7: First real day on the trail

Once again I woke up with the crack of dawn, but I remained in my sleeping bag to keep warm and hopefully fall asleep again. This attempt did not last long; I was feeling self-conscious, lying under a stage in a picnic park behind a church in daylight. I got dressed and went to one of the picnic tables. Last night I had gotten a 2-for-1 deal on a pair of pizzas in Irun, and I finished up their cold remains for breakfast. The park service came to maintain the lawn, so I packed my things to get out of their way.

It became immediately clear to me that my expectations of pilgrimage would undergo a few alterations. I had tried to have no expectations at all, but that is simply impossible. I now noticed that I had not expected to be hiking. I had not expected trails like last night’s, and I saw that it continued this way. A narrow path led up the mountain and along the ridge. My friend Bryan defines the difference between traipsing and hiking as “hiking is where there’s an actual risk of you falling down and breaking something”. There did not seem to be such a risk here, but it still did not feel like I would be able to walk 5-6 hours a day for 40 days with a guitar on my back if the trail was going to be like this the whole way.


I was on Jaizkibel, which is more of a high ridge than a mountain. It reminded me a lot of where I grew up. To the East of Quito there is a similar ridge, collectively called Pichincha, which affords a similar hike. Today there was fog in the lower elevations, and only occasionally would the fog thin enough for me to catch glimpses of the valley to my left, and the sea to my right. That is, the sea itself was not distinguishable, but outlines of ships were visible.


I remember that day as a long walk, even though I covered less distance than on many of the following days. Most of it went along mountains by the sea. At one point the yellow arrows pointed me to a small pier where a ferry picked me up and brought me across an inlet. The ferryman had virtually no voice; he half croaked, half whispered that I had to pay 60 cents for the fare.


This was Pasaia San Pedro. The town was charming enough, but I was surprised at the hostile graffiti on some of the walls. I did not understand most of the words themselves (almost everything was in Basque), but one can get a feeling of the sentiment behind them, especially when there are symbols and illustrations to accompany the written word.

After Pasaia San Pedro the trail went up to the mountains again. There was a large lighthouse which dominated the view for a while. The trail continued, offering a view of a rugged shoreline.


I started worrying about water. In my hikes in the Alps, there had been fountains everywhere; today I had walked mostly through mountainous areas and hadn’t found any fountain. Twice I had asked a local if I could have some water. One lady was not accommodating at all, but the other one gladly complied. In fact for the rest of my pilgrimage I was to encounter a disarming hospitality again and again.

My half-empty water bottle was not the only problem, though. I began to realize that my idea of sleeping wherever I laid my head was not going to work out very well. There hadn’t really been many places to lay one’s head. It was the hot hours of the day, and I had not slept well the last few nights. It would have been great to find a shady place in the grass and just lie down for an hour or two. But no such place was to be found. There were rocks, there were bushes, there was a steep slope, and there was a trail.

Eventually I did come to a spring. I had a good long drink of water, and I washed my hands and arms. I took off my shoes and washed my feet and legs. This felt so good that I undressed and got myself completely under the stream of water.

Of course, a handful of hikers chose that moment of my solitary day to walk by. I sort of hid behind a rock and we all laughed. I washed a few of my clothes in the fountain and sat down nearby to rest a bit.

When I finally found a place where there was some grass and shade, it was almost 6 in the evening. I laid down for a bit, and started wondering whether or not I should spend the night there. Was I likely to find anything as good within the remaining two or three hours of daylight? True, I had no food left, but I did have water. I did not really need to eat again until morning. I could just drift off, fall asleep here, to the sound of very distant breakers and not-so-distant seagulls...

...but of course it did not work that way. After less than an hour of failed attempts at falling asleep I was feeling restless, and decided to keep walking, and to find something else before it got dark.