Harry's Journal

Getting on the bus to Laurca to walk on the Norte was a little nerve racking because I was really liking the Frances but I was excited to see my walking buddy who had departed a week earlier. The bus ride up was gorgeous, I was changing my mind on how I was going to view the Norte but I wasn’t a 100 percent convinced. As I arrived to Laurca I was excited to walk. We started the next day on our walk but first we went to have breakfast at this very nice quant American style place. It was wooden all around with pictures of John Wayne, Steve McQueen, and many other Americans that Europeans think of us when they want to have an American themed restaurant. It was great for the first time I had a real breakfast. As we finally started to walk at around 10 am, I immediately started to fall in love with how green and beautiful it is up here compared to the Frances. That is not to say one is better than the other but they are beautiful in different ways. As we walked I was invited to smell more cow shit, which I am not going to lie I missed. But as we got to our final destination I was amazed to see it right next to the beach. It was perfectly placed at the start of the town so that tired pilgrims like Fern and I didn’t have to walk more than we had to. It was in a cove with beautiful cliffs and perfect amount of nestalga I had from living on the California coast. That night I fell asleep as quickly as I had ever, with giving all credit to the ocean waves 10 yards away from me.

Getting to ponferrada was a beautiful 37 kilometer day in the scorching heat but that wasn’t the highlight of the day. It was the walk to the cruz de ferro that made the day great. We had started at this beautiful paradise town, which had lawn chairs everywhere. They had palm trees and even a pool that you could take a dip. Me and Luca started our day walking with this strange English man who was a vegan and had done the Camino 3 times before. He was a nice man who had a 50 pound pack to carry his weeks worth of vegan food. As we started our walk we started to see these beautiful snow covered mountains in the distance and for some reason I felt we were going to have to climb them. I started the quick incline up the mountain with gorgeous views of Spain. I was excited to get to the cruz de ferro because I was going to place two rocks for two special people in my life who recently passed in September, my grandmother and my uncle. When I finally got to the top and saw it I just thought to myself that my uncle and grandmother could hear my prayers that I was leaving for them. After doing what I needed to do we started our decent down which was a little more steeper than I thought. But it was a nice walk down being able to see ponferrada from the decline. I walked as fast as I could because it was getting late and I needed a bed, so I sprinted down to the city in intense heat but I made it. As I got to the albergue I was greeted by very nice hospitalaros which helped me buy bus tickets to switch up to the Norte to walk with Fern, than after I fell asleep for that long hot beautiful walk.

After walking from La Virgen Del Camino, Luca and I decided to stay at a beautiful place called Hospital De Orbigo with a beautiful bridge we had to cross to get to the albergue we were going to stay at. As we walked into our albergue I was tired from our walk and gingerly took off my boots the smelled like sweat and with that came a reply from the hospitalaro “ wash your feet, before they kill the rest of the other pilgrims” which I did right after I checked in. We got settled in and decided to get some drinks and dinner to watch some champions league soccer at a bar. We after drinking for a while and also rooting for the other team were asked to leave, which we had no argument and returned to our albergue. When we entered we saw this girl from Barcelona that was also a pilgrim were we sat down and talked to her about our reasons on the Camino and one reason she gave was to escape the political climate of where she lived. As soon as she told me that I was interested into her opinion on the subject. I haven’t heard from anyone that was catalon and I needed to know for not just my project but my interest about the subject. She talked about the hostilities between the guardia civil and pro independent protestors and how she just needed to leave for a bit. After her telling us this I decided I didn’t want to pry more that I have and call it a night.

I just made my first post!!!!