fantastic. We begin to follow the yellow arrows*. We feel
we are starting a new relationship, with others and with everything around
us.
Neither the places
nor our feelings can be properly described. There is nothing to say. You
can see how limited my communication skills are in the Information Age.
The stage is very
hard. There were 60 pilgrims at Roncesvalles the night before. But only
the five Andalusian pilgrims and two more that we did not know, besides
Paca and myself, arrived at Larrasoaña that day. Some pilgrims went
further, but they were on bikes. However these pilgrims cannot follow the
true route (very hard to do it even on foot), they went through the area
using the road. Most pilgrims stayed at Zubiri’s pilgrim hostel, 7 Kms
back.
We leave Julian,
from Plencia, at Zubiri. He is so tired he cannot stand up. He gives us a
drop of water and says he’s staying put. Paca and I go on towards
Larrasoaña. When we are leaving Zubiri there is a four-year-old boy
looking at us from a house door. When we walk past him, the boy says:
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Are you going to
"el Santiago"?
-
Yes.
-
Well, when you
reach a small bridge, you should cross it, then follow the path and
then you will arrive in "el Santiago".
We thank the boy
with a smile. He is right, you only have to walk some 730 Kms more after
crossing the small bridge over a small stream, when you leave Zubiri.
The Camino for the
Andalusian young woman (the nineteen-year-old one) has come to an end today. She
has sprained her ankle and must go back to Seville tomorrow. At least,
that's what the doctor says.
The hostel of
Larrasoaña is very well served. Both Santiago Zubiri, its manager, and
his assistant, a young woman, are kind to pilgrims. There is a computer in
the hostel with a Jacobeo 99 logo. The computer is not connected yet. They
say it is going to be connected next Sunday.
Bridge upon Arga
river in Larrasoaña
People tell us there
is a new hostel with 14 beds in Uterga.
Paca is having a
siesta. We ate for 1350 pesetas per person. We ate well, very well, in the
only bar-cum-shop in the village. The bar-cum-shop is on the left, at the
end of the main street going towards Pamplona. It has a familiar
atmosphere.
While Paca sleeps,
Santiago, the manager, marks our pilgrims’ passports (credenciales) with
the stamp of the hostel of Larrasoaña and issues each one of us with a
Camino yellow ribbon. The price of the hostel is 400 pesetas.
Meanwhile, the
nineteen-year-old Andalusian young woman is very, very sad. "You can
walk the Camino next year, honey!". She does not answer. She is
crying her eyes out.
Santiago Zubiri, the
manager, barges into the sleeping room at night. All of us are in bed and
half asleep:
*Yellow
arrows.- Signs in the Camino de Santiago. You have to follow the yellow
arrows if you do not want getting lost.
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