Part 2: Jaca - Arrés (26 kilometres); or how I survived a Rottweiler attack...

The town of Jaca evokes a real feel-good sensation for me. I had some great times here alongside some great mates. It was those little getaways that planted the seed of what would later become an incessant spell of travelling. Going up into the Pyrenees and crossing the border into France to go out on the town without our parents finding out was our usual sort of mischief. We were good boys really, as you can tell. The only problem with these little trips was that it was Huantse’s car and we had to put up with his unique taste in music. There was one song that I managed to salvage from all the American punk rubbish that he made us listen to, and I always asked him to repeat it, mainly because I liked it but also because it would delay the next song, sure to be unbearable, for as long as possible…

I’m not sure if the neighbours of my friend Borja remember our visits to his apartment in town as fondly as we do though. There was a time when our "modus operandi" was to arrive in his neighbourhood at 6 in the morning with the windows down, even if it was snowing outside, with Thunderstruck by AC/DC on full blast. Then we would go up to the kitchen to carry out our sacred ritual of having a second dinner, letting our Michelin-starred creativity flourish. I remember that once Luiso ate a whole tin of Litoral bean stew without heating it up and went to bed without even saying goodnight…

Despite the rainy weather forecast, I left Jaca around 10 in the morning with the sun splitting the skies and a spring in my step. A few kilometres later I came across a group of soldiers with camouflage paint on their faces who must have been doing some training.  Further on, to my left I spotted Batiellas military camp where it seems, as I was able to confirm a few minutes later, there is also a shooting range for the military to practise. To my right there was a picnic area and about 100 metres away sitting reading the newspaper on one of the wooden tables was a short, plump woman with a small ‘hand-bag’ dog and a Rottweiler of a considerable size playing by her side. When she saw me, the woman took hold of the dogs, quite discreetly, and moved to a table a little further away. A prefect day in the countryside for everyone, or so I thought…

As usually happens on these occasions, everything runs smoothly until something unexpected happens to change the course of events. In other words, until someone comes along and screws it up. In this case, the screw-up came from the military camp where suddenly shots from a machine gun were fired at will.  I continued to walk with my gaze fixed on the shooting range, scared that the officer in charge hadn’t instructed the new recruits on the use of artillery. The truth is I don’t know why I was looking over there, as if I was the main character in The Matrix  and I could dodge the bullets, but that’s exactly what I was doing until I heard a terrifying yell from behind: “Kaiko, for God’s sake, come here!!!”…

I can’t really say that I’m afraid of dogs but when you turn around and see a Rottweiler coming towards you with its jaw ready for action, it kind of puts the wind up you. And what puts the wind up you even more is when more than 50 metres behind him you see his owner starting to run in slow motion, only to fall and get up again as if she was Sergeant Elias fleeing from the “charlies” in Platoon, all whilst hysterically begging the dog to come back.

Thankfully the dog must have been short-sighted because when he had me close enough, he braked so suddenly that his hind legs almost went flying up. I imagine that the sight of an idler of my size wearing a txapela (a typical hat from the Basque country) that looked like a flying saucer and carrying a stick ready to smash his ribs would have been as worrying to him as his presence was to me. What’s for sure is that he stayed there staring at me for a few moments and then turned around and went back the way he came. He should have added, “it’s because my owner’s calling me but if she wasn’t, I’d rip you to shreds”. The lady, rather than apologising for the fright the animal had given me, started talking to him as if he was St. Francis of Assisi.  

Leaving this little incident behind, I started to climb a hillside where I was able to enjoy a spectacular view of the Pyrenees, with some of the peaks still covered with quite a blanket of snow. I didn’t cross paths with anyone on this route either. That’s the good thing about the Aragonese Way, which, unlike the French Way starting from Roncesvalles, is less travelled and so you can enjoy the landscape and walk undisturbed without any sounds other than those from the place itself.

At ten kilometres from the finish line the tiredness started to hit me, as did the weight of my rucksack. They say that the first few days are the hardest but that once your feet get used to walking and your back to carrying the weight, everything rolls along nicely. Rolls along in the figurative sense, obviously. As had happened the day before, when my meeting with the great Manolo gave me the strength I needed to reach the finish line, today it was this picture that helped me continue walking.  Hundreds of mounds of stones, piled up by the many other pilgrims who had walked these paths before me, all with their own reasons and at their own free will.

The final ascent to Arrés was quite tough. Three kilometres of an upward hill climb on a very impractical path. I ended up with mud up to my ears. I slipped as I was splashing about in the bog and was unlucky enough to rest the hand that I had free on a bramble patch. It looked as if I had made peace with a hedgehog. The village lies on top of the hill. 38 people live in the stone houses permanently and some outsiders come at the weekend. What bad luck that out of the four houses in the village, there were workmen working on the one that was beside my bedroom and I couldn’t have a siesta. The good news is that I went down to the bar and ran into the volunteers of the hostel who were having a little tonic. I immediately realised that they were country folk because when they saw me arrive with the txapela, Rafael, from Calatayud, said, "that’s a pretty big cap you’ve got there, maño”, which in Aragón is the delicate way we have of telling someone that they have a big head…

While the photo was being taken, Alfredo, the one on my right, mumbled, “smile, smile; show off your money’s worth from the orthodontist”, a comment which would explain why he kept his lips tightly closed in the snapshot… 

Part 1: Canfranc Estación – Jaca (25 kilometres)

                           

Twelve years ago, while I was working as a labourer on a construction site for some new apartments, I was given the news that no one ever wants to hear. Today I returned to this neck of the woods to start the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James). I’ll cover around 850 kilometres on foot which I hope to complete in a reasonable period of time.  

I went into a café near the abandoned station as I arrived in Canfranc.  After serving me breakfast, the waiter showed me a couple of small bottles of pills that he bought on the internet. “Viagra for budgies”, he confessed. He must have seen the look of utter shock on my face as he explained that he breeds budgies and canaries in his free time.

Every time I hear the word budgie, I remember a friend who invited me over for dinner once after work.  When his father, a doctor to set the scene, arrived and sat down with us for a chat, my friend got up, took out the budgie they had in a cage and put it on his father’s bald spot as he imitated a parrot repeating “daddy, daddy”. The father, rather than swiping the bird off, telling his son to fuck off, or both, started to tell me about the terrible state of the health service in Aragón, blaming the relevant Minister, all while the budgie remained motionless on his head.

With this personal background, I listened carefully to the waiter in the Canfranc café telling me that he spent a fortune online buying a canary that is the Singing Champion of Spain. He’s really pleased because, in his own words: “he’s proving to be a real hit with the ladies” and he already has 7 baby birds which aren’t out of tune when they sing. With the success we normally have in the Eurovision song contest, I suggested that he enter some of them when they’re a bit older. He looked at me as if he would actually consider it and told me that he plays them CDs of the songs of other canaries so that they can train and improve. When I asked him if he had noticed any progress, he told me with a lot of conviction that he had. He also told me that in the beginning he had the Champion of Spain in the café so that he could entertain the customers, but on the fourth day his mother got sick and tired of the same drone all day long and took him up to the house. “It’s a losing battle”, he admitted defeatedly as I paid for my breakfast. 

                             

Once outside, I headed for the apartments I used to work on and the chosen point to start my pilgrimage to Santiago. The truth is I was surprised to see them still standing. And not only because I worked there, but because of the workmates I was lucky enough to have. I remember that in the beginning my duties were limited to collecting the rubble and preparing the material for the others. However, as time passed and I showed the Site Manager my willingness to take on tasks of a higher calibre whenever I could, I began to clear away the undergrowth for sockets and pipes and to use the drill.

Even though I had already done other seasonal jobs, this one in Canfranc was my first experience in construction. Another world, as I would come to know. The first time I was given a drill I started to dig like a madman following the instructions of the Site Manager. As soon as he left to get on with other tasks, a hefty 15 stone workman appeared from amongst the shadows flapping his arms about like a tawny eagle, a signal that I interpreted as an order to stop the drill which was going like the clappers, never mind the fact I couldn’t hear a damn thing above the noise anyway. “This is it, I’ve drilled into the gas pipes” - I thought swallowing hard, convinced that we were all about to be blown to smithereens.

What are you doing, maño*? , the workman asked me, annoyed.  “I’m just doing what I was told” – I answered, blaming the manager for whatever might happen next. “So, you were told to drill, right?” “Yea”, I answered. “Good lad, but I bet you weren’t told how fast to do it?" “Well no, he didn’t say anything about that” - I said, to which he replied “perfect”, with the condescending tone of a master to his apprentice. “If you keep going at that rate you’re going to finish before you know it and you’ll be given something else to do, won’t you?”. I would have told him that that was exactly what we were being paid for if I wasn’t convinced that that was the wrong answer. “Besides – he went on without giving me time to respond -, if you finish and the rest of us are still in the middle of the job, you’ll make us look bad. So do me a favour and take things a bit easier, stress is very bed for ya, y’know” - he concluded as he gave me a slap on the back of the neck that left my neck bones trembling.  The truth is that as a life philosophy it didn’t seem like such a bad approach to me. Stress is “very bad for ya” in my opinion too. What I couldn’t quite understand was why, every time he crossed paths with the foreman, this same workman puffed and panted like a rhinoceros and put his hands on his kidneys as he complained about the stress in his body…

It was with these cherished memories that I began my descent towards the village of Canfranc and my stroll along this thousand-year old route walked by thousands of people before me – a trip I had been planning for many moons. The weather conditions could have been better and the 25 kilometres I had in front of me posed a certain degree of difficulty. It wasn’t snowing in Canfranc but it was falling heavily on the border, 5 kilometres north, and with the prevailing cold, snowflakes were expected to fall at any moment. In fact the weather forecast said exactly that. The Republican flag was flying in the square of the Canfranc village and I couldn’t quite work out if it was a form of protest against the current regime or because it had been there since 1936.

                                                 

In Villanúa, half-way through, I met up with Gus for a drink. Gus is the brother of my cousin’s husband so we’ve decided to call ourselves cousins from now on. When I told him about the flag, he said that I shouldn’t pay much attention to what people from Canfranc do.  They’re just like that apparently, and if there was a Republic they would fly the flag of the Monarchy. “Don’t you see that in this valley there are very few hours of sunlight?"- he declared, attributing any type of eccentricity of his people to the adverse weather they endure. As I devoured a slice of Spanish omelette, Gus told me that there is very little work in the Pyrenees and that he’s going to go and work in a restaurant in Berlin where he worked last year too, and that after he’s thinking about heading off to California or Canada, preferably to a state where smoking isn’t banned and he can live a peaceful life. While exchanging email addresses, I had to show him how to send an email from his phone because, as he confessed, he pays little attention to “these modern things”.  I let Gus pay for me, as he told me that it’s good luck to be hospitable with a pilgrim, and we said goodbye with a hug before I continued on my journey.

I managed to get all the way down to Castiello de Jaca without coming across a single soul. Instead of following the route that runs parallel to the road, I took Gus’ advice and veered inward a little to the Paseo del Juncaral, a forest that runs along the river Aragón and where only the noise of the birds and my footsteps on the fallen leaves could be heard. After Castiello, and when I only had 5 kilometres left to go, I began to feel an irritation caused by a blister on my right foot and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, clear signs of the mother of all chafings near the perimeter of exclusion where I keep “the Three Amigos”, as I like to call them. 

       

I continued on my way and not long after, I made out a man of about 65 in front of me, dressed in military clothes and carrying more than 15 kilos on his shoulders. It turned out to be Manolo, an ex-legionnaire and ex-member of the High Mountain Special Operations Group, who was on his way down from climbing the Collarada, the highest peak in Jacetania at about 2,900 metres. Nothing more than a morning stroll. He didn’t ask me why I was walking with my legs arched but if he had, I would have been sure to tell him that it’s because I love rap. On the final path to Jaca, he told me that he passed by the reserve a few years ago and that it’s now a company that organises survival courses in extreme situations for different types of people. As we arrived at the Mountain Military School, he wished me luck as we said our goodbyes. I headed for Prado Largo, where courtesy of my friend Miguel, the first Samaritan to take pity on me on this pilgrimage, I enjoyed a well-deserved hot shower. For my first day I think I did pretty well. Still a few left to go before reaching Santiago though…

And to finish off with today, a song dedicated to a great friend of mine and some good Aragonese music.

 *a person from Aragón