After breakfast I walk over to the tourist information office. It is still closed. The internet café is open, but it is very expensive.
Too bad. I haven’t been online for over a week. Gotta update my blog so that people at least know that I’ve started the pilgrimage safely. Gotta see if there were any important eMails.
After a short internet session I return to the tourist office. The woman behind the counter speaks practically no English, and only broken Spanish. I ask her if I can get a pilgrim’s stamp in my passport.
Not that she knows of. I’m thinking of St. Jean Pied-de-Port, she says.
No I’m not. I’m intentionally walking the Camino Norte because I’m trying to avoid the big crowds. I was told that the Camino Norte begins at St. Jean-de-Luz. The man who picked me up when I was hitch hiking in Luxembourg told me that they give you a stamp in your passport here.
But it’s OK. I only need a stamp to show off with later on, right? (I didn’t know about the “pilgrim’s passports” yet. I had done no research.)
She couldn’t even tell me where the trail began, so I just started walking westwards. I bought some peanuts and some roasted corn on my way out of town.
The walk was frustrating. There was a sort of highway or busy country road (in Spanish the generic term is carretera) leading towards Irun. There wasn’t much of a shoulder to the road, and the traffic was disconcertingly close as I tried to walk there. I walked in the roadside ditch for a while, which was not a happy experience either. When a trail appeared to the right, I gladly got on that, figuring that there would probably be some back roads to get me to the Spanish border. Two goats were tied to some nearby bushes.
I met an elderly couple out for a walk. They gave me a friendly greeting and immediately asked what language I speak: French? English? Spanish?
“No French,” I replied. “The other two are not a problem. Also German.”
“Ohh, a polyglot”, said the man.
“Well, hardly. You’re speaking English, and you most likely speak French and Basque as well, and Spanish, too?”
He nodded.
“See? You speak more languages than I do.”
“But where are you from?”
“I’m German. But I grew up in South America.”
“Ah. Alles klar.”
“And Basque, what is it like? I was reading the street names last night, and it looks to me a bit like a Slavic language, but I heard that it’s closer to Gaelic…”
He was shaking his head.
“No, it’s not like any other language.”
“But where did you Basques originally come from?”
“From Heaven,” he said, and smiled. “Direct out of Noah’s Ark into this beautiful country. See that fortification there? 11th Century. But the Basques have been here long, long before that.”
I was pretty sure I had heard that the Celts and the Basques had roots in common, but I couldn’t remember if it had been a reliable source. Besides, even the connection between Celtic and Gaelic was foggy in my mind.
“And now I’m trying to walk the Camino de Santiago. Does this path lead anywhere?”
“Oh yes. You’ll find it takes you to the top of a little hill, where there’s a pretty little chapel. It keeps going on the other side until you get to Hendaye. Then you can cross the bridge into Spain.”
“Thank you very much.”
“You’ll be walking along the north coast of Spain?”
“Yes.”
“Make sure to visit Ondarroa. It’s a beautiful little coastal town. Beautiful.” (Here he kissed his fingertips in the way that Italian cooks stereotypically kiss their fingertips when talking about extra delicious pasta.)
“Well, thank you very much. Have a good day.”
They waved goodbye and continued their walk. I soon found the chapel and rested a while in the shade. I took some time to pray, some time to write, and some time to read through the gospel resurrection accounts. Those, and the Epistle of James, were going to be my themes for meditation on this pilgrimage. The Epistle of James because I was walking towards the traditional site of his remains (although this was probably not the same James), and the resurrection accounts because it was that time of year. For my pilgrimage I was hoping to spend forty days walking, the forty days from Easter until Ascension Day, the same forty days during which Jesus kept appearing to people who had known him.
Every Monday I took a picture of my shoes. This is what they looked like when the journey began.
