Third Day On The Camino Thursday, September 20, 2018

We got up at 7:00 AM, packed and had breakfast at 7:30. The proprietor laid out a nice spread for breakfast. We had yogurt, Tang, coffee, croissants 🥐, fruit and ham and cheese sandwiches. They are absolutely crackers about ham and cheese sandwiches in Spain. The proprietor gave me a ration of crap, in Spanish, about not drinking coffee. Something about only being half a man because I don’t drink coffee. I think the French are sending messages ahead instructing the Spaniards not to let up on me.

We were out on the trail at 8:00 AM. It was a cool morning but the forecast predicted a hot day. We did a little road walking to get out of Zubiri and walked through the Magna asbestos mine and processing plant. I always thought that stuff was bad for you and they quit mining it years ago. Who knows?

Magna Plant

Road Walking

After we got out of town and into the countryside things got a little better and then took a turn for the worse. The Camino did a few up and downs and then followed along the bank of the Arga river. The path along the Arga was very narrow and ran through a dense dark forrest of hardwoods. As I was walking along the path I saw this beautiful waterfall.

That made me think of Deliverance, the movie. That made me think of all the ham and cheese sandwiches I have been eating. Then I started hearing the banjo music from Deliverance in my head and I couldn’t make it stop. 🐷 Nothing like a good marching song to encourage you to pick up the pace. I don’t know if they have hillbillies in this part of Spain, and I did not want to do any research on that question. So I got out of the dark spooky forrest as fast as my feet could carry me.

I stopped for an early lunch at this trailside cafe.

Beautiful flowers on the river bank opposite the cafe.

I ran into the group from last night and also Rick and Lucinda from North Carolina. I had lunch with Rick and Lucinda yesterday and I joined them for lunch again today.

After lunch I followed a group out on the trail and started walking with them. Unfortunately, they missed a yellow arrow and we started walking away from the Camino onto a country road. A farmer came running out of his field and told us, in Spanish, that we had missed a turn and we needed to backtrack a half mile and take a right instead of a left.

I walked until I got to Zabaldika. I decided to stay at the parochial alburgue that is associated with an order of nuns who live in an adjacent convent.

Alburgue Zabaldika

That is where the trouble began. Sister Mary Claire was the nun assigned to check me into the alburgue. I didn’t notice the yardstick she had in her left hand until I got a whack on the head for failing to take off my hiking boots before entering the alburgue.

This is strictly a donation alburgue. You give what you want to give for a night’s stay, dinner and breakfast. I pulled out my wallet and was in the process of giving her a $10 bill when she whacked me on the head again. She said: “Hey big spender, $10 doesn’t even come close to covering this and I know you have the money so give me $20. She gave me a whack on the hand and I dropped my wallet. She picked it up and fished out a $20 bill. She told me that for another $10 she would promise not to whack me with the yardstick again, unless I really deserved it. I forked over the extra $10 and was glad to do it.

This whole experience reminds me of my days at St. Joseph’s grade school. Sister Jean was my fourth grade teacher and she had a yardstick the size of a fungo bat. Step out of line even a little bit and you were going to get whacked by Sister Jean. We used to call her the Sultan of Swat, or Babe Ruth, because, like the Bambino, she was a lefty, and she put a great deal of power and grace into her yard stick swing. I think I have a moderate hearing loss in my right ear from getting my head whacked one too many times by Sister Jean and I know I have arthritis in both hands from getting whacked by her on the knuckles. Maybe there’s a class action in this. Who knows?

I got to the alburgue at 1:30 PM and found out that it did not open until 2:30. This nice older nun, Sister Mary Celeste, gave me a tour of the 13th century Church of Saint Stephen.

Church of St. Stephen

The altar piece or retablo in this church is magnificent.

At the end of the tour of the church, Sister Mary Celeste, who was acting as my tour guide, asked me to bow my head and join her in the Pilgrim prayer. I prayed with her and at the end of this prayer I was sobbing uncontrollably. She then touched her heart and then touched my heart and then pointed to the altar. She also pointed to my head like she thought I was crazy.

In order to cheer me up, Sister Mary Celeste let me climb into the belfry and at 2:00 PM I rang the bell twice. It did cheer me up and gave me a mild case of tinnitus for the rest of the afternoon.

This evening the two alburgue volunteers cooked and served a communal dinner for the 20 people staying at the alburgue.

This is one of the volunteers. His name is Chuck Ripely. He is from South Bend, Indiana and of course he is a Notre Dame alum.

His family founded the town of South Bend and donated the foundation stones for the Church of the Immaculate Conception on the Notre Dame campus. In return for the foundation stones, four generations of the Ripely kids got a tuition waiver to go to Notre Dame. Rick is generation five so he had to pay full price to be a Golden Domer.

For dinner we had three different salads, potato soup, a chicken casserole, wine and melon for dessert. It was sooo good and I had two helpings of everything. The following nationalities were represented at the dinner. Poland, Russia, France, Mexico, Italy, Germany, Denmark and Spain. At the end of dinner a French couple sang a song of thanks for the two volunteers. As much trouble as I have had with the French, I will have to admit, they sure can sing. These two Frenchies could have been professional singers.

After dinner we went to the church and the nuns conducted a prayer service in the choir loft. We read a bible verse and then shared our reasons for being on the Camino. One of the young women from Denmark told the group that she has been severely bipolar all her life and is now better and wanted to do the Camino to thank God for her recovery. Not a dry eye in the house after that. At the end of the prayer service the French couple sang a couple of Camino songs and got a standing ovation.

The alburgue has two coed sleeping rooms and three bathrooms. One bedroom has two bunk beds and the third floor bedroom has eight single beds and two bunk beds.

My alburgue bedroom

I got a single bed in the corner and slept OK, other than the nightmares about being attacked by giant bed bugs.

All in all a memorable day on the Camino.

I hope everyone had a great day.

Good night from Zabaldika.

PS – There was no internet at the alburgue last night so I am posting this a day late. That is going to happen every once in a while during this journey. Please be patient with me if the daily post does not appear at its normal time.