Camino Portugues Day 5: Expectations

Ansiao —

Distance: 9 miles 

Time: 4 hours

I woke up this morning at 4:30, listening to the thunder crack overhead, and my stomach started to churn with anxiety at the thought of going back out in the rain. I'd missed most of it on my first day walking, except the last 45 minutes or so, a downpour ushering me into Alvaiazere. I had to stop in a small grove of trees just short of town to pull out my poncho, the one I'm just now remembering was part of a gag gift some years back and probably not as useful as some others I could have packed. It's pretty much a garbage bag with a hood. I've already ripped it twice. 

But as I neared my first walking destination, I was glad to have it, even though I was failing to get it pulled down all the way around my backpack and self. The snaps on the side kept coming undone, making it so that I arrived in Alvaiazere with not even the subtlety of a poncho, but more a giant square cape, with my tired wet face in the middle of it. The wind plastered half of it to my front, and whipped the rest out behind me to flutter with great abandon, doing precious little to keep my backpack dry. 

It was this I remembered as lightning flashes bit across the early morning sky. And as I tried to stand for the first time, I decided that today was not a day for another 20 miles. I grabbed my cookies, and got back in the sleeping bag.

But as the church tower chimed the morning passing, I got up to prepare, working to actually secure the poncho to all corners of my bag. I set out around 8 am in what turned out to be a fairly pleasant morning, interrupted sporadically with some rain showers, more dogs, and the occasional bus. 

I wound up through several mountain villages, through olive groves and down the other side of the pass along rocky trails. I passed farms, and several small shrines, but again, not another pilgrim or even a day walker. But, as Carlos promised, rain or no it was a beautiful and peaceful trail. With the occasional palms, leafy plants, eucalyptus trees and oranges in every yard, it even seems an almost tropical place, other than the 45 degree weather. Still, a fine way to spend a morning. 

As I made my way down the other side into Ansiao, technically the halfway point of this stage but probably my stopping place for the day, my spirits deteriorated quickly. My right leg was cramping badly, the cough that had started bugging me on the plane was now graduating to a proper rasping hack, and I was all too aware of the fact that I was totally fried after only 9 miles. Half of what I'd originally planned to do today. I started to question, well, everything. 

I'm not even Catholic. Why am I on a Catholic pilgrimage again? I don't even usually like going on short walks. If you ever ask me, should we walk or drive? I will always, always say drive. But this, I needed to do? Why do I always have to make things more difficult than they have to be?

It was barely noon when I checked into the hostel. Out of quitter's guilt, I dropped off my bag and made an attempt to look around town. I did what I'm best at, ordered coffee in multiple locations, found the library, and visited some cold, dark churches. Sigh, I love Catholic churches. Which is completely mysterious as I am highly critical of organized religion. I will probably spend the rest of my life reconciling my own complicated spiritual concepts with the deep mistrust I have for much of humanity's God-construct. And yet, something draws me to the Catholic tradition. Not necessarily a peaceful affinity, but a looking for something. The practice I developed in Spain, and continue here, is to enter every church I pass and look. I don't know what I'm looking for, but I have a habit of skipping to the female icons — the Marys, the lesser known female saints, the angels which seem to be both masculine and feminine, and the women in the backgrounds of paintings. What were they doing when these grand buildings and the people associated with them rose to power? What were they really like, not this gilded version of them. What kind of divinity was rooted in place before them? The Moors, the Romans, the Celts. Holiness is hardly owned by any one path to God, and certainly there's an older kind of magic here somewhere too. 

I visited two churches in my usual looking, but as I started to shiver and cough more and more, and the rain showed no signs of letting up, I threw in the towel and ran for the hostel. I cranked up the heater, crawled into my sleeping bag, and pulled it up over my face. I set the alarm for 7, the number of fingers the downstairs host had held up after miming putting food in his mouth. You know, as I said before I absolutely should have learned more Portuguese before coming, but it's amazing how much you can do with sign language and the words "please" "thank you" and "sorry." 

As I lay in bed moping that I didn't know how to take a vacation without feeling sorry for myself, and moping that the trail was lonelier than I was prepared for, and moping about my conflicts with religion, I thought maybe it was time to give Boyfriend a call. I told him I missed other pilgrims, and that after two days my body hurt more than I thought it would, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to do what I set out to do, and I wasn't sure exactly what it was I set out to do anyway, and was I a terrible person?

"Honey. A spiritual journey is never going to be what you expect it to be," he said. "You need to stop making up ideas about what your trip is supposed to be like and just be on your trip." 

If that means that after a few more days I take a bus to Porto, and start again with the larger group of pilgrims that usually begin the Camino Portugues there, then that's ok, he said. 

Which is what I'm probably going to do. When I walked the Camino Frances I was very much committed to the purist approach — 500 miles, no wheels. And I'd like to do that again someday, and at the time I had a very open ended completion date that left me plenty of time to wander. But for now my body and mind are telling me that I don't need to hurry up and walk all of this in this moment. That I don't have to make it difficult. That I can see the things in this part of the country that I want to see, make sure my sickness doesn't get worse, and then take up the Camino again in Porto. But I'll walk a few more days from here and see where I end up. I might have a totally different attitude tomorrow. Lord knows I'm good at changing my mind. But the path is there, and well marked, should one need to find it. 

In the mean time, I have my hosts to thank for a yummy fish dinner, which I ate quietly next to a large, boisterous group of men. I pretended to watch TV the whole time so that I didn't look bored. I'm not sure why since it was on the news station and I'm pretty sure everyone in the room knew I didn't speak a word of Portugues. Who am I kidding? 

Obligatory food picture: Here's a close up of my soup, which was delicious. Let's just take a moment and examine the sad image of a girl taking a soup picture with her iPad, while dining alone. That should effectively close out any hope I had of making friends here.

Regarding Tom, the mysterious character in my English Portugues translator app, here are the clues I got today.

Tom ate dinner by himself. (Sometimes we have to be alone, Tom. It's fine.)

Tom asked Mary if dinner was ready. (Maybe that's why Tom is eating alone.)

Do you have a gun? (Doesn't mention Tom, but is literally the FIRST example given for the phrase "do you have.")

Do you have a hobby, Tom? (See to me, the first part of the phrase sounds like a reasonable question. The addition of, comma Tom, is completely unnecessary from a linguistic stand point and just comes off as passive aggressive. Read between the lines: Get a life, Tom. Love, Mary. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?) 

Do you have a crush on Mary? Do you have a better suggestion? Do you have a chainsaw I can borrow? Why do you have to belittle people all the time? 

**Scene***

In all seriousness, for someone that's literally just following arrows across a country, I seem to be having a hard time finding my way at the moment. But it's an interesting and enjoyable journey nonetheless. Those of you reading, thanks for giving me a reason to look for the good stories, ask questions of myself, and reflect a little each day. Tomorrow morning I'll duct tape my poncho and try again.