Travel Diary: Day 4
On day 4 we chose to sleep in, the previous day had been so exhausting and we had been talking to the other pilgrims far into the night, or what seemed like that, but it was probably only around 10:15pm when we went to bed.
So, we didn’t start walking until 7:30am. We met two young guys from the US who, to my joy, wanted to take it a bit slower and enjoy the walk instead of rushing. So, everything was just swell (even though I still had excruciating pain in my knees and feet but I tried to come to terms with that), until I got pissed! Pissed that it was raining all the time (and one can only wonder why of all places I chose to move to Scotland…)! Pissed that I was hungry, and pissed that I didn’t feel like I had time to eat all the food I’d been carrying around, which weighted like a hundred pounds. I was also pissed that I again, had fallen behind and had to walk with Francesco – even though he was very nice. To make matters worse, two old ladies who were respectively 67 and 65 years old, passed me… Again!
However, I must admit that I cheered up a bit when we reached a monastery where a group of monks were singing and trying to make themselves heard above the one monk who kept choking on his own salvia, which made a magnificent echo in the church.
We finally reached Guernica and had to separate with the two Americans because they wanted to walk another 25 kilometres; as if 27 kilometres wasn’t enough. All the pilgrims must have some supernatural powers or extremely strong legs… something I thought I had before I came to Spain. Maybe, they just don’t have to deal with constant thoughts that go something like: “Retreat! Retreat!” every five minutes, or maybe I was the only one who had a severe case of blister epidemic. Nevertheless, I still tried to look on the bright side, I mean, I had managed to get a blister between every toe. However, I also knew that a small part of my mood swings were because of my lack of food. The people there didn’t know, like my mom or friends back home, that when I get like this they just have to get me some food.
Marta and Francesco just took everything too chilled. I mean Francesco would meditate every morning and evening, something that even seemed to piss me off, even though I’m all in for meditation.
The next would be better, or so I thought…