Maddie, Aidan, and I showed up late to the albergue for the second day in a row.
“We have one bed left.”
Not what I wanted to hear.
Aidan and I looked blankly at each other. There was no other room in town, not even a hotel. We knew that we would let Maddie have the bed but what would we do?
We nodded and turned to leave.
Julie the gypsy popped her half-shaved head out from behind the doorway. “I have a tent!”
Aidan and I grinned at each other.
“We’ll take it!”
We made camp at dusk on a small bluff just off the beach. Cops were guaranteed not to bother us and rain was a 60-40 chance in our favor. Now we just had to actually set up the tent.
Aidan, being a man of the woods, went straight to work setting up the red and grey two-man MSR. I being a man of the couch went to the bar.
Nightfall found me hobbling back across the dunes to our hiding spot behind the cow pasture. Aidan was drinking whisky watching the bats. The tent stood erect on the hill watching us.
After wading through the tall grass I joined Aidan on the hill.
“Great spot man, this is gonna be so cool!”
“Yeah, just watch out for ticks, there’s a ton of them in this field.”
After I had plucked the last of some twenty parasites from my legs we got changed leaving our packs outside the tent along with our shoes and sticks.
The tent roof was open. Aidan and Aiden lay in borrowed sleeping bags beneath a freezing, cloudless expanse. I wrapped myself in the gold-aluminum emergency blanket that my father had insisted would come in handy. I crackled like a bag of chips whenever I moved but at least I was warmer.
I shivered myself to sleep, back to back with Aidan Ripley.
At 5:00 A.M. my eyes snapped open. The first rain drop had landed on my cheek.
“Aidan it’s raining!”
Aidan flew into action, scrambling over me to the door zipper. Helplessly I rolled around in my sleeping bag. Aidan’s backside wagged in my face as he fumbled with the tent opening. The covering flew on. We sighed and fell back to sleep.
At 6:00 we broke camp and headed back down the beach. Breakfast at the albergue was toast and coffee and cereal. Not much sleep. Sand in our clothes. Aidan and I laughed about our little misfortunes.
“It was worth it man.”
“SO worth it. But next time we keep the roof on.”
I was thinking later that having no bed turned into an opportunity for a good story because Aidan and I remained calm and trusted that things would work out. When I go home I think most of my problems will pale in comparison to being homeless in a foreign country. Many problems may seem easier to handle by comparison. And perhaps I will never have another blessing quite like falling asleep on a beach in Spain.