We saw a fox! What an auspicious start to our walk. Let me set the scene: it was 5:30 in the morning, dark in the streets of a far London suburb, and we were pulling a roller bag on our way to Gatwick Airport. All was quiet when we spied the little guy crossing the street ahead of us – on the hunt for something delicious to eat…or at least thats what I would be doing if I was him at that hour. He had the run of the town, in the middle of densely packed row houses as far as the eye could see. What a guy.
We hopped back on the Picadilly line, then switched to the Victoria line, then got tickets on the Gatwick Express train. In all this time I was without coffee. Without the essential primer of the day. This would be a trip of testing my current limits, and it turned out that I could ride the sunrise for an hour and a half without the stuff. I made it. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Whew.
We joined the hundreds of others waiting for a morning flight from the airport and eventually looked at the display screens with confusion. A gate hadn’t been assigned for the 9:40am flight, and the digital display told us it would be updated at 9:55am. Hmmm, something was off, so we joined a few others at an empty information booth to ask WTF? Soon it became apparent that we were all there for the same reason. A Camino symbol on one, new trainers on another (that’s British speak for trail shoes), and the confusion of a Spanish speaking grandma gave it away. Finally Margo and I found a gate run by the small Spanish airline so we could ask about it. Delayed.
Ahhh. It was already going to be a tight connection from the Santiago airport to the bus station to catch the 1:55 ride to Farrol and the start of the trail. But now? We’d most likely not get a bus until the evening. But this was our first lesson of the trip: you have to go with the flow. Now Margo had never hiked or walked a trail like the Camino, but she took the delay like a champ and we settled in the hard plastic terminal seats to wait until 9:55.
The gate was announced on time, this time, and we joined the queue of obvious Camino goers and Spanish nationals.
The flight shot us an hour forward in time, one more hour put me 11 hours ahead of home in Oregon, so I was quite literally on the other side of the planet from the cancer center, and that was just fine with me.
The plane touched down in sunny Santiago, we gathered our luggage, pulled out some Euros from an ATM, and got in line for the city bus. 45 minutes later we arrived at the regional bus station and found the desired ride wouldn’t leave until almost 6pm.
We faffed about, sitting at the cafe for a bit, and then at a park across the street. When we finally got in another line for our final ride of the day, the bus was late. The bus driver finally appeared in a huff, shouting fast Spanish at the bewildered crowd. There were obviously more people than seats, but we were near the front and got on, not entirely sure we were going the right place. You see, I have almost no Spanish, and despite repeated declarations that I really wanted to learn, had put in no effort to do so. Margo had much more than me, but not enough to understand exactly what was going on. We got on anyway. Trips like this are not about the destination (we were already at our destination after all!), it was what happend in between that made a journey an adventure.
Turned out we were going to the right place, and an hour and a half later, the bus pulled in to a dark station in Ferrol on the Northwestern coast of Spain.
We walked the roller bag a mile to our hotel on the uneven cobblestones, and finally collapsed in our room. But not so fast! We had planned to walk to the start a mere mile to the pier, pick up our pilgrim passport, and get some dinner. Yes, we were exhausted. Yes, it was dark and the streets were mostly empty. And yes we’re were starving and hadn’t had a proper meal all day, but if we skipped this part of the plan our whole morning would be shot and we had miles to make.
Everything worked out. We arrived to get our passports from a bar near the start just as they were closing, took some silly pictures, and found a lone cafe open late on a Sunday night for dinner.
By the time we rolled into bed our travel day to Ferrol had taken us both longer than our days from the western US to London, but we were here, and that was a huge accomplishment.
