On the first day, I lost my ATM card.
Chicago, a foreign service officer at the U.S. Embassy, had gone to get boosted. I was killing time and had decided to get Euros at her bank. I fed my card into the electronic mouth, punched in my PIN, made my selection in English, and heard a sound, the sound of an ATM card inhaled by a plummeting waterfall, never to be seen again.
They say the Camino provides. Chicago and her spouse became my bankers. They live in Madrid and were my hosts before and after my first Camino de Santiago Compostela. Although I had a second ATM card, I couldn’t stand the humiliation of it, too, being eaten by a hungry Spanish bank.
The second day, I lost my water bottle. Operating out of a backpack after a long hiatus is an adjustment. When you haven’t worn more than a daypack in decades, and the weather is below freezing, just regulating your body temperature is sufficient a task, never mind figuring out which pocket has your money in it, where your hat is, much less the phone, your passport, pen, credit cards, the slip of paper with your notes, or your water source.
I had taken an early morning flight from Madrid to Santiago de Compostela, noting there would be a bus to Lugo and another from there to Sarria, the start of my walk. I had a vague recollection of needing to wait a couple of hours for that first bus.
The airport at Santiago is mercifully small, so there was little chance of not finding the bus. I waited outside the terminal then found a table inside near the window. The pack, hat, jacket, and gloves were off. My eyes scanned the floor for an outlet to charge the phone. When I looked up, a bus pulled in.
A young man came up to me and asked in English if this was the bus to Lugo.
“I think so,” I replied.
I put my pack in its belly, launched at last.
Lugo sits high atop a hill. That Saturday morning it was bathed in sunshine but wrapped in bone-chilling cold, too. The bus dumped us in an ancient, deserted depot. I donned my rain shell and thin wool cap, in search of information on the next leg to Sarria. Ticket in hand, I learned that it would be about 90 minutes, far too long to remain in the icebox of a waiting room.
I spotted the Indian man who had asked me about the first bus. His companion had a far finer grasp of Spanish than I. When I next looked up, they were gone.
I was as cold as I was to be. Finding my gloves, I went in search of civilization and something hot to drink. I walked out of the depot, retracing the route the bus had climbed to reach it. Deserted, the streets pulled me downhill. I had seen a grocery store, and the thought of clementines pulled me like the needle of a compass. What I saw, however, was a bustling cafe.
Between the cold and another need to voice my wavering Spanish, I couldn’t remember whether to push or pull the door open, but I made my way in, manhandling my pack beneath the stool. Every baked good called to me, but I wasn’t sure I was up to the linguistic challenge, so I ordered tea.
“Te negro?” the girl behind the bar asked.
“Si.”
It arrived accompanied by a pair of mini pastries. As the hot liquid thawed my insides, the butter and sugar from the pain au chocolat revved up my circulation. From my pack, I dug out an insulating layer. It remained to be seen whether I could zip the rain shell over it. Lingering as long as I could over that tea, I eventually felt fit to circulate in the city.
It’s true; you can see only so much from a vehicle; whereas, on foot, you can dig into the nooks and crannies of a place. Lugo, as far as I could tell, was surrounded by enormously thick walls. Later, I read that they were built by the Romans to defend their city in 263 A.D.. This was exactly what we taught in fifth grade social studies, that the Romans spread their culture throughout Europe and Africa.
At one point, behind the cathedral, I saw a spot where you could walk atop the walls. A section stretched out in front of me like its own Wall of China and brought back memories of navigating the walls of Derry, Northern Ireland, but the bus to Sarria, awaited, so I skipped exploring the walls and made my way back to the bus station.
In the sunshine outside the front of the depot, far more hospitable than the backdoor I had exited, I spotted a public water tap. A well-dressed, middle-aged woman bundled in layers of wool sunbathed in a wheelchair beside the massive Roman walls. I found a bench and took off my pack to refill the small green thermos serving as my water bottle. I pulled at the pockets in my new pack. Nothing.
It was gone.
Sometimes when I lose or break things ,I feel relief. Too many possessions overwhelm me. Part of me loves living out of a backpack for the simplicity it represents. I long to sail long distance with only a few possessions to stow below deck.
That small green thermos, however, was something I was sorry to lose. When I taught fifth grade in Taiwan, the principal brought in a writing teacher from Maine to run a workshop for the teachers. The thermos, bearing the name Kaohsiung American School , along with a reference to writing, was our swag. During the intervening years, I had used it more often than I would have predicted, for it was a good size, small, but sufficiently large. It meant more to me than I realized.
Maybe the thermos was in the cafe. Had I tried to refill it in the lavatory there? I didn’t want to miss the bus to Sarria, nor did I have the language skills to navigate a search.
I could not retrieve my lost object, but I hope I have paid it homage.
To replace the thermos, I bought two half-liter plastic bottles of water in the grocery store in Sarria. My antipathy for plastic water bottles is legendary among a small circle of my teaching friends, but despite being the environmental abomination that all plastic bottles are, these two served me perfectly.
The Camino provides, and life, so often, is a big compromise.
I lost more things on other days.
I lost my way, and I lost part of a tooth, but it was all a great adventure and ultimately, a gift.
Now, of course, living in Maine, what was the name of the school on that beloved water bottle?
Sheila, great read… and, it is always something!
Nice being an arm chair traveller in this wintery weather! great travelogue, mishaps and all....