25: walking on a rainy night

Shortly after the lights of Zarautz disappeared behind a bend, the streetlights stopped as well. It was a rainy night, and all was pitch black, apart from the faintest white ghosts of the breakers on the rocky coastline to my right below, and the faintest ghosts of white lines on the pavement. I myself was a faint white ghost as well, I reflected, being clad in a huge plastic covering. I was hoping I wouldn't scare anyone driving this stretch of road at this hour of the night.

One lane ended. I had hit a construction zone. There was a construction fence down the middle of the carretera, and the vague shapes of large machinery behind it. Great, I thought. It's pitch black, I look like the spook of a KKK member, and now I'm having to share one lane with two-way traffic.

But there was practically no traffic. I occasionally turned on my flashlight to see where the heck I was going. Eventually I reached Getaria. I took a breather in the shelter of a bus stop before beginning to walk out of town. I got myself lost on some roads that looked promising but came to dead ends.

They had told me that the next pilgrim shelter was near Azkizu, and getting there involved taking a side road from the main carretera along the coast. But after groaning and sweating my way uphill to this little village, I couldn't find anything resembling a pilgrim shelter.

I looked around for a while. I thought. The first light of dawn was beginning to show. Probably an ungodly hour to knock at a pilgrim shelter anyway, even though I'd been practically walking through the night.

But with the daylight increasing by the minute, I was able to find the trail markings, and decided to keep walking. The rain had stopped, or at least given way to a light drizzle.