Day 23

I left the campsite in Puente la Reina, followed the sign “bar” in the next village (Mañeru), assuming they needed customers more than the one right on the Camino and had coffee with some elderly men drinking beer who explained me all about Sociedad La Union (where the bar was). Ready to get walking again I bumped into a young man with a converted baby stroller, a month into a 7 year journey around the world. He came from London where, not long ago, he had a girlfriend and a job that bored him to death and weekends that all looked the same and so he decided to, instead of doing what everybody did -working long days and saving up for a house-, use the money he had to go on a long journey, living on a budget of 10 pounds a day. He said he felt a bit silly since leaving Pamplona and I knew exactly what he meant. It didn’t take long before we were talking about the meaning of life, the meaninglesness of life, we were both wondering about everything in a similar way and it was a pleasure spending a bit of time with him. We exchanged contact information and he invited me to come to South America where he was hoping to spend some time as a ranchero. (Check out Walkyboyz on Instagram).
In the village of Cirauqui I stamped my credential because I didn’t have to enter a church to get a stamp, it was on a table outside, attached to a mailbox.
A few kilometres outside the village I stumbled into an olive orchard that was used as a resting place for walkers. “Help us to keep creating this place” a sign said in 3 languages. There was nobody there and it seemed like nobody had been taking care of the place for a long time. There were chairs and tables inbetween the trees, a book exchange, a gifting area, a garbage area with different containers to seperate trash but they were all overflowing and the books were mouldy and the gifting area only had things that were broken or completely worn out. In the middle of all of this was a tree where people had left little tokens. You find them here and there on the route, sometimes in places with a special meaning, sometimes at a random place where somebody started, others continued and just by the act of leaving something behind turned it into a site of contemplation.
I found Jesus on the road. Or next the road to be more precise. He was on his cross, but lying on his back in the grass.
A grasshopper travelled along for a while, clinging to my walking cart. There was a box filled with plums and pears with a note inviting people passing by to eat them, sunflower fields, a map giving information about la trashumancia, the transhumance. Where the Camino went right, the shepherds and their animals went left in the past. I went right, but not without hesitation.
Estella was a small city, pleasant at first but noisy and soulless after passing through the centre and I decided to walk on. In a bakery I tried to explain the sweaty owner -she was baking all day inbetween running the shop- I couldn’t spend 7,50 on the tasty looking big empanada and she started a litany of complaints about the difficulties of living here and making enough money and I bought a few overpriced cookies, partially to support her and partially because I was hungry. On the one hand the Camino offers local people an opportunity to sell their products but there is a lot of dissatisfaction as well, possibly because many walkers are mainly tourists, having a good time, dropping in and out of shops and bars and restaurants to consume and then continue their adventure while others work long days, week in week out, to survive.
Half an hour walking out of Estella there was a wine fountain. I blinked my eyes but it was real. The Bodegas Irache wanted to continue the tradition of the Benedictine monks to offer pilgrims the wine they produced to give them strength and vitality on their walking and so they had constructed The Fountain of Wine on the outer wall of the bodega. No wine came out of the tap though, I wasn’t sure if it was broken or if the 100 litres they provided daily had been consumed already.
The campsite I had set my eyes on was a massive site, the size of a small village almost, surrounded by long walls and metal fences, not a place I wanted to set foot in. The forest that came after was a better option to get some rest. In the middle of a harvested field, on an elevated island filled with trees and rocks, away from the trail where in the early hours of the morning the first pilgrims would pass, I slept undisturbed by animals or wind or rain.