Distance traveled: 18.1 km 

My day began with a glorious view of Puenta la Reina in the pink light of morning as I set off.

Because I’d stayed with only a handful of pilgrims in the albergue past town, I didn’t initially have too many pilgrims on the road with me. I tried to take it slow – I’d bandaged up my blisters as best I could, but my toes definitely didn’t feel comfortable, and I was also starting to feel tendinitis on the tops of my feet and partway up my shins. Thankfully, it was such a beautiful morning that I found plenty of distraction and comfort in contemplating the landscape before me.

The path today took me through my first grape vines of the Camino. I found it so remarkable that we could just walk through someone’s land in this way! Most of the vines I would pass in the coming days had yet to be harvested, so they had plenty of grapes still hanging in bunches on the vine. I found myself wishing that my wine studies in Paris had prepared me to identify the particular types of grapes I was seeing!

Periodically along the Camino, we’d encounter spots where locals or the land owner had left food or set up a resting place for pilgrims, and I encountered a particularly nice one on this morning. There was even a cute puppy hanging around!

Apparently I didn’t take pictures of the rest of the zen garden… but here’s a good reminder of how far I have to go!

I continued to chat with other pilgrims as I walked. I met a girl from the south of France and enjoyed speaking French with her. One of the things that had surprised me in the first few days of the Camino was that I felt more of a natural affinity with the French pilgrims than with the Americans. I had been living outside the US for six years at the time I started walking, and I’d spent so much time and energy in the past two and a half years in particular attempting to be as French/Parisian as possible that I think I succeeded in mentally distancing myself from my fellow Americans, who had started to become more “othered” in my mind. It’s hard to imagine, but I literally would think “my people!” when I’d see pilgrims speaking French, whereas I registered Americans as foreigners. It felt good to speak French and to identify as a different type of American than most of the others walking. (And there were a LOT of Americans. There’s no question that Americans accounted for the largest group of pilgrims by nationality. Other well-represented countries were France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Brazil, and South Korea.)

I walked a shorter distance on this day due to my blisters. Let me pause for a moment to explain a point of logistics. Perhaps you’re wondering how I decided where to stop each day. The various Camino guide books break down the entire journey into daily “stages” of roughly equal length (with variation according to the distance between towns over particular sections of the country). Often, the recommended stage ends are larger towns with multiple albergues, but you don’t have to follow the recommendations. I had heard that it was a good idea not to stay in the larger towns by default because there is plenty of charm to discover in the smaller ones as well, and just about every town that the Camino passes through has at least one place to stay. So, on this day, I’d heard that the one albergue in Villatuerta, which came before the suggested end point for that day, was really great, and I took that as a sign that I should stop early and give my blistered feet a rest.

I was the first or second to arrive at La Casa Mágica (the Magic House), a wholly delightful albergue. I received a warm welcome from a teenager working at the desk, signed up for a massage later (massages are easy to find along the Camino!), dropped my stuff in a room with four beds (not bunk beds!) upstairs, and promptly installed myself in a hammock where I could elevate my feet, read, and generally enjoy the afternoon.

While I was swaying in the hammock, a group of American women arrived to have lunch. They sparked my interest because they clearly weren’t typical pilgrims. All of these women – who were in their 40’s – were wearing athleisure, jewelry, and make-up. (In contrast, I was the typical pilgrim: I was wearing shorts with optional zip-on pants and a tank-top made of a sweat-wicking fabric; I had a bandana in my hair, which I hadn’t put conditioner in for several days; and I wasn’t wearing any make-up at all, let alone the mascara that I could see on these women!) While they enjoyed a boozy lunch, I just kept looking over and thinking… who are these women, and what are they doing here? The Camino isn’t a party! It’s a time for living simply and without all of the trappings of normal life!

I’ll return to these women tomorrow, when I shall encounter them again.

The home-cooked, vegetarian dinner offered by La Casa Mágica is one of its claims to fame, and it didn’t disappoint. It was a lovely communal meal. We all sat at one large table: me, a younger Australian woman who was also alone, two pairs of American women walking together, two Danes, and five people from France. Everyone at the table spoke English except the one French man who was walking by himself, and I tried to make sure he could follow what was going on. The food was delicious, and the conversation included a lot of laughs.

Meals like this were one of the very best features of the Camino – as I mentioned previously, people speak very candidly and openly about their lives, and that comes out just as much when seated with wine as it does while walking during the day. Experiences like this were important and meaningful to me because they were opportunities to practice presenting my future self. Each person I met on the Camino heard the same thing: “I’m originally from Virginia, but I’ve been living in Paris for six years, and I’m about to move to San Francisco. I’m a lawyer, but I’ve quit my job and plan to do something entirely different next.” It was the first time I was living the reality of the huge life decisions I’d made in the preceding months, and constantly meeting people and presenting these things about myself helped to reinforce that I’d made the right choices. I found it particularly interesting to realize my need to present all of this geographic context. Virginia. Paris. San Francisco. Each tells you a lot about me, but none are the whole story; I am Virginian and Parisian and, now, Californian. The simple act of presenting myself helped me to be more in touch with my own identity and to think more about what already was true about me, and what I wanted to be true. This was a principal theme of my thoughts the entire time I walked.

Coming up tomorrow: I reach the famous wine fountain (at 10:00 a.m.), take another shorter day, reunite with some old friends, and make some new ones. Plus: details of my injuries and how I dealt with them!