One Hundred Grams

The last time I saw Mary, she put her mouth right up to my ear and whispered: "Whatever you do, please sit next to him."

The him she was referring to was Brian, a 35 year old man from Louisiana. He had come up to me at the bus station in Santiago, looking for his bus, which, as luck would have it, happened to be the very same one that I was catching. Mary and I were in the middle of our goodbye, as she was leaving on a different bus bound to Granada - the result of a last minute coin toss decision.

Brian was a giant, but a stooped one due to a neck that thrusted out at a right angle from his shoulders. His arms could easily wrap around a tree trunk and break it in half with a flex - one arm at a time. However, any sense of danger or threat immediately melted away the moment you looked into his eyes. Eyelids hung at half-mast across summer grass orbs, giving the impression of a lamb staring docilely at that friendly metal rod flying towards its temple.

The bus ride from Santiago to Barcelona was 17 hours long. As the sun floated towards the horizon, a familiar landscape flashed past; a roll of film sucked through the spools of a projector at too great a speed, rewinding the scenery of my last five weeks. Nightfall hit over the meseta, burning the celluloid into darkness, and my camino was officially completed.

That left just Brian.

"I love ham, Jimmy, you know?" Brian said, taking a piece of chorizo out of his bag, "and the ham here is fantastic, just superb, you know. What you have to do is go into a supermercado, like El Corte Ingles, you know, and buy yourself a nice pack of ham. All you need is 100 grams. In fact, remember that Jimmy, 100 grams of anything will do you quite nicely over here."

Brian patted his not-too-shabby belly and grinned at me. His eyes still remained lamb-like.

"So, Jimmy, have you accepted Jesus into your life?"

In that instant a building shuddered and collapsed somewhere inside me, killing millions.

It was still 16 hours until Barcelona, and I was helpless as the grinning, ham-obsessed sheep spouted verse after verse of biblical scripture, telling me about the joys of being born again and that "you have to look to the nation of Israel, Jimmy, its fortunes are the clock that counts down to the end of days - think about every nation that has gone against God´s chosen people. Every empire has collapsed, but the Jews have carried on."

Brian´s sermon ended by about the ninth hour of the bus trip, when we were joined by two Nigerian born agains. One of them, Ojo, misheard me and introduced me to his friend as Jimmy the Christian from Sweden (I had earlier made up a story about coming to Jesus so as to get Brian to shut up). Having found the flock he´d never had, Brian and the Nigerians proceeded to chant "Praise God!" and "Hallelujiah" at every stop.

My first experience of Barcelona was a grid of empty streets, flooded with blinding sunlight, and a stumbling attempt to find my hostel, despite having not slept at all. When I finally found the place, I discovered a locked door that refused to open, no matter how many times I buzzed my way up. Luckily, a resident left it open long enough for me to sneak through.

The next challenge was to get into the hostel itself, as it was part of a larger building complex. No amount of knocking achieved anything, until the door opened of its own accord to reveal a startled girl doing her best to find a toilet. Unfortunately, the shock of seeing me appear on the doorstep was too much, and she had no choice but to vomit all over the floor.

Welcome to Barcelona.

A trick that I´ve learnt in hostels is, if you don´t know anyone, just go to bed during the day. Every time I´ve done this, I´ve been woken up about half an hour later by a very apologetic person. The apology is enough to start a conversation, during which point you discover common ground and make plans for the evening.

This is how I met Bianca.

Somehow we ended up at an "Australian" pub, called Hogan´s, in La Rambla, where the Swedish girl behind the bar didn´t understand what Coopers Red was, but swore that Fosters was enough to make it an Aussie establishment. I opted for a Newcastle Brown instead, and at this point was introduced to Jarred, a commerical diver from Adelaide, but more recently of Long Beach, California.

A funny thing I´ve learnt about travel stories is that the other person always tells the better tale. Bianca´s and my eyes goggled at tales of deep sea welding work in the middle of the Atlantic, and of near death experiences in Romania, and yet Jarred whooped with excitement when I told him about walking across Spain.

"Maaaate, I wish I´d had the chance to live your life," Jarred said, having just finished telling me about how he´d been traveling the world and getting paid silly amounts of money since he was 22.

It was an early night for me that day, mainly because somewhere between jumping over a pool of vomit and being woken by Bianca, I had decided to explore the city.

The map I´d been given at the hostel mentioned some place called the "Museum of Comics and Illuminations". This obviously was the most interesting place in the city, so I set off, navigating the grids and streets to find the museum. Another trick I´ve learnt, so as not to look completely like a tourist, is to make a note of the important streets I need to find, and do my best to memorise the general shape of the route ahead. This means that I don´t have to pull out a map on the street, and it works especially well on grids.

But not with maps that don´t list every street you´ll come across.

Having brutally murdered a few hours, I arrived at the non-descript, mirrored glass building that supposedly housed the comic musuem and found it to be empty. A security guard on his smoke break grabbed my map and pointed out Montjuic - the Mountain of the Jews, which is located on the opposite side of the city from where we were standing. It had moved.

I´ll look at comics tomorrow, I decided, thanked the man, and made my way back to the hostel. However, the clouds immediately burst into rain, causing my sleep-deprived mind to pull me aside and offer the most valid counsel ever:

Jimmy, the only option you have now is to go and drink in a bar until the rain stops, and then climb up to the top of La Sagrada Familia.

Trusting in the better judgement of my higher consciousness, I found the nearest cafe-bar, sat it out until the rain stopped (only a half hour later) and promptly skated my way across wet pavement towards Gaudi´s incomplete cathedral.

I don´t usually suffer from vertigo, and the climb up the tower was definitely lovely, awe-inspiring, and filled with all sorts of naturally-inspired architecture. But, when it came to climbing back down, especially down the madman´s bowel of a spiralling staircase, I found myself in the grip of white knuckled terror. Definitely enough to evaporate the warm glow of alcohol from my veins, yet without doing a thing about my sense of balance.

The experience must have driven any desire to see Gaudi´s further works from my mind, because the next day was spent exploring the works of Dali and Picasso instead.

Of the two musuems, Dali´s was by far my favourite exhibition. I didn´t know too much about his work, beyond his interest in drawing his wife nude, lots of surreal landscapes and his interest in cannibalism. However, it´s his work in pen and ink, around the mid 1960s, that I really admired. Ironically, it was his religious ilustrations that I loved the most.

The Picasso Musuem was also great, especially its temporary exhibition about how many artists have been fascinated with Velasquez´s Las Meninas. Also, being an art neanderthal, it was interesting to see Picasso´s earlier works, and to finally confirm that despite his famous work looking like something Ken Done could´ve painted, he actually had a lot of classical skill and talent behind him.

This was, for the most part, my experience of Barcelona. Despite my disappointment with the Camino´s tourist epidemic, I fully embraced Barcelona´s, having always known what to expect there. There was only one time that I had a truly local experience.

Catching the tram from the city centre, I made my way to the outer suburbs of the city, where I was greeted by Carlos, from the camino. He´d invited me over to dinner at his apartment, where he had prepared a Catalonian-style meal.

It turns out that I was the guest of honour here, as Carlos´two young daughters greeted me at the door.

"When they heard you were coming, they went straight into their rooms to put on their make-up and dresses. I think they like you." Carlos said, with a cheeky grin (his daughters were 9 and 11).

All throughout our walk together, Carlos had always told me that he cooked an amazing tortilla. He was not proven wrong - it was by far the best tortilla I´d tasted, with zucchini as an extra special ingredient.

Carlos´youngest daughter was overcome with excitment by my arrival, and ended up having a heated "discussion" with her dad in her bedroom. Shortly afterwards I heard her ask how to say "buenas noches" in English, before she sheepishly crept out to give me a kiss goodnight.

Before leaving that night, I asked Carlos if he had kept to his suggestion of spending each day as if he were walking the camino. He nodded and smiled, saying, "Jimmy, I can´t stop walking at all."

Neither could I, really. My last day in Barcelona saw me climbing Montjuic in an effort to finally see the comic book museum. Obviously it must´ve been a massive collection, to have been moved to such a prestigious location. Yet, it was strangely not listed on the map, and no-one in the tourist information had a clue what I was talking about. In the end, I was directed to the Military museum, where I was told that this castle held the comic collection.

I paid for my entry, navigated through the impressive fort, and came across my goal. There, sandwiched between some stones from an ancient Jewish graveyard, was a small collection of glass cabinets. Inside were some yellowing sheets of comics; pirates, cowboys, knights and soldiers from the 1950s. All in Spanish, and completely out of my grasp.

In an attempt to cheer myself up, I decided to check out the Miro Foundation in my last hours before the bus to Granada.

A large swarm of bright colours and sweet smells, bleating in American accents, surrounded me once I was inside. They leapt from room to room, walking up to paintings and sculptures, cracking jokes about how bad they looked, before grabbing a friend to take their picture next to "the painting that Miro obviously made for his fifth birthday".

I couldn´t help but think back to Brian´s rule about 100 grams. Just enough culture to say you´ve done something, but not enough to really get it. The Americans must have it written in their constitution.

Memories of Brian were hard to eject from my mind when it came to catching the bus to Granada. Though I knew he was safely back in Louisiana, my eyes kept avoiding contact with any potential anglophone.

Instead, I ended up catching the bus part of the way with a Catalonian called Jordi. He wore a "dreadlock mullet" - the trendy shaved head with dreadlocks spurting out from just above the neck. I couldn´t help but ask him what it all meant. In an effort to practise his English, Jordi told me that he was an "okupo", a Spanish squatter, and that rasta culture is a big part of that scene. Funnily enough, I´d actually passed his squat on my first day in Barcelona, when trying to find the Comic museum.

I showed him the picture I´d taken at the front of his building - a piece of grafitti saying "Tourist Terrorist".

Jordi nodded sadly, but then smiled and said, "If you like grafitti, you will love Granada. Just ask around."

I wished him well and we parted ways. In another 11 hours I would have the chance to see if he was right or not.

Beyond the End of the Earth, Back to the Field of Stars

There is an older path that lies beyond the terminus of the Camino de Santiago. Striking out west towards the Atlantic Ocean, the Camino Fisterra has its roots buried deep in pre-Christian culture.

At Fisterra, the End of the Earth, you can find a gateway to the underworld deep below the freezing waters. Here pagans came to celebrate the sun, watching as it fell to its death in the extinguishing ocean. Others, though, came to witness the procession of the dead -- loved ones who had departed in the previous year, marching along a dirt road and into the mysteries of the eternal deep.

Today it is a seaside resort crawling with tourists.

The road to Fisterra was a colder, harder road than the relatively pampered one I´d stumbled along to Santiago. Though only three days, the path takes you away from the catered, tourist-flooded areas and into a wilderness where you´ll be lucky to find one refuge within a day´s trekking.

Most of the time this would be fine, as historically the Fisterra walk is not as heavily trafficked as the major Camino Frances route. Unfortunately, Hape Kerkeling decided to write a book.

Apparently it was very popular, because this year saw an unprecedented peak in the number of Germans making the pilgrimage -- not only to Santiago, but also beyond it to the usually footnoted Fisterra. Albergues found themselves booked out within twenty minutes of opening for the day, even burning through their usually sufficient summer overflow options. While turning up late to an albergue pre-Santiago wasn´t a problem (most towns had several accommodation sources), the Fisterra was cruelly barren and forced stragglers to march out for anywhere between 12 and 20km for their next chance at a bed (which was probably occupied by a man called Rudolph).

To make things even more terrifying, I overheard rumours that Krekeling´s book is going to be made into a feature film sometime in the next year or so.

And it is here that I have to shake my head sadly. Not because I don´t want Germans making this pilgrimage, but because I don´t actually think that the Camino de Santiago is a true adventure anymore.

Millions of dollars have been pumped into the Camino Frances, making it one of the cushiest walking experiences, where you know that your chance of a bed at the end of the day is 100%, and that while a lot of locals won´t speak your language, at least you know that their menu is almost identical to the town you just departed.

Why then would anyone want to make a movie or write a book about what is now just a very long walk to the beach?

It may have something to do with the pagans, dancing naked on the beach as they cheered the sun onto its watery grave.

There is a lot of mystique and romance associated with the Camino, and I can definitely see why. You walk through a beautiful, everchanging landscape. You hear stories about interesting pilgrims (the two men who started at their front door in Holland, stopping every hour to drink wine and eat meat, or the man who carried a tuba all the way with him from Cambridge). You have heard the legends of St James, and of the knight Sir Roland, and it all sounds like an epic quest.

And then, there are the aphorisms that you hear along the way. Paul, a priest from South Africa told me, while massaging his swollen knee, that "you stort yor Caminoo wan you leave your front door." And Laurie, who I was later reunited with in a small restaurant 12kms short of Fisterra, smiled despite dripping with rainwater (reports suggest that this was the wettest May in the history of Spain´s weather records), saying, "it´s out here, while walking, that you see the true nature of God. It´s here, not in that Cathedral back there."

But, most memorable of all, are the words of Nora. She was the first pilgrim I met, many weeks ago, as I unpacked my bag in St Jean Pied du Port. A traveller from Belgium, she´d just arrived in St Jean that day, having not only walked from there to Santiago two years earlier, but also trekking from Le Puy in the south of France to close her personal moebius strip.

We shared dinner in a Basque restaurant, where she said to me, "Remember, no matter what happens, you were chosen to walk this Camino."

Those words stuck by me throughout my whole journey, especially when I was shivering in a wet tent, or losing my mind while stumbling that extra 12km.

For me, seeing the ocean was a lot more momentous than walking into the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. There is something electrifying about watching ancient trees peel back one by one, drawing the speck of blue slate water closer and closer towards you until, finally, it is the only colour in your vision and the sky and sea have melded into a singularity.

Despite the rain and my heavy backpack (once again plumped up to its 20kg bulk), I took off my boots and walked barefoot into the ocean, taking the last part of the pilgrimage feeling ice water and sharp sand scour my feet clean.

In contrast, the Cathedral at Santiago was a nest of tourists, clambering over eachother to take photos of golden statues. The density of money and a willingness to spend had drawn all manner of opportunists to the steps of the Cathedral, including a man dressed as a pilgrim selling lottery tickets.

Happily, though, none of them were Germans. In their defence, the Deutschlanders actually took the time to walk the entire length of the Camino. Santiago, on the other hand, seemed to have swallowed them up, leaving American pips in their place, crammed into every alley way and hotel room.

And this is why I would not recommend the Camino Frances to anyone. It has been gutted, hollowed out and transformed into a symbol for people to parade about in a series of photos and stamps. St James and his Field of Stars is top heavy with tourism, and the sense of achievement, growth and challenge that a pilgrimage should represent seems to have faded away.

Days earlier, while still walking towards Santiago, I had the pleasure of walking alongside Carlos from Barcelona. Always embodying the soul of the true pilgrimage, he said to me, "When I return home, I plan to live my life as if I was walking the camino. Everyday you wake up, prepare yourself, and then march on towards a destination. It is not like my old life, where somedays all I´d do is wake up, work, then go back to sleep. You need to keep your life´s purpose in mind, whatever it is, and walk towards it. Every day."

Santiago de Compostela, then, was not the end for me. Neither was Fisterra, despite its romantic, pagan connotations.

Or maybe I´m just grumpy and spaced out after the 17 hour bus ride from Barcelona -- but that´s a story for another day.

Off the Beaten Egg

The young bartender adjusted his smudged glasses as he peered at our drunken faces.

"Do you remember how much you had? It was six, yes?" he asked.

We nodded, not exactly sure how many beers our table had consumed, but six was an affordable number. As he fumbled with the till, we shook our heads at the thought of Spanish honesty -- no Anglo-Celtic pub would ever dare be so lax about their alcohol supplies.

Still, we had good reason to celebrate. It was the eve before our arrival in Santiago de Compostela and, after 32 days of walking across Spain, our goal was only a 5km skip down the road. Along the way our numbers had dwindled, as the original fellowship of pilgrims broke away, while new faces had passed through only briefly: it seems that friendships from the first days of the Camino set firmer than those of the sophomore weeks.

Naz had left, driven off by dogs and blisters. Scott and Peter reached Santiago days ahead of us, and were already back in their normal lives. Abigail, determined to reach the Cathedral of St James for the feast of Corpus Christi, had pushed on into the black, soaking night by herself. The final challenge of suburban labyrinths, followed by the majesty of the cathedral itself, was enough to strike her down with tears at her destination. Alone and crying in the Praza do Obradoiro,
Abigail ended her pilgrimage by checking into the most expensive hotel in the city.

The concierge at the desk gave her a 70 euro discount.

But let´s go back, before the end, before the rain and wind and more beer than anyone could dishonestly remember. Before we crossed the frontier, leaving red mesetas for the drenched emerald of Galicia, there was another table dressed in empty mugs.

"I´m interested in seeing how all of the food changes from province to province, as we travel across the camino," said Laurie, her hippy gums and peaceful whites shining across at us.

"In the start it was all of this asparagus, then lomo, lomo, lomo. It´s so wonderful being able to walk past these things, growing in the land, and then finding it on your plate that night, knowing that you probably waved at the farmer who picked it."

Laurie was very right about this, and from that moment onwards I started taking note of the food around me on my journey towards Santiago de Compostela.

Pork, otherwise known as lomo, was a major staple of the early Camino. This has been one of the greatest mysteries for me - despite Laurie´s observations about homegrown food, I never once saw a single pig on my travels. Yet, bacon, ham and pork took up the greater part of my digestive system over this last month.

Probably best not to dwell on that one, given that lomo directly translates to the scarily vague "loin".

This is why I jumped to eating beef the moment I saw cows in the fields beside me. Sometimes this could be a little cruel, especially when I ordered veal a few hours after patting the head of an inquistive calf. But that´s the beautiful horror of life, I guess.

Galicia is renowned for its cows, as well as its octopus, which I´ve had the pleasure of trying a few times. My best experience was in the town of Melide. Here, an old woman plunged fresh, whole octopi into a bit vat of boiling water. The bubbling liquid turned purple from leeching all the deep sea hue out of the creatures´gelatinous bodies. When an order was placed, she´d fish out a monster and hack its tentacles into bite-sized chunks, drowning them in salt, chilli and olive oil. We ate them, sucker pods and all, with bread and white wine that was so homemade that it looked like murky water.

Burgos, a city of so long ago that I only have a stamp to remind me that I visited it, is equally famous for its "Morcilla de Burgos", which is a type of blood sausage. I´m neither here nor there about its ingredients, but it was always very tasty and one night in Burgos we ate it as tapas while being treated to an impromptu magic show by some very talented bartenders.

However the crowning honour of most amazing, useful and cheap dish has to be awarded to the Spanish potato omelette, aka Tortilla aka Tortilla de Patates.

It was a bad day when breakfast didn´t start with a slice of this delicacy. The potatoes, rich in carbohydrates, and the eggs, powerhouses of protein and fat, were the best possible ingredients to push weary pilgrims across the finish line.

Which is why a cold fear set in when we arrived in the lush land of Galicia and found that tortilla isn´t that popular in these parts.

Any sense of torment, of starvation and exhausted collapse on empty roads were dispelled shortly afterwards, thankfully, when we were introduced to something that the Galicians do make in great abundance. Empanada, the spanish pie, sometimes filled with fish, mystery meat or chorizo and wrapped in the crispiest pastry imaginable, has occupied the tortilla-shaped hole in my heart ever since.

I know that last time I promised to talk about what I´d discovered by stopping in towns off the recommended way, but the rumbling of my stomach might have had something to do with my sudden change in topic. So, for now, it´s time for me to go and discover some new gastronomical wonder, or canoodle with an old favourite.

Or both, because I´ll need my energy for the days ahead.

Tomorrow I set off west - towards the end of the earth.

Sir Bawls-a-lot: Worst Spirit Guide. EVER.

...somewhere I passed an old man pushing a wheelbarrow. Hiw toothless smile touched me so deeply that I had a momentary impression that he was my father: a representation of The Father. Tears well up again and I am left speechless...my reality is shifting...why is it that I cannot recall the last few hours? This altered perception and emotional surge is overwhelming me. My heart feels so open my chest is aching. I seem to break in and out of conscious awareness, one instant of complete clarity, the next only haziness. I resolve in this moment to continue my pilgrimage in total silence. I don´t know for how long; I know only that something is seeking to reveal itself that can only be heard in the silence. Amidst these uncontrollable tears I write this simple message to hang around my neck. I trust others will understand what I can´t articulate or comprehend it myself. I don´t even know if it makes sense in Spanish, "Saludos. Yo peregrino a pie, caminate en silencio. Paz."

Every night we have a bed time story from one of the main English guide books for the camino. Back in 2005, a man by the name of John Brierley apparently cried his way along the entire pilgrimage. Anything would set him off, be it an old man´s smile, or a local peasant waving from their field. For this reason, we have taken to calling our "guide along the spiritual path" Sir Bawls-a-lot.

In his defence, he provides some great maps and practical tips for the days ahead. But, unfortunately, there is a wealth of personal reflections and advice for having your own spiritual experience along the way.

Perhaps there´s something wrong with me, but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. One day, Bawlsy directed me to look at all the bees buzzing around and to think about the "buzziness" in my own life. I wonder such deep introspection had caused him to vomit a little in his mouth too.

Walking 800km across another country is a pretty big undertaking and, when it is steeped in centuries of Christian and pagan tradition, it is understandable that a lot of people will see the path as one leading towards a spiritual terminus. But, to think that this "inner journey" can be packaged and presented as some holiday tour for the soul is awful. Unfortunately, it happens a lot out here: there are buses of pilgrims who hop off for a quick, 15km jaunt before hightailing it to their hotels and hot showers. Other pilgrims sit and write in their journals, not because they´ve necessarily experienced a form of enlightenment, but rather because that´s just what you do when you walk.

For me, strangely, I´d have to say that this pilgrimage has become one of physical and pragmatic growth. When I started, 26 days ago, my body burnt and ached and I hobbled with blistered feet and sore joints across the way. Something changed a few days ago, and now we burn our way across the countryside, melting 30kms beneath our soles in the space of 5 hours a day. My feet have healed amazingly; they are not tough and calussed, though there are still razor-sharp shreds of skin from old blisters, but instead they refuse to be injured any further. Even my baby toenail, now an angry shade of Spanish Onion purple, is still holding on, despite all the stories of other pilgrims having lost their entire collection.

Mountains are no trouble anymore, either.

A few days ago, the hellish mesetas bowed down and their red earth cracked apart as rivers of grey slate rose up into new, healthy mountain ranges. These mountains hid many secrets.

I came to the town of Foncebadon. Back in the 80s this was where Paulo Coelho, starved and driven mad by his own spirit guide, attacked and defeated a dog. It is also where Shirley Maclean was menaced by local dogs (perhaps they had something against pilgrims after previous experience). For me this ghost town, abandoned to the misty mountains, was a point of tension.

I found, instead, a village reinvigorated by the life blood of the pilgrimage and the very reassuring sight of dogs sleeping in the middle of the road. They just didn´t have that demonic fighting spirit anymore, apparently.

Beyond Foncebadon, the path climbed steeply towards the Iron Cross, a place where pilgrims are meant to bring a stone from their homeland. I didn´t know about this tradition, but it was very moving reading all of the messages left in the past. The pole (a simple telegraphy pole) to which the iron cross is attached was festooned with memorials to lost loves, faded photos of pilgrims, strange nick-nacks and Korean student cards.

The Iron Cross marked the highest point along the camino. Miraculously, it also marked a transformation in the landscape. Once we left the cross, we were transported into the west coast of Ireland: grey and white stones pushed through the ground, while yellow-flowered bushes did their best impression of gorse bushes along the way. Hidden amongst this new, cooler world, was a small hippy hostel, built out of natural stones and watered from a nearby well. We did not stay here, but I could already see an outcrop of dreadlocked folk sipping chai in front of it.

For me, there was nothing spiritual about these experiences. At least, there was nothing tear-inducing, striking me down to the ground and forcing me into a fit of silence. But, maybe I was doing something wrong.

Germans are one of the most common sights along the camino, so I asked a few travellers what guided them along the pilgrimage. It turns out that a German comedian had written a recount of his travels and that it was this that encouraged them to flock in gigantic numbers, clogging the arterial routes and enfuriating locals (we noticed that if ever we did anything wrong, a local´s first question was "Are you German?"). Supposedly a feature film is being made based on this book, which bodes ill for the "spiritual purity" of the Camino pilgrimage.

Mr Spain noted his dislike of the Germans on the day we entered Leon. Skipping around the rest of our group, he used his walking stick as a machine gun, firing bullets into the air and screaming:

"It´s a fucking war, aye, yeah, these Germans, we´ll beat them, aye, we´ll take them out before they get to the next city."

Needless to say, I haven´t seen Mr Spain since Leon.

But, he did make a good point, in a lateral way, and that is that the camino experience can be easily trampled by the immense number of pilgrims walking the way. Bawls-a-lot sends thousands of English-speaking travellers to the exact same towns every day, and I think that this is a major reason why a lot of the stops are either overcrowded or starting to develop new hostels (and why dogs are no longer attacking pilgrims).

To experiment, and get away from his pre-programmed path to Nirvana, our group has started finding beds in towns and villages off the beaten track. So far, so good, but I´ll leave this for another day.

You will face your devils...

Dinner is a particularly fun part of the pilgrim experience. We call it the Game Show, and every time we sit down to a meal there´s a lot of hand-rubbing in anticipation for the frolics ahead.

It works quite simply: you´re given a menu that is completely in Spanish. You have exactly ten seconds to decide what you want, before the camarero/a arrives to take your orders. As you progress along the trip you´ll learn some words - for example, "lomo" can mean anything between pork steaks to friend SPAM. However, it´s considered poor form to keep choosing the same, safe items on the menu. The cut of a real champion lies in picking the most random, yet still digestible dish.

Along the way you have bonus rounds, such as when you ask the waiter to describe what you´re ordering. They will tilt their head to one angle, and say "It´s like cold and white". Everyone at the table has a chance to guess what it is, yelling answers such as "ice-cream!", "yoghurt!" and "winter!". Every incorrect answer causes the waiter´s head to swivel, followed by a drawing in of the breath and an apologetic "noooooo, not like that". Eventually you´ll give up guessing and just order the mystery dish. Though it hasn´t happened yet, such a gamble is always prompted with the phrase "you´ll probably be eating testicles tonight".

Unfortunately, the game show came to an end for me a few nights ago when a new traveller joined our posse. Let´s call him Mr Spain.

Mr Spain is skilled in multiple languages, is very well read, thinks a bit too much about everything, talks more than he thinks and calls me "Hemingway" as an insult. He´s also incredibly helpful and insightful, which means that he´s present at every meal as our convenient "phone a friend".

Mr Spain is representative of why a lot of modern Spaniards walk the camino. Sick of his hospitality job and in the throes of kicking a cocaine addiction, he left his home and arrived in Roncesvalles to begin his journey. For him the camino is a chance to complete something in his life and, hopefully, it will be the first completed achievement of many more.

When I first came across Mr Spain, he was walking with two other men - Mr Italy and Mr Poland. Mr Italy took to the camino like a moving mountain, big and silent, though able to utter "Hola!" in a booming voice. Nothing, it seemed, was able to sway Mr Italy. Opposed to him was the mysterious figure of Mr Poland, equally gigantic but more in the way that a gorilla is as big as a rhinocerous. Guitar always in hand, Mr Poland sang pop songs in a doggerel mix of English, Polish and Spanish while walking.

Our first night together was fun, ending in a local Spanish tavern where everyone decided that I was a capable singer. After scaring the locals away, we called it a night and went to bed. Except for Mr Italy and Mr Poland.

In the days that followed, after Mr Spain had distanced himself from the other two, he told me that he could not walk with Mr Italy or Mr Poland anymore because they were cocaine addicts. Though they tried to quit, they were constantly falling into and out of the habit, and this was not something that Mr Spain wanted to remain connected to.

I took careful note of Mr Poland the next time I saw him, asleep in a refuge. When awake he was proud and warm, usually with a glass of wine in his hand. But, when wrapped up in a blanket, his face shrunk and aged, looking more like Socrates in his hemlock stupor. His teeth, I noticed, were also black - permenantly inked by his addiction.

Several days have passed since we last walked with either Mr Italy or Mr Poland. Though I look forward to seeing them again, Mr Spain is happy that they´re not around.

There is a saying about the Camino, that you will meet your devils on the road to Santiago. Perhaps Mr Italy and Mr Poland were the smiling, charming demons that Mr Spain was to face in his efforts to completely throw off his past. Hopefully they are the worst that he´ll have to confront.

I have seen signs of other pilgrims´ devils. For example, a few nights ago we slept in an old nunnery. No-one slept well at all that night, and everyone had strange, vivid dreams. But one girl awoke during the night, screaming and almost leaping from the top bunk. She said that she´d seen the walls of the room collapsing in on her. For most of the trip she has been worried about every minor detail in her life, whether related to the road or to her home life, and it seemed that it was now stopping her from sleeping.

The only dream I remember having that night was this one where I was put in charge of an international team of detectives, and we had to solve some supernatural crime. Two team members come to mind: one was a grandmother of five, while another was a B- grade, direct-to-video horror movie.

As for my own devils, I´m hoping that I only have to face my blisters and other physical ailments. In case you´re worried, most of these things are sorting themselves out, and the other day I cruised along at the healthy speed of 6km per hour.

Then again, if there is a place to confront your inner demons, it is certainly the mesetas. For the last six days, and probably for the next four to come, I have walked through this cursed landscape. If you can imagine the entire camino as a wrinkled t-shirt, the mesetas is the single point that God decided to iron.

Completely flat, the mesetas spreads out in all directions before dipping below the horizon. There are no trees in sight, except for newly planted eucalyptus that will one day bring someone shade. The landscape forms into a patchwork of green and red - fields of young wheat and baked clay that roll on and on forever. Overhead the sky is blue, though often dominated with fat clouds in procession towards the Atlantic.

That is pretty much the extent of the mesetas. You will walk for hours seeing nothing but the road snaking into the distance. And, if you ever do see a town, it will sit and taunt you upon the horizon for several kilometres until it finally reveals, with a cruel flick of a slight hill, that it was never on your path in the first place.

In short, you have a lot of time to think about things, and this is why a lot of people suffer from "meseta madness". Too much introspection is not good for the soul.

Then again, not many people seem to be out here for their soul.

"It´s like the Camino is becoming more of an endurance race, rather than a spiritual pilgrimage," Scott said on the last morning that I saw him.

Scott, aka John the Scottish Pastor, has been collecting information during his walk about whether or not spirituality is still a major reason for modern pilgrimages. At the surface this doesn´t seem to be the case at all.

There are now hundreds and thousands of pilgrims walking to Santiago every year, and in these warmer months you will often find yourself in the middle of a race for beds. People will wake up as early as 4am to rush ahead 30km to the next bed. Curses upon anyone caught walking beyond 4pm, because you will more than likely arrive in a village to find it completely filled and an aggravating 8km trek ahead of you to the next potential shelter.

As Mr Poland put it, "this is not a pilgrimage, this is a box that you tick off: you go from bed to bed, eat the pilgrim meal, take photos of the cathedral, collect your stamp and then get your little compostela. This is not how it should be done".

I agree with this view, that the majority of people here are not pilgrims, and perhaps this is another devil that I must face.

Yesterday, exhausted from another stretch on the endless meseta, I was relaxing in a bar in a town dropped from a spaghetti western. Whenever I see a new pilgrim, I´ll call them over to my table, as it´s the best place to meet new people. One of the new faces drinking beside me was a woman by the name of Laurie. She had a relaxing, caramel-rich voice pumped directly from California, and a smile that reminded me of hippies in summer. Her entire camino was paid for by a big food magazine because she was going to write an article about how food is an essential part of the pilgrimage.

One topic led to another and eventually the gripe about the camino being a race fell upon the table. Laurie beamed flower power right at me and said:

"Maybe they´re looking at you and thinking the same thing - that you´re not doing the camino the way it should be done."

Damn these hippies and their "eveybody wins" attitude; but she was right, and today I´ve walked without a thought of those stamp-collectors and their need to get ahead. And tomorrow, perhaps, I might learn what a pilgrim actually is. Or that there isn´t such a thing as a pilgrim at all.

I think it´s time to go and play with a menu, because this introspection thing will get me nowhere faster than my battered feet.

An Ode to Naz

We met upon a mountain top, buffeted by rain and held down by overweight backpacks. At first I only knew of him as the Canadian, and we hobbled together, watching as speedier, less burdened folk passed us. Then, strangely, I also had a burst of energy and left my new friend behind in the mist.

This was Naz, an amazing companion for my first two weeks of this walk towards Santiago. Slow, like a mule and destroyed by blisters and tendonitis, Naz was still always able to laugh the loudest and crack the funniest camino-related jokes.

I say "was", because he is gone now. But more on that later.

An ex-rugby player, born in Baghdad and raised in Toronto, Naz found it easy to make friends on his travels. Easily the slowest of our cohort, his arrival would be anticipated each night, and announced with a cheer. As a reward for our patience, Naz told us stories of his day, about how he had developed a subsequent generation of blisters, and of the new friends he´d made.

Indeed, everyone on the camino knew Naz. On the few times that I walked with him, we´d find ourselves passing a couple who´d enquire about the state of his feet. The extent of his blistering had become legend.

Together, Naz and I first discovered the joys of the Spanish postal service, sitting on the floor of the Pamplona post office hastily assembling boxes and stuffing them with excess baggage. Our efforts attracted a small crowd of amused Spaniards, taking time out from their duties to watch Naz rip his box.

There was a period when Naz, Mary and myself were bound together for several days, separated from our fleet-footed companions by the urge to drink beer at 10am. This story has already been told, but it was also the start of a series of events that would grow to haunt all of us over the next few days.

Forced to sleep in Redecillo del Camino, a small town outside of Santo Domingo de Calzada, we settled into the room with the infamous Portugeuse snorer. The next morning, aside from complaining about that man´s vicious night horn, Naz swore loudly about the hygiene practices of the man who´d slept beside him.

"His feet were growing trees...I swear, that smell will haunt me for the rest of my life!" he yelled, pointing at the empty bed beside his.

Despite sleeping on the bunk above Naz, I hadn´t smelled a thing. That was the last I thought about the issue, as I busily collected my socks from where they´d fallen off my bed and onto the ground.

The next night, in Tosantos, we all slept in the creepiest refugio that I´ve come across so far. The entire building appeared to have developed organically, with irregular wooden beams and bulging walls. Everyone slept on gym mats on the ground.

Before dinner we were asked to sing by the hospitalero (a volunteer member of some religious sect), who then shouted at us because we started eating before he´d had a chance to say grace. Following dinner, we were led into a strange chapel at the top of the house, where we read out prayers, listened to him sing strange songs, and then read out personal thoughts left behind by other pilgrims. This in particular didn´t seem right.

Naz just didn´t seem right after that, because the next morning he was extremely agitated. Finally, after debating within himself, he pointed at my socks and said, "Dude, it´s your socks. It wasn´t that man´s feet at all...your socks are filthy!"

Another pilgrim had overheard, and agreed that my socks were more than a little ripe. Flashing back to Redecillo del Camino, I remembered that my socks had fallen on the ground - behind Naz´s pillow. The poor man had been haunted by the offspring of my own sweat-socked soles.

I apologised and promised that I´d wash my socks at the next place we stopped at. Unfortunately that place was a hotel that for some reason didn´t believing in a laundry service. I shared a room with my traveling companions, and my socks were quarantined in a cupboard. When we opened those grim doors the next day, a stench so vile poured into the room, sending Naz running out of the room. I was not allowed to put on my shoes and socks until everyone else had cleared the area.

Finally, in the next hotel, we were able to find a laundry service to deal with my socks. For some reason this serivce took over twelve hours to be concluded. Kept in suspense like this, we found our imaginations drawn to horrific scenes of laundry ladies dead, the fatal socks clutched in their stiff hands. Naz warned me that the laundry would probably be returned along with a furious spouse, bent on killing the owner of "el socko".

As chilling as the episode of my socks may be, the final straw for Naz came yesterday.

Tormented by blisters and realising day after day that he was not going to be able to complete the camino before having to return to work, Naz bravely limped along with us for 30km. We stopped for a break from the hot, maddening boredom of the meseta flats in this beautiful little grove. At its heart lay a bubbling spring which, according to legends, would cure the ills of any feet placed into the pool at the base of the spring.

When Naz took a look at dark, algae-rich waters, he refused to dunk his feet in. Though the rest of us did, I think this was a wise move on his part. His poor, abused feet were filled with gaping sores, blisters within blisters and decaying skin. The only treatment he gave to his feet at that stop was to douse them with cringe-inducing Betadine.

Finally, we arrived last night at the town of Hontanas, which was completely full of pilgrims. Unable to push on for another 10km to the next potential bed, we bargained with the hospitalero. Finally, though appearing very angry about this, he led us to the only space available in the town: his garage. In total, seven of us shared this room.

After dinner, we crammed into the tiny space. There were only two foam mattresses available, so we turned them horizontally and each enough space to elevate our upper torso from the freezing cold concrete. It was almost impossible to sleep though, because we could do nothing more than giggle at the absurdity of our situation.

Naz´s grim luck struck again, however.

The only way out of the garage was to open the electric doors, which created a gun-rattling roar. Not only would this wake up anyone else sleeping in the garage, but it also set the home-owners into a frenzy and was always echoed by barking dogs.

This would´ve been easy to ignore except for the fact that Naz contracted a mild case of food poisoning. At first he tried to keep the garage door ajar, allowing him to slip out in an emergency, but the helpful hospitalero closed it early on in the evening, so that we wouldn´t freeze.

Finally, after two hours of containing a boiling fury within himself, Naz yelled sorry, burst open the doors, and escaped into the night. This was the last we saw of him until 6am.

Bedraggled, by strangely still laughing, Naz described the night that "finally destroyed me". Locked out of the actual refugio, Naz was forced to find a suitable toilet amidst the fields that surrounded Hontanas. Repeatedly. While stumbling on his rotten feet.

Driven to the brink of exhaustion and freezing, he finally collapsed onto a bench in front of the albergue and wrapped himself in his sleeping bag. His hobo sleep did not last however, and he was woken up by a curious German Shepherd, licking his face.

Unable to walk, internally tormented, Naz bid farewell to us this morning and set out for Burgos. Here he found a doctor who confirmed his suspicions - we was not going to finish the Camino. The last I heard, a much happier Naz was on his way to spend a week in Barcelona.

Our dwindling number set off, much sadder for having lost our funniest traveling companion, and made our way into the grey morning light.

Then, 6km away from our next destination, I felt a sinister gong vibrate loudly in my guts. I remember little of that last hour or so, except for my extreme concentration as I bunny-hopped my way along to salvation.

At least I hadn´t got it the night before.

Here´s to you Naz, good luck with the rest of your holiday, and safe travels back to Toronto! It´s been an absolute pleasure walking with you, and all your funny mishaps and observations.

Signs and Wanders

It is called the Santiago Shuffle.

This is by far the easiest way to determine a pilgrim, just in case you ever happen to be hanging out in one of the many towns, villages or cities along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. The most important thing is that you seem to move only your shins, your knees having completely seized up. And you only carry weight on the inner edge of each foot, as every other spare inch has been converted into raw, fluid-filled blister goodness. Finally, it is important that you swing your arms as if you´re trying to press a button in front of you, while grimacing with each step.

The end result is that you look like one of Michael Jackson´s background dancers.

One of my walking partners, Scott, coined this term. For some reason, I keep calling him John (despite the fact that he´s Scottish, which is the world´s easiest mnemonic). But, let´s face it, I spend more time thinking about his profession rather than his name. You see, Scott is a priest, who midway through his holy career actually threw it all in to become a London detective (he once interviewed a man who´d had his nose bitten off and, presumably, swallowed...insert a pun about a hard-nosed crim here). Years from now I´ll write an award-winning TV series called "Cassock Closed" about a priest-cum-detective. At the end of every episode, when Chief Inspector Father McGinty gets the bad guy, he´ll stare straight into the camera and say "I´ll throw the good book at ye".

Scott is just one example of the posse of amazing folk I´ve gathered (or have gathered me, depending on your perspective) along the road to Santiago. Joining him is Mary, the Irish engineer who loves a good fart joke and a beer (she introduced me to the term "crop dusting", which is when you walk through a crowd of people, silently farting and spreading the smell without any concern of being identified), Abigail, the super organised lawyer from England and Naz, the wise-cracking Iraqi-Canadian photographer (I told him that his company motto should be "Get shot by an Iraqi today").

Occasionally others will join us. There are Ilke and Judith, two German girls who provide us with a lot of fun when their knees are up to our walking pace; Peter, the retired doctor who, at age 60, is able to outrun us all and is now, by all our estimations, currently relaxing in Santiago. There is Andreas, the flatulent Milanese boy who started walking in Converse sneakers and, after a failed attempt to teach him a German card game (that we ourselves couldn´t understand the rules of), became immortalised by his frustrated intonation of my name - "JEEEEEEEMEEEEEEEEE".

Finally there is Carlos. Carlos is the human embodiment of how the Camino should be walked.

Born in Uruguay, raised in Barcelona, Carlos seems to appear within our reach every few days. He is always happy, and greets us with a jubilant, "Mi Amigos, que tal?" Carlos, it seems, has tapped into the important elements of the Camino: take your time, make as many friends as possible and, most important of all, SIESTA.

I have come across Carlos sitting under a tree, smoking a joint and drinking a beer. He has once slept in a town square, only to be woken up by children and their concerned parents. Regardless, he is always smiling and refreshed.

Faced with such a persuasive front, a group of us decided to spend a day walking the "Carlos way". Myself, Naz and Mary hopped off the road at about 10am to drink "grande cervezas". Tres. By the end of it, we were grinning and laughing our way along St James´road, until we finally decided to siesta beneath a tree.

Actually, it was a ditch beside a tree, next to some loud water pump and a polluted stream.

When we finally arrived in Santo Domingo, we were ecstatic, cheering on the spirit of Carlos and his wacky ways. But, unfortunately, we learnt too late that all of the beds had been taken in Santo Domingo. This meant that we were faced with the gruelling seven km trek to the next town, which may have also already have booked out.

We took a taxi.

The albergue (this is camino-speak for the cheaply run hostels that are provided to pilgrims on the path) we stayed in was indicative of the overall absurdity of my current life.

Firstly, before going to bed, Mary, Naz and I, bonded by sitting on the floor puncturing our pregnant blisters. Once they were attended to, I hopped into my bed, drawing my blanket up to my chin.

I promptly pushed it back down. It stunk of dog, wet dog in fact, and while sleeping with a dog´s blanket might be considered a little unpleasant, the thought turned far more sour when it combined with the additional realisation that no dog would have actually come into contact with said blanket. I could only imagine the kind of sick, intestinal activity that some poor pilgrim had to endure to produce such a strong, canine odour.

So, there I was, perched upon a top bunk, with only five centimetres on either side separating me from sleep and a five foot plunge, surrounded by dog, and doing my best to ignore the fact that my knees and ankles were swollen, and that my feet were filled with fluid-releasing thread.

This alone would possibly turn away even the bravest of adventurers. But, let us introduce into the mix an obese Portuguese man who, thanks to the wonders of his respirtory system, managed to produce a symphony of nasal concertos throughout the night. In fact, between 4am and somewhere short of 5:30, I tried my best to catalogue every nuance of his sinus symphony.

At some points I think he died - he literally stopped breathing, and I could hear the flesh equivalent of a cork stopper lodge in somewhere around his epiglottis. For a second or two there´d be silence, until suddenly that spark of stubborn life would kick through and he´d rip in a lungful of air with the most efficient of sail-flapping gusts, sucking phlegm and drying saliva down into his gullet.

He was not alone with his snoring, but he was by far the most interesting specimen.

However, what is most absurd, most laughable about this whole ordeal, is that I´m still laughing about it. I wake up each morning, groaning at my calcified legs, and trot along on ruined feet for another 20 or so kilometres until I get the pleasure of flopping into my next dubious bed.

I think this is the true beauty of the Camino. Stuff Shirley Maclaine, who dreamed that she was a hermaphordite in Atlantis, and Paulo Coelho, who beat a dog up because he thought it was a sorceror - the insanity of the Camino comes from the bloody-mindedness one experiences when walking for the sake of it.

All we do, day in day out, is hobble, keeping our eyes open for those glorious signs. Sometimes they´re a yellow arrow, haphazardly sprayed against a wall, or a beautiful, tax-payer sculpture of a sea scallop, marking the way forward. It makes you feel like a rat in a cage, pushing the button and waiting for the pellet, but gosh is it rewarding in its own, sick way.

I tell you what, if there was any real sense to any of this, I´d have packed up and gone straight to Barcelona, sitting on a beach somewhere with Carlos. But for now, I´m quite happy to do the shuffle again, with my Frankenstein feet, gammy knees and sleep deprivation.