Day Three: Puente la Reina to Estella

I’ll begin at the end. I’m not in Spain any more. I’m in Chicago. This post explains why.

When I wrote my last post, sitting on a bunkbed in an albergue in Puente la Reina, I was already sick, though I didn’t know it. In fact, I’d been sick for a while. While walking up the Alto de Perdon the previous day, all of a sudden I felt a massive pain in my gut, just under my ribcage, so bad I had to sit down. I thought it was reflux, maybe from too large a coffee at breakfast. I was able to continue eventually, but the pain never went away. I stopped a lot and people started to ask me if I was okay. I’m fine, I said. I just need to rest. I figured it was my first day, the hill was high, of course I was struggling a bit. One guy was worried enough to offer me chocolate or a power bar, and I think what made me reach the summit after turning him down, was the hope he’d still be there at the top when I got there so I could take him up on the offer. He was (thanks, Victor from Singapore, wherever you are now!).

But the rest of the walk went okay, even though I couldn’t eat my lunch after I ordered it, and I couldn’t choke down more than half the power bar. I had two Fanta limon (why can’t we get that here?) and a Magnum. When I got to the albergue, the guy took one look at me and put me in a semi-private room instead of the dorm (thanks, Albergue Jakue!). I had dinner with the very nice Italian race walker who ended up in my room, by which I mean I forced myself to choke down something. By then I had decided my problem was dehydration, and that had caused the reflux, so I drank masses of water and ate a banana. I was in a lot of pain that night, not from my feet or legs or hips or shoulders but from my gut and I was beginning to experience other, um, biological manifestations. But I was good to go the next morning.

The reason the photo above shows a view of the lovely eponymous moon bridge of Puente la Reina rather than a view from it is that instead of crossing it with the rest of the pilgrims, I took a detour to a pharmacy to get something for the “reflux.” I struggled up the first hill that morning in a way disproportionate to its difficulty, but apart from that, most of that day was a magical walk, as if the Camino knew I was only going to have that one more day and wanted to give me its best. Here’s the only photo of me I have:

I walked on a Roman road:

I talked to a man my age from Poland whose father under Communism used to go often to serve as a doctor in a sanatorium in Nachod, the town in Czechia near where my grandfather’s factory was. I sat under a stone portico at the top of the medieval village of Cirauqui and rested my feet. I walked through landscapes like this:

And I rested at places like this, where I saw again a nice young woman from Belgium who had been one of those the previous day to kindly ask me if I was doing okay. (She didn’t have a white dog though, only a tall boyfriend(?). It wasn’t until Estella that I saw the blind pilgrim):

I stopped for lunch in Lorca, where King Garcia Ramirez, the grandson of the Cid, died (no, I didn’t know that before either). I forced myself to choke down a tortilla and I had another Fanta limon and I sat in the sun with a nice woman from Hungary who I had also seen the previous day in Uterga. She had stopped there for the night and had shipped her pack ahead. We both wanted to make it to Estella:

I only had about 8km of easy walking left to do. It should have been fine. But it wasn’t. The abdominal pain I had been experiencing since I started got worse and worse. As the kilometres pounded on, I started to feel dizzy and light headed, By the time I got to Villatuerta, I knew I was not going to make it. The albergue was closed but the guy there directed me to a bar across the street. I asked for a mineral water and for them to call a taxi. It was going to take an hour. It didn’t matter. It could have taken six hours There was no way I could leave that bar under my own locomotion. And then I was violently, violently ill all over the nice bartender’s bathroom.

I am going to draw a bit of a veil over the next bit. The taxi came, I went to the albergue, they put me in an empty dorm so I could have a bottom bunk (thank, Albergue Municipal de Estella!), another taxi to the Centro de Salud (which deserves a whole post on its own about different medical systems) where I got a diagnosis of gastroenteritis and a sheet of instructions, another taxi to a shop where I could get some bottles of water for the rehydration solution the doctor gave me when it became clear to him I was not going to be able to squeeze lemons and mix them with soda and salt etc. (thanks, doctor, and thanks especially to taxi driver #3 who *saw* me vomiting in the gutter outside the Centro and still picked me up *and* gave me his card in case I needed more taxis). I walked over the bridge back to the albergue, did the best I could do to wash some clothing, and collapsed in bed.

The next morning, I realized that this was not going to be a 24 or 48 hour and done thing. Recovery was going to be slow. I was not going to be sending my bag ahead, I was not going to be walking half or quarter stages. I was going home. I changed my flight. I spent two more nights in Estella, three nights in Madrid, and now I am back in Chicago. If you ask me how I’m doing, the answer is better each day but not okay, not yet. I listened to my body. It was the right decision. For that reason, it was not difficult to make.

I am going to do one more post, about Estella, probably tomorrow.

Day Two: Puente la Reina

Technically, I could quit right now.

No, really, it’s true. In the Middle Ages, a pilgrim who climbed to the Alta de Perdon and who was ill could quit there and walk home and get all the available indulgences. And they did not even have to walk down the other side of the hill MOUNTAIN, which I did.

I’m not going to post a photo because a) I’m not sure it’s working (can one of you tell me from the Pamplona post?) and b) because my photo does not do justice to the grandeur on the hill. MOUNTAIN.

Now I’m in Puente la Reina collapsed on my bunk, too tired to walk to the puente and even too tired to go see Calle Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada street. I’ll see them tomorrow. Photos on Instagram.

Day One: Pamplona

Pamplona on a Sunday was as quiet and subdued as I remember Madrid being, back in 1991 when I was first there. I confess, it did not win me over but jet lag and nerves probably meant I was not bringing my best either. And maybe I am just grumpy that I could not see the Nunilo and Alodia casket because the museum was shut. I’ll just say that there are some places in Spain that make me remember Spain was fascist really recently.

I did have yummy mint chip ice cream for dinner and in the cathedral I saw two beautiful alabaster royal tombs. And a marble plaque suggesting Anne of Cleves was also “Prince of Viana”??!!?? And that she was buried under the slab with a whole crew of Navarrese kings??!! Really? Cool, if true.

I love this statue. It’s the monument to the fueros to which the Navarrese attribute their rights and independence, put up in 1903. Yeah, there were some very reactionary consequences for their attachments but when will you ever see a statue that celebrates a charter? It’s what she holds in her hand and it even has a seal.