Last night I had dinner with my friend Miguelo and, to avoid the strict curfew of the pilgrim hostel, I stayed in another hostel in the village. I got up feeling a bit sluggish. Miguelo had wanted a fatty dinner and I wasn’t going to let him go it alone after having come all the way from Pamplona to Sangüesa to keep me company: fried eggs, potatoes, bacon and, to celebrate that we are now in Navarre, a double portion of chistorra. Basically, exactly what 9 out of 10 specialists would recommend you stuff yourself with before going to bed. I had arranged to go and meet Günther at the pilgrim hostel first thing in the morning and then walk to Izco together. As I was going to arrive 10 minutes late, I sent him a message to tell him that I was going to be slightly late and that he should go ahead and start walking if he wanted and I would try to catch up with him later. Apparently quite Prussian about time-keeping, Günther took me for my word and when I passed by in front of the hostel, there was no sign of him.
There are two routes to Izco from Sangüesa; the short one, about 18 kilometres, and the long one where you walk 10 kilometres more. As I was leaving the village, a couple of country folk who were filling up at the petrol station warned me that if I chose the shortest route I would end up with mud up to my ears as it had been raining the last two days and the roads were quite bad. At least the longer option meant I could take in the Foz de Lumbier, a nature reserve recommended by the guide books and also by my friends from Navarre. In the end, I opted for the longer route in spite of being almost certain that I would do it alone and so, without any further delay, I began walking. The wind mills to the left, depending on how you leave the village, silently prepare you for what lies ahead on the route. They didn’t put a wind farm there by chance. Holding on tightly to my txapela so that it didn’t get blown away like a frisbee, I defied the wind mills like Don Quijote and arrived in Liédena, where I stopped to have my first bite to eat of the day.
I walked on and, before going into the Foz de Lumbier, I ran into Mario, a Portuguese guy of Angolan origin. He told me that he had walked from Pamplona and that he had planned to walk to Huesca, staying in pilgrim hostels, in order to get in touch with a friend there who might have some work for him. And if not, he’ll go to Lérida in time for fruit-picking season, save all the money he can and go back to his country. Mario worked in construction until 2008 when he lost his job due to the recession. He was on benefits for two years but since then he hasn’t had regular income and he scrapes by with odd jobs here and there. He doesn’t exactly look ready to walk into a job interview, it has to be said. He has dreadlocks, which he tells me he hasn’t cut for 10 years, brown leather trousers and he talks to me while he sips from a can of beer. Given the way the shots are called around here, I don’t think there will be many people willing to give him a chance, even though he’s actually an educated person who speaks three languages.
We talked about his life for a while. He lived in Angola until he was eight years old where his father, who is Portuguese, was a landowner and enjoyed the good life. But then the civil war started and the government had to get them out of the country as quick as possible, thereby losing all that they had. When they arrived in Lisbon, his father left them and he grew up with his mother and sisters in very humble conditions. He told me that he would never forgive his father for what he did. “Don’t you think everyone deserves a second chance?” – I asked him and, after a few seconds, he told me he does but that it would need to be his father who came and found him and apologised first in this case. I wished him all the best and gave him some money so that he could have a decent meal and buy a bus ticket to Huesca. As I’m writing this, I’m not sure if Mario from Lisbon will be in Huesca by now or lying on the bar of the first pub he finds. Whatever he decides is fine. If I was in his shoes, I’d probably have chosen to quench my thirst and worry about how the hell I was going to get to Huesca tomorrow…
It really was worth taking the detour and seeing the Foz de Lumbier, a gorge carved in the rocks by the river Irati which you get to through a couple of caves that are pitch black for 100 yards. You can even see a huge colony of vultures circling at the top of the gorge. The down side is that with one thing and another the morning flew past and I still had another 17 kilometres to go to reach Izco.
I did the next 10 kilometres at a good pace and I only met one person from Lumbier, who very kindly accompanied me to where I had to restart the walk. As I arrived in Aldunate, a small country house village, I got lost again. It’s a good job there turned out to be people in one of the houses, otherwise I would have strayed quite a bit off course to arrive in Izco. There was Alfredo and his wife, originally from New York, who were finishing their meal along with two friends from Singapore, but resident in Australia, who had come to visit them. I enjoyed their hospitality for half an hour and they told me that they came to Spain after a few years in the United States and that after living in a big city, they decided to permanently settle in a village with no more than 20 inhabitants. They treated me to an orange which I polished off a few kilometres later while I was contemplating the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees. I reached my destination at around 5 in the afternoon.
In the lodging in Izco I met Günther and “Kelly’s Heroes” who, according to what they said, had arrived a good while ago. Günther gave me a hug that almost broke my spinal cord and told me that he was beginning to get worried about me. I told him that, rather than worry about me, he should worry more about the pasta he was cooking sticking to the pot, and he laughed as only he knows how and made me forget, for an instant, how exhausted I was. Günther invited me to join him and his fellow countrywoman, Monika, who he had met on the outskirts of Arrés, in sampling a plate of pasta with tomato sauce. I politely declined with the excuse that my friend Mikel was coming to pick me up soon to go for some pintxos in the old town of Pamplona...
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