FOREWORD: I completed the El Camino de Santiago – an 800km spiritual pilgrimage across Spain in late Summer of 2009. I journalled and photographed my trip, and as a final completion I agreed to publish my journal and pictures a year to the day of my journey.

STATS: Walked 19 km (11.8 miles) Spent €8.60- (Accommodation – €2, Food – €5.70, Internet €1)

8:11am I left at 7am and the morning was kinda hard. The sunrise was spectacular…I am beginning to adore the sunrises each morning. The pics I took do not do justice to how Godly and sublime they are. I guess they are just for me. My body overall is all good except for my blistered baby right toe and my feet feel so dry like they could crack and sensitive to the touch, and the underneath are bruised. I am just sitting here resting and taking in the beautiful scenery overlooking the town of Sansol, and a flock of sheep are making there way down the road.

I often sang the words of this song in my head, and they have haunted me…”I don’t want to live in this world anymore”. (I have a hormonal imbalance with manifests as a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which lists depression as one of its symptoms. Something which I have dealt with at periods in my life.) This morning I found myself rephrasing them to “I want to live in this world” and another song I often sing is Michael Jackson’s “you are not alone” (Interestingly, it is my current ring tone on my iphone, and I am pretty sure I chose it not consciously remembering the Camino….!!) “I am not alone” There is another word that I hear that says “What the hell else are you going to do?” I am not sure which voice that is but I am looking to change that. So many people here on Camino are in similar positions to me..like at a crossroads in their lives. Either in a dilemma of some sort or have come to the end of something and are not sure what is next. I don’t want to just do things for the sake of it, just because I have nothing else to do. I want to do things and become more involved because I genuinely want to. So that is a good starting intention.

3:18pm I am completely exhausted.If I close my eyes I would fall completely asleep. I am still in my sweaty gross walking clothes, and have not showered and have dry sweat on me, yucky. Everything has gone a little pear shaped and I hope I have made the right decision. I am sitting outside the Albergue in Vianna waiting for it to open at 4:30pm, still an hour to go…..f*ck…Today has been intense, physically felt fine though, although my toe was aching so bad that I had to change my boots for the sandals. I walked well all day. Luis left me in the morning and I walked the last part with a South African lady. I came into Vianna at 12:30pm. I found a beautiful soft patch of grass, it was cool. Had a little lunch and met up with some buddies I hadn’t seen for a while. It was cool to catch up and hear about there adventures. They were Aussie and British, so was not to have a good easy natural chat, with someone who speaks like me, well relatively speaking…haha….

I then came into the town. I really loved the look of Vianna, but as I was to discover all that glitters is not gold. Luis was with his Italian friends in a cafe, so I went and got a soda and came out and joined him. The South African woman came in after me and joined us too. One of the guys in there group was Romanian I think and he did not speak English, or Spanish! Wow, that is brave! I was pretty shattered, and Luis was begging me to go on and walk through to the next town. We both knew that if he went ahead of me today, we probably wouldn’t see each other again. He walked so much faster than me, and I think he had been lagging just to stay with me, and now he was going on. It was really sad because he was my best buddy and I loved hanging out with him. But I made the decision to stay. In hindsight now, I wish I had gone with him. He is just 3 hours ahead, I wonder if I would make it. It is late now. I had also heard that beds in the next town were scarce.

So he left and I felt so sad. I went to the main albergue and from the minute I walked in I got a really bad feeling. I paid my money and was escorted to my bed. I was not on the top of a double bunk but a triple bunk, in a room with just too many beds, I found myself hardly able to breathe. Before I could even think, I said no and that I wanted my money back. It all happened very quickly, and I was not treated well because what I was doing was very “unpligrim” behaviour. Pilgrim protocol is one of humility and gratitude, and my behaviour could have been viewed as ungrateful, but it was not. It was that my intuition was telling me to get the frig out of there so I did that. There was just something weird energetically for me about the place.

Of course, luck would have it that I missed the supermacado (supermarket) so could not buy lunch. They close at 2pm for siesta, and I still keep forgetting that! But this sweet guy who is now waiting for my albergue to open too just bought me an ice-cream from the bar.

So now I sit here in self-judgment that I did the wrong thing, that I acted too hastily, that I could be clean and asleep in my bed by now, or that I could be with Luis. Suck. I just feel completely zapped out of the Camino. Everywhere I have been I have been so patient etc and now I feel demanding and wrong…well I don’t care…..Man, I am so in my head stuff, this all sucks, I just wanted to go away from myself.

5:13pm I am lying on a mat under a table in the albergue, with a bitter sweet sense of gratitude and exhaustion, and still completely swirling in my own negativity and pettiness. So I had been first in the line up to get in to the albergue (there were only about 12 beds, which are actually 2 inch hard mats!) and this group of 5 Germans pushed in front of me, I struggled as I stood there in my exhaustion to know what to do, whether to speak up for myself, or to trust that there would be a bed for me. There was no Matthias here to fight my battles for me. Anyway, I got in and went and found my little space, near the window. I find it very hard to breathe at nights in the rooms with so many bodies, so if I can, I try to get near a window. I then went to find a shower and got myself freshened up and returned to the room, to find that my stuff had been sprawled and pushed away. So on one hand that is fine, but on the other I am now in a position that I have to spend the next 14-20 hours in the same space, and sleep the night with the little group of woman who had carelessly done the sprawling. I did not want to make a scene or offend them in anyway, I already was wishing that I was any where else but here. But at this point I was committed to grinning and bearing whatever was to befall me. I subtly gathered my things and moved to the furtherest other corner, and found a little space under a table. It was a little weird, but I did find it comforting, and started to pretend I was a little girl playing cubby house. Anything to try to escape the complete weirdness of the reality I was in. This was also the first night that I did not have a pillow supplied by the albergue. It really does bring in a level of gratefulness and humility. I thought the last 7 nights were bad with snorers, and sore feet, and cold, and weird smells, but now I see the blessings, I had blankets, and pillows and friends close by. Now I was a little more bare, and how those little things count.

I feel a little frustrated and sad that I am feeling so shut down and anti-social and how I really miss my family and the protection of Luis. I am shy to talk to these people, and for the first time the pilgrims feel like strangers. There is just no one I can connect with. I call on the Christ for assistance, and I remembered the warmth and welcoming feel of the hostess and I am reminded that I am not alone. And that is what I put out this morning, so now I am just being tested. And really it doesn’t matter where I sleep. As my physical body stabilises and pain is no longer consuming me, it is like I am coming to the end of my physical realm ‘clearing’ and I am now embarking on my emotional realms stuff. The uncertainty and the shaking of my creature comforts are afoot. And I want to go crying to the comfort of my mum or family. This is my ‘fleeing pattern” and I want to retreat from everything, and I know I can’t. I am here in Spain and I have to keep it together. I know that what is presented here, now, is that nothing is insurmountable. This is not insurmountable. And to trust my intuition that told me to leave the other albergue, and that that was all on track and that I am contented. I am okay, this too shall pass and thank you thank thank you.

As I lie here, I am consumed with the idea of blowing my brains out with a revolver. I have the whole picture here with the revolver to my head. I have never ever had thoughts like this before. I am clearing this energetically, and am very aware that these are not my conscious thoughts I really think there is some heavy past life karmic stuff here in this town that is getting to me. It is a relief in some ways to have this clear and bizarre vision, because it helps me realise that the negativity is not mine, and has been transported from another time. All that my job is today, is to get through it. Call to God, and tread lightly and carefully.

7:53pm This albergue is a little different and is fairly strict. It is run by the church and the vicar comes each night to have dinner with the pilgrims. Attendance is compulsory. It is a little weird because usually it is totally loose, so to add to my little prison of a bed set up, I am now subjected to “convent school” dinner. But I am grateful at least it passes the time. TIme goes slow here without my buddies.

So I went in to town and bought a fizzy drink and went to a gross bar, where these guys were playing poker and smoking. I am used to smoking now. Everywhere you go people smoke. This is where the internet was. I skyped my Dad and gathered some support but did not fully explain how crap I was feeling, in case he worried too much. And besides it is subjective and I know it will pass. And the turmoil and the angst and lack of clarity is really only of value if I can prove that I can overcome this. It does not matter now that I feel small and deflated and unworthy of the love of my beloved *Jason* it is the knowing that if I can get through this with Grace and elegance then I know that I will be new.

9:30pm I returned to the albergue early before dinner and helped with the preparation. The hostess and her daughter were very grateful and said that not many pilgrims ever offer to help. I didn’t tell her that the only reason why I was helping was because I felt so desperately alone, and I had no friends with me and she was the only person who seemed nice. They were French and I enjoyed talking to her daughter. The dinner was weird and contrived, and we all just sat and did what we were told. Some of the pilgrims did not turn up for the compulsory dinner and some were late and that caused a fair amount of tension. I ate, be’d polite, tried to stay present. And now I am in bed, with clothes as pillows about to listen to my John-Roger meditations and hoping that tomorrow will be a better day.

to go to previous day: day 7 estella-to-los arcos
to go to next day: day 9 vianna-to-navarette

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