BURGOS BOUND

It was freezing cold on Thursday morning ...and I'm not even exaggerating that much, as there had been rumours we might hit zero degrees. But we were quite okay with that, since wearing all your layers means less to carry in your pack! Off we went into the cold bright morning, toward the neighboring town of Atapuerca.

The first thing we hit on the other side of the town was a steep rocky hill inhabited exclusively by a few hundred sheep, who watched us traipsing by like we were their favourite tv show (we probably are). At the top of the hill was a stunning view of a wide valley -- and there in the distance was Burgos! It didn't even look that far away, hardly 20k! I hurried down the hill, stopping only at a village cafe for cafe con leche and the amazingly wonderful fresh squeezed orange juice that is so readily available, before continuing excitedly toward town.

However, it wasn't quite that simple. The country road crossed a bridge over a highway and became a long curving asphalt road around Burgos airport. Ugh. It sort of felt gross being on this service road in the middle of nowhere, and I couldn't wait to get to where I saw buildings not too far away.

However, this was not much better. An overpass brought me to the airport strip, full of cheap dingy hotels (the Hotel Las Vegas was particularly memorable), gas stations, and windowless lowrise office buildings. Blech. A Frenchman I'd met back in Belorado urged me to follow him to the bus stop where the airport road met the strip, to catch the local bus that would ferry us to the city centre. I declined, determined not to cheat on walking every step of the Way...but it was a decision I soon found cause to regret.

Almost as soon as the bus whisked my fellow walker away, my earbuds died. My fourth set, it must be said. I don't know what I've been doing wrong on this trip, but for some reason I have managed to render four sets of earbuds useless. And this was a really bad time to lose both company AND the distraction of music, because I was about to begin the WORST WALK EVER of the Camino so far, worse by far than even the muddy road and snow yesterday.

The Camino into Burgos is actually quite legendary, like the Pyrenees or the Alto de Pedron...ask any veteran of the Way or read any memoir and almost everyone tells you it's dreadful. But you really don't know HOW bad it is until it's your turn. You find yourself facing a long, concrete strip of industrial parks, factories and other ugly businesses, many of them car-part related. At one point, you cross a freeway over a six lane highway. Imagine walking the wasteland of Toronto's Airport Road to the north Kipling drag, or south Kipling and North Queen in Etobicoke...or the area around the Allan Expressway north of the 401. It's hideous, and I found it a cruel irony that a spiritual pilgrimage route would lead people to such a soul-sucking path.

With no diversions, I had only my digital diary to resort to, and the audio I recorded as I walked through the cement hell is a series of horrified rants about how godawful it all is to walk through. At one point I even got mad at myself because I needed to take a break and rest for ten minutes...but that meant I'd be delayed getting the HELL out of there. I think part of the issue was plain shock; we'd been surrounded by countryside for days, and the sudden surge of commercial stimuli and urban noise -- loud trucks rumbling by! Buses! Factory noises! -- was overwhelming to the senses. Whatever, it was just infuriating and exhausting and I Could.Not. WAIT to just get to Burgos and some sort of humanity.

Eventually after what felt like an hour I reached the edge of Burgos proper, a mix of residential high rises and stores at grade that made for a surprisingly busy, if faintly dingy, shopping district. I made three futile stops to the kind of places you might find earbuds in Canada (gas station? Variety store? Video and game rental store?) before finding them -- of course! -- in a home appliance store. What HAD I been thinking....where ELSE would they be?

LOSING WEIGHT

Not quite what you think. An obsession of any backpacker, and particularly of those on the Camino, is the heaviness of one's luggage. As I've mentioned before, and as others on the Camino have observed, I have definitely been carrying too much.

So another reason I was keen to get to Burgos was that it was the first place in over a week to have a post office. (Seriously.) I was going to participate in another Camino tradition: mailing yourself a "pilgrim box" of unneeded items you no longer want to ferry but for whatever reason don't want to toss.

Of course, being new to town I had no idea where I might find a post office, so I just continued along the Way hoping to at least get my bearings and figure things out from there. As I went, I passed by a shopping mall...and then doubled back. I realized I'd seen a big yellow Correos mail sign on the side of the building along with the major anchor stores, which boded well for my mission. So I went to investigate.

And here I discovered a travel tip I plan to tuck away for future trips. You know, it's easy to visit other countries and see their churches and historical sites, and dine at their tipico restaurants. But for some insight into their contemporary culture, I recommend visiting a busy local mall. It's just an interesting window into their wares and styles, and can make for intriguing comparisons to what you know from home. This two storey mall was quite stylish, with slanted ramps instead of an escalator, and a refined looking dining area on the upper floor. And away around the corner was my post office!

I explained my wish to the patient lady behind the desk in a Spanish that was half French and involved a lot of hand gestures, and by quoting me various prices on a piece of paper we came to an understanding. She gave me a box, and I went to a corner of the office space and sat down to open up my backpack. Twenty minutes later I'd filled it with everything from my unused sleepsack and dry bags to small gifts and souvenirs and unnecessary toiletries. It was shocking to learn I'd been lugging around close to 5 pounds of excess. Once we communicated the information needed to mail the box to myself in Santiago, I resumed the road feeling both physically and emotionally lighter.

HEY LADY, THAT'S NOT THE WAY...

I was not completely sure of where I was going next. Brian had booked rooms for our little clan at a place called the Hotel Forum Evolucion, and the other four had travelled there together ahead of me. My phone had died, but I remembered the street address from forwarding it to Melissa, and remembered her saying it was near the Museum of Human Evolution . Luckily it's a place that Burgos had tourist wayfinder signs for, so I just continued along the avenue I'd been on till they directed me to turn right and follow the river.

Burgos got prettier and prettier as I went along. The river is not wide, maybe as big as the Humber is in parts, but it's surrounded by pretty parkland that makes for welcome green space. And the city has used it to build a series of bridges, many quite striking. I was liking this city's self-assured style.

I didn't see a hotel near the glass box of the museum, just a convention centre, so I went into the posh cafe to ask and was quickly dismissed with a cool "Lo siento, no se". My muddy boots and walking poles probably didn't help. Discouraged, weary of walking after 8 hours, and not sure how to find my friends, I wandered to the streets behind the museum and suddenly recognized a street name I had the good fortune to remember. As I approached the door, Elke came out, and made for a sight for sore eyes indeed.

I don't know what I'd expected our digs to be, but this far exceeded whatever I might've come up with after two weeks of budget living: a small, super-modern boutique hotel reminiscent of ones I'd stated in in Seattle or Italy. Wow. And when I got to the suave gray-toned room I shared with Melissa, she dropped another surprise: Brian was treating us all. Um, WOW. More on this later.

We caught up, and Melissa confirmed that walking alone wasn't what had made that strip entering Burgos awful. The four of them had had each other and had hated it as much as I had...so that helped make me feel that my frustrated ramblings were a little less crazy-sounding. I must say I look forward to hearing that bit of the recording when I listen back sometime.

Exhausted, I showered, unwound, checked email, and really craved a nap...but I felt a bit guilty. Here I was in Burgos late in the day, clearly a fascinating city, and I was going to miss it completely by sleeping. So I picked myself up and went out to walk around a bit to see what I could see in the hour or so before we were to meet for dinner.

Turns out Brian had chosen wonderfully central digs; we were minutes from thr heart of the city. I crossed a classically styled stone bridge and admired how the carved figures lining it weren't just standing in poses -- they were dynamic, and DOING things, captured in action shots of stone. Similarly, the statue of local hero and medieval warlord El Cid (whom Hollywood scholars have determined resembles Charlton Heston) is a wonderfully active figure, with a swirling cape of bronze trailing the raised arm and charging horse, like the wind caught it. Public art with such vivid character says something about a city, and to me it gave a sense that Burgosburghers are a confident, independent lot who are just fine doing their own thing without needing to be on the map like a Madrid, Barcelona or Seville. Very cool.

I wandered through the cobbled streets of the shopping district, featuring tall, almost Swiss styled buildings in different colors, and neat squares of inviting public spaces. At the cathedral, I genuinely gasped. Yeah, yeah, I'd seen photos of part of it and knew El Cid was entombed there... But honestly, any trip to Europe is almost always so saturated with ancient churches and grandiose cathedrals, one can easily go numb after a while.

This one shook me loose of any complacency. First of all, it's an unusual shape; the standard cross formation has been added to so much over the centuries that it has all kinds of intriguing levels and annexes and side buildings, and is now more of a massive Gothic compound than just a temple. Secondly, it's clean. Too many old cathedrals are sooty or greyed by weathering, making them all kind of look the same. But this one glows bone white, and makes for a much more arresting view. I stood outside gawping up at all the buttresses, turrets and windowless blocks and thought, I gotta get in there. But it was too late to go now, so I began contemplating taking a rest day and staying extra to tour the town more. Brian had booked our room for two nights because Melissa was staying on as part of her trip home, and she'd already invited me to stay if I liked. For the first time, falling behind on my Camino plans seemed like a good idea.

I bumped into Elke and then Thomas and a few other familiar pilgrims, and had to laugh : even in a town this size, we are forever seeing each other wherever we go! And yet, suddenly we agreed we were feeling very far from our lives on the road as well : clean sheets, private shower, city clothes, urban bustle...had we really been walking past sheep in a mountain only hours ago? Eventually I made my way back to the hotel and did eke out a much needed nap, very nearly sleeping through our dinner meeting.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A group of us had agreed to try a place Matt had recommended to me that was supposed to be great for lamb...but we didn't realize it was a cab ride back to the edge of town -- and when we got there we didn't realize it was so tipico it wouldn't open till 9:30pm. Unfortunately our appetites were on pilgrim time (ie early to bed, WAY early to rise) and so we headed back to the city center. Considering banners everywhere announced Burgos as Spain's Gastronomical Capital for 2013, we had a surprisingly hard time finding someplace open, even pushing 9 pm. Finally Brian decided the place in Cathedral Square with the heated indoor patio box was just the thing, and we all went in for a very refined and filling meal of paella, steak and artfully grilled vegetables.

This being The Last Supper, there were some exchanges of small gifts and mementoes (nothing huge, because you have to carry it!). I gave the Europeans Canadian pennies, which I hoped was a little more meaningful than a traditional Canada pin... not only does it have the maple leaf on it, but since they stopped making them this year -- the year of our Camino -- they are a little more special, and unique, and hard to find. Like these people.

When Brian moved to pay for dinner, that opened up protests from all of us who, between this and the hotel and other acts of his generosity, were feeling terribly over what our friendship was costing him and wanted to treat HIM for a change. But Brian waved us off, and reassured us (tacitly assisted by Thomas, who knows Brian better than the rest of us and seemed to get his thinking), and insisted. He's been like our very own Martin Sheen, though we prefer to call him King of the Pilgrims.

Brian's generosity is so organic and inclusive -- reminiscent in many ways of my father's -- that it prompted a lot of thought. I also mused about how Thomas abetted Brian's wishes by urging us that it is important to learn to accept things...I'm guessing he had some conversations of his own with Brian and was persuaded. It made me think about generosity, and our impulse to repay a benefactor. Sometimes I wonder if that drive to give back isn't always about appreciation of beneficence, but an eagerness to cancel a perceived debt, or perhaps to be seen as "just as good". It can reduce generosity to an exchange or a transaction...the kind that diminishes the real essence of generosity. In this context, being able to accept an unexpected kindness with appreciation becomes a certain art or ability that elevates the heartfelt gesture to a different level. I'm not suggesting that good deeds should go unreciprocated, but I do get that there may be something to what Thomas was trying to explain. It made for a valuable lesson for me... That with some people, just being able to do things for people is at its best value or satisfaction when they know the recipient is just truly enjoying the gesture for what it is and is happier because of it. I think my dad had some of this at times, and so I am obliged to the group and of course Brian in particular for this reminder, and insight. Brian really did make our Camino better by letting us enjoy life off of it for a day or two,among friends and good times that are priceless. That's a great gift, and pretty cool. Thank you.

And thank you for coming along to this part of the trip! A few new pix have been added as well.