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Day 5. Pamplona – Puente de la Reina [Part 2/2]
Finally arriving to Puente de La Reina, 25 kilometers walking distance from Pamplona, I chose the albergue Padres Reparadores.
Albergue Door
Why?
Well, if you insist, dear reader, I must admit it was the first that I came upon and I was REALLY looking forward to put down the backpack.
Inside, I came upon an old entrance hall furnished with nothing but a desk and a chair, where one of the priests received the pilgrims and stamped their credentials. Officialities completed, I went inside and came across a huge dining room with four long wooden tables and benches of solid look. I had, as usual, to wait until 5 pm for the end of Spanish siesta time when the stores would open so I could buy dinner and thus, while I waited, went to the kitchen and prepared water to make tea. Meanwhile, the Korean girls who had arrived and were also seated on one of the benches must have guessed how hungry I was, because they offered me an apple and a chocolate croissant which I thankfully accepted.
Afterwards, I took the time to deal with the whole protocol of arrival at a new albergue which was starting to become a daily routine and went something like: unrolling the sleeping bag, taking off the boots, putting on slippers, stretching exercises for the legs and back, taking a shower and hanging the wet clothes that I’d used (mostly it was raining or snowing!) to dry.
Takahiro, who I had seen pushing the bicycle up to Alto del Perdón was in the same bunk as me, reading in the bed below and so we started talking. We chatted about Portugal, which he also wanted to visit, particularly Porto, my hometown and a Japanese animation director called Hirohito Miyazaki whose work I love. I told him that when he went to Porto, he definitely had to try our traditional dish, the Francesinha. He wrote the information carefully in a small travel notebook with a black cover.
Sometime later, Lenny, Micha and Natalia arrived and, by some reason I cannot recall, I became responsible for cooking dinner that night. I said that the only condition was for the dinner was to be rice and beans, because I had been feeling this unspeakable munchies for beans and this was the first albergue with a kitchen that would allow me to satisfy the whim. No one disagreed and so Lenny, Mika and I went to the supermarket to buy some beans. Since I carried a kilo of rice in the backpack, I would also use it to cook dinner and make my backpack lighter.
In the supermarket, I was trying to choose the beans, but as a complete ignorant about the types of beans spanish cuisine used, I asked the opinion of one of the ladies from the supermarket. It was hard to make myself understood because I thought the words “beans” in Spanish would be similar to Portuguese and it really wasn’t. The Spanish word was “alubias” (Portuguese is “feijões”!). When the language gap was finally bridged, she handed me a can of beans. "The very best of Spain!" she assured. I smiled and thanked her. Before leaving, I also bought some bread, cheese and tomato for lunch the next day. When I was finished, I saw that the Korean girls were wandering aimlessly browsing around for products and I went to them and assured that my Spanish, no matter how poor, was at their service, but they guaranteed me it wasn’t necessary. They did get along surprisingly well for someone who did not speak the language.
On the road back to the albergue, I was surprised by the number of storks occupying the rooftops of the houses and the church tower with their magnificently nests and by how much they seemed not to care about the tumultuous snowstorm that was happening all around their homes.
The Storks
While I was cooking my humble four person dinner, which was slowly cooking on the gas stove, side by side with two or three other dinners who were also (one person at a time) being attended too, Ila, who had made a colossal salad and was unable to finish it, came to me and offered me a full bowl of lettuce, onion and tomato topped by a gourmet seasoning which I went picking from, as I cooked. The seasoning was great and I was so very hungry! Then, Natalia enters the kitchen and starts fooling around around about being so hungry that she could finish that cooker of rice and beans all by herself. Slowly stirring the rice with a wooden spoon, my expression the epitome of seriousness, I looked at her and replied that if, when that dinner was finished, the cooker was empty, I was to personally carry her and Micha all the way to Santiago, the next day.
Ila's Salad
“It’s a promise, then!”, she laughed and stood to keep me company while I was finishing the cooking. Changing the subject, she said with a much more serious face that I’m carrying too much weight in my backpack and should really leave some stuff behind.
"A JAR of GLASS for carrying rice?!? Are you CRAZY! You have to leave it here, right in this albergue, are you aware how much you are overweight? And that book?! Is that a book you bring to a pilgrimage, do you think? That book alone weighs one kilo! ", she listed her premise, built her argument.
"I know, I know! But look at the jar, it’s just so beautiful, isn’t it? And I didn’t want to leave the book halfway through... It's my homage to Tolstoy, this way he walks the Way with me... ", I tried to explain, although I knew that she had all reason on her side.
"You ARE crazy! You just cannot carry that much weight! ", she said, "Every day you are to leave something behind, it’ll be a daily goal for you, from now on...", hearing her words, I did felt Providence speaking through her. My backpack was, in fact, really heavy. So I took the jar of rice, which was now empty and placed it on top of the refrigerator for the next few pilgrims who passed there and, by any chance, needed it. She smiled at me in agreement.
Dinner was ready.
Alubias
I held the cooker that contained my stupendous (or so I thought!) rice and beans in one hand and the huge bowl of salad in the other and took it to the first of the long wooden tables of the dining room, where three famished pair of eyes waited. Everyone ate heartily. Humility aside, for the limited resources I had at my disposal, I thought it was pretty good "arroz con alubias". In the end, with just a little effort on our part, there was nothing left in the pan. Natalia and Mika looked at me with an expression of “something that is due”. Without the slightest chance of argument, I bowed to the awful truth “You were right and I was wrong! Climb on my back, let’s go to Santiago...!" They laughed and said, considering I cooked dinner, they’d free me from my promise.
At 10 pm, most of the pilgrims were still scattered, chatting in the dining room. I had a map and was showing Lenny and Mika where my house was in Portugal (Portugal is so small that it appears in all Spanish country maps!), I told them of the peace and beauty of the Alentejo (the Portuguese lowlands) and we laughed as a crazy people, often without apparent reason. We were so tired, we seemed drunk. I agreed, the tiredness and the lack of rest were making me feel quite lightheaded. To my right the two Korean girls had the guest book open and were writing something while they were giggling too. Everyone shared what they had with everyone else. There was this common feeling we shared, being all in that one division, sharing the same experience. We were like brothers. Brothers bound by the Way.
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Day 5. Part 1/2
Index
Day 1. Saint Jean Pied-de-Port - Orbaitzeta
Day 2. Orbaitzeta - Roncesvalles
Day 3. Roncesvalles - Zubiri
Day 4. Zubiri - Pamplona
Day 5. Pamplona – Puente de la Reina (YOU ARE HERE)
Day 6. Puente de la Reina - Estella
Day 7. Estella – Torres del Rio
Day 8. Estella - Logroño
Day 9. Logroño - Najera
Day 10. Najera - Grañon
Day 11. Grañon - Belorado
Day 12. Belorado - Atapuerca
Day 13. Atapuerca - Burgos
Day 14. Burgos – Castrojeriz
Day 15. Castrojeriz - Fromista
Day 16. Fromista – Carrión de los Condes
Day 17. Carrion de los Condes - Sahágun
Day 18. Sahágun – Mansilla de las Mulas
Day 19. Mansilla de las Mulas - León
Day 20. Léon – Hospital de Órbigo
Day 21. Hospital de Órbigo – Rabanal del Camino
Day 22. Rabanal del Camino - Ponferrada
Day 23. Ponferrada – Vega de Valcarce
Day 24. Vega de Valcarce - Tricastela
Day 25. Tricastela - Ferreros
Day 26. Ferreros – Palas del Rei
Day 27. Palas del Rei - Àrzua
Day 28. Àrzua - Santiago
Disclaimer. I did not carry a camera with me, but I will do my best to illustrate these texts with free for use images found around the web and later sent to me by my fellow pilgrims. All images that are not mine will be attributed to their rightful owner at the end of the post, even if no attribution is required. When no attribution is stated, the image is from my notebook.
Thanks to the following authors for kindly providing the CCO License Free To Use photography that illustrates this post:
Albergue Door - pasja1000 (Pixabay)
https://pixabay.com/en/users/pasja1000-6355831/
The Storks - romaniamissions (Pixabay)
https://pixabay.com/en/users/romaniamissions-7956575/
Ila's Salad - StockSnap
https://pixabay.com/en/users/StockSnap-894430/
Alubias - StockSnap
https://pixabay.com/en/users/StockSnap-894430/