Camino, day 5
Tui, 9th October 2023
Buen Camino,
And hola from the pilgrim who traded pastel de nata for churros today. Hola from Spain!
I am in the town of Tui, right by the Portuguese and Spanish borders. Two countries are divided by one hour and a bridge that I crossed today with tears in my eyes. 35 kilometres in ten hours. I am proud of myself. But I hope I won't hate myself tomorrow.
Let’s go back to the beginning. At 6 a.m., I was woken up by the pilgrim race. The winner was the fastest one to pack their sleeping bag and wander off into the darkness (the sun rises after seven in Portugal).
Anyhow, I do not enjoy these morning panics. And today was the last time I fell for it. I left the albergue at 7 a.m., surrounded by a crowd of pilgrims. There were so many people around me that I almost felt like in the line to Everest.
At one point, I was dragging about ten pilgrims behind me. We walked up a hill and the sun came out. The place looked gorgeous. And so, I stopped and let everyone pass me. From that moment on, my day was amazing.
“The big mountain” was just a bigger hill. It took about 15 minutes to climb the hardest part, it wasn’t really bad at all. It was beautiful! The trail led mostly through a forest, so in the shade. And it’s the nature around that brings me the most joy. Photos don’t capture it so nicely but I’ll pick some and send them to you. Today was truly the most beautiful day of the whole pilgrimage, at least for right now.
I arrived at the next albergue in Rubiães at half eleven. But I didn’t wanna stop at all. I just wanted to go on and on and on.
I had a few reasons for that. The main one was that I wanted to continue, obviously. But I also needed to separate myself from the pilgrims who surrounded me in the last couple of days. They were all kind and interesting people, so I hope that we will meet again in Santiago. It's just that I was feeling kinda settled right then and, for me, that’s not what this pilgrimage is about. So I rather ran away. And well, the third reason was that if I had stopped, I would have been thinking about the princess audition that was happening in Prague today, without me. So, I rather kept walking to push those thoughts away.
By the end of the day, it was a bit of a struggle. I walked out of the forest and continued on hot pavement for a few kilometres before I reached the Portuguese town of Valença. Since I had packed a warm hat instead of a cap (again, I had expected October to behave like autumn), I had nothing to cover my head, so I pinned a towel to my backpack and hid under it. My shadow then somewhat uncomfortably resembled an overgrown Forrest Gump on his run across America.
Then a random man walked past me and said I had the most beautiful hair he'd ever seen. And I just thought that, perhaps, I never really needed that crown. Also, from now on I have to remember that my hair looks best after 35 kilometres in 32 degrees when it’s stuck into a braid and at least five times a day poured with water, then just let it down before dinner and that’s it.
Thinking about it though, I got so many other signs today too. Lots of fives and eights on gates (they happen to be my favourite numbers), this is my fifth day walking, I passed a baby clothes store called Nina (which is what I’d like to name my daughter someday). Well, I just saw clouds of signs, it depends on what you believe in.
I believe that someone sent me this pretty day to let me know that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Somewhere on the road, not in Prague at an audition.
And with that, I'd like to end today's letter. Tomorrow is another day. Please pray that I am able to get up.
Love,
Kat
And since I had added one more croissant to the original three, I told myself that I wouldn’t be craving more pastéis anyway and decided to cross the bridge to Spain today. I was so crazy excited. I once spent a month of life here, and so this country will always be my beloved special place. And I greeted myself with tortilla de patatas for dinner (I had eaten this almost every day back then, it’s this nostalgic, delicious, gigantic potato omelette). I had a cider with it and spent my very first evening of the pilgrimage just by myself.
