An End and a Beginning

Our rest day in Burgos somehow felt both very long, and like it passed in a flash. We slept in until an unheard-of 8:30, then got a leisurely start to the day. When we eventually headed out, we meandered through town, enjoying not needing to be anywhere. My companions got matcha, something they had been searching for for days, and then we all got churros before splitting up for the afternoon.

Atapuerca, an area near Burgos, is home to one of, if not the, single largest discoveries of prehistoric human fossils ever found. To start off my afternoon, I went to the museum built to house them. It was incredible getting to see these artefacts that I've heard of time and again in lectures I've listened to, and imagining that each of these bones used to be a real person, with thoughts and feelings just like mine, but who lived in a world so different from ours as to be almost unimaginable.

After that I went to the Museum of Burgos, which was worth the 1€ admission price, but was quite small. Still with some time to kill, I walked around the city for a while, enjoyed the esplanade, visited some bakeries, and then headed back to the hotel to take a nap, as I was still feeling fairly under the weather from the cold that was going around.

That's El Cid's sword. One of them, anyways.

When I woke up, my roommates were plotting how to use up their remaining wine and coke, and were planning to make kalimotxo, a Basque drink consisting of equal parts wine and coke. Some of our other companions staying in the same hotel came and joined us, and we spent the afternoon talking and enjoying each other's company. I had planned to visit the cathedral before we met everyone for drinks in the evening, but I ended up opting to stay and enjoy my friends' company instead. Yes, you read that right. I, Gabe Leonard, missed the chance to visit a historic cathedral which contained the tomb of El Cid. Truly, the Camino does change a person.

I did still see it from the outside though.

As the afternoon turned into evening, we headed to a pub nearby to have our going-away drinks. One person was leaving to go back to work, and several more were altering their pace, either biking across the meseta or switching to slower or faster days, and as a result the group we'd had since the start of the Camino was going to be going our separate ways. We were missing one person who had gotten the Camino cold extra hard, but so many of our friends showed up, including several we hadn't seen in a long time who were one day behind us and had caught up with us during our rest day. I brought cards for those who were leaving, and passed them around to sign, hoping to leave them with some physical memento of our group and the people they'd met.

Eventually the pub meetup died down, and we wandered off to get ice cream and pizza, in that order. We enjoyed one last meal together as a Camino family, then everyone headed off to bed.

But the day wasn't quite done yet, as one of my friends found a (dead) bedbug in her bedsheets as she was getting ready to go to sleep. The hotel staff was extremely apologetic and helpful, and it turned out the sheets had been changed that day, so the bedbug had died in the drier and had never been alive in our room. Neverthelesss, we turned the place upside down checking for more. When we finally convinced ourselves there had never been live bedbugs in our room, we settled down for bed.

😬

We stayed up talking longer than we should have, nobody wanting tomorrow to come and for all of us to split up. But eventually we all went to bed.

This first section of the Camino has been an incredible experience, and I have met absolutely amazing people, who I think I will always remember fondly, and who I hope I can stay in contact with, even intermittently. The next section starts now though, with the dry, hot, shadeless, flat meseta comprising the next part of the Camino. In some ways it feels like I'm starting over, leaving all the people I've met behind. In other ways though, their support and friendship at the beginning of this journey have helped me to see what the Camino can be, and I will go into this new experience far better equipped because of them.

I may pick up the pace now, but I would almost certainly have pushed myself too far at first and have injured myself or missed out on all the excellent camaraderie that makes the Camino the Camino. I honestly don't know if I would still be going without them, and I know I wouldn't be this enthusiastic to finish the walk. It's true what they say; if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.