Part 3: Arrés - Ruesta (30 kilometres)

I couldn’t leave Arrés without saying goodbye to Alfredo from Zaragoza and Rafael from Calatayud, two fantastic guys who dedicate their holidays and free time to volunteering at pilgrim lodgings. They met each other yesterday but if you heard them talking you’d think they’d known each other all their lives. Before heading off, I suggested recording a short video to have a memory of our visit and when they asked: “and what the hell do you want us to do?” I told them to laugh at the damn recession. Without any type of script, they talked and laughed for a minute until Rafael said ‘cut’, but in Aragonese dialect, something to the effect of: “C’mon, stop breaking my balls”. Given how they managed to improvise, as it seems our leaders do too, I’d choose Alfredo and Rafael’s anti-crisis package of measures any day…

The journey down from the high town of Arrés was again through a gully which, after the last two days of rain, was in terrible condition. Every stride was as if I was walking with astronaut boots on the moon’s surface. After a couple of kilometres I arrived at a flat forest trail and, a little further ahead, at a picnic site beside a farm I met a group of pilgrims who were taking a rest. There was a South-African woman who had come from Lourdes, an Austrian girl who had come from Somport and four Catalans: three who had started in Montserrat and a fourth from Sant Boi who they had met along the way. One of the three from Montserrat bears a striking resemblance to Donald Sutherland in ‘Kelly’s Heroes’, one of my cult films. I can’t not like someone who looks like Oddball, as the actor is known in the film. So I joined them and we started walking again.

                     

You have to see the Catalans. They’ve been walking for two weeks now and they look like a group of fugitives, like the main character of the platoon in the film. They’re going to cover so many kilometres that they’ve got a tent, portable stove and even cans of food. Mauro, who I’ll call Oddball from now on, told me that he had even brought his two dogs but they are hunting dogs and the countryside drives them mad, which is why when they got to Igualada, he phoned his mother and girlfriend to come and pick them up because, in his words, he was “so fucked off with them”. With all the frenzy the dogs caused, Oddball had suffered a muscle spasm in his back while trying to keep them in line, which had left his back worn out.

Diego is Oddball’s brother. He’s small and has a goatee which I’d like to see by the time he arrives in Santiago. The third member of the group is David, the real inspiration of this project, who tells me he’s going all the way to the Galician capital because he’s out of work and he likes walking. Unfortunately, it’s to be assumed that the reason I’m meeting so many young Spaniards out here with so much free time in the month of May is due to their undesirable work situation. The last but not least in the group, Jesús, comes from Sant Boi, near Barcelona. On his first two routes he covered more than 100 kilometres and when the ones from Montserrat met him, his feet were nothing but two giant blisters. He’s fearless and apparently quite tough, but I think that it was good for him to join forces with the other three to take the rest of the journey a bit easier. After the first few days, the Camino puts you in your place and you realise that the important thing is to add up the distances, you shouldn’t be thinking about the final goal but rather about the goal you’ve set for yourself that day.

I left “Kelly’s Heroes” in Artieda, where they were going to spend the night, and I moved further inland to the Cinco Villas region to walk the last ten kilometres to Ruesta alone, convinced that I would bump into these friendly Catalans again.

                       

So far all the routes have rewarded me on the final stretch. And today’s route didn’t disappoint, as I veered towards a forest under heavy rain and walked alongside the Yesa reservoir for several kilometres, enjoying the landscapes which are just as breath-taking as those in other latitudes. As I arrived in Ruesta, a deserted village in the Altas Cinco Villas region that was rehabilitated by the General Work Confederation of Aragón, the rain stopped and I made my way to the hostel to check in and take a well-deserved hot shower. 

I was killing some time until dinner by stretching my legs in my room when Günther arrived. He looked exhausted and was guzzling water after having walked more than 40 kilometres in one go. Günther is Austrian and tonight I’m sharing a room with him in the lodging. So I start to sound him out and the truth is I get a good feeling from him. He looks like a good guy with just the right amount of eccentricity thrown in to make way for some moments of laughter. For example, before going to bed, he asked me if I would have a problem sleeping with the window open as, according to him, it’s normal in his country. Leaving me no alternative, I told him that under no circumstances would I be sleeping with the window open at 0 degrees Celsius and that if the problem is that he misses his native Austria, I would rather watch ‘The Sound of Music’ with German subtitles with him than let him have his way…