“Ok, I’m going to go get lost now.”

Greetings from Fez, the land of countless, endless mazes.  I arrived here yesterday afternoon after a bumpy 5 hour bus ride from Chefchaouen.  The highlight of the trip was seeing 3 sheep being stowed in the cargo area below the bus.  And it was just normal for everyone.  The sheep just kind of stood there waiting for the door to be shut.   But then I give them my walking stick to load on the bus and they bust out laughing and showing it to everyone.  Strange.

I met an Italian on the bus ride, Mateo, although he seems more like a Giovanni to me.  He just finished his studies in Geology and is traveling through Morocco for a month while he decides what to do next.  We walked around Fez for a couple of hours upon arriving, looking for a hotel/pension/whatever.  We must have seen 10 different places and none of them really stood out.  Most of them are families giving up their living room for you to sleep in.  It sounds romantic and every time someone tells me a story about a family they stayed with I think I need to do that.  But then I walk into one of these places and I think I’m not really feeling it.  Maybe sometime.

And of course the last place we went to was by far the best. Hotel Cascade where I met Hussein the self-proclaimed rapper who works at the hotel. He doesn’t speak much English but he likes to try to rap while he waves his hands in front of him, and he ends all his lines with ‘Now go away….yeah’.  I am telling you he is a talent and needs to be signed immediately.  He really liked my yellow Camino de Santiago arrow I had pinned on my shirt and asked if he could have it.  Of course. Anything for Hussein.  He put it on right away and then broke into an impromptu rap session.  Hands always waving. 

About Hotel Cascade…we’ve got an open air roof top terrace and we’re right at one of the big entrances into the medina (the old city).  In the morning you see all the merchants carting in their goods in wheelbarrows, or on bicycles with a big cart in front, or my favorite, the mule.  I feel terrible for these animals as they just get so much stuff loaded on their backs. This one mule seemed to be the trash mule as he just walked around and people threw their trash over him and into a big plastic tub.

Once we got settled in, we hung out on the terrace for a bit with some other travelers and then Giovanni stood up and said ‘Ok, I’m going to go get lost now.  Do you want to join me?”  Ten minutes later I had no clue where I was.  It is impossible to not get lost here. No map can help. You just walk and hope you eventually see something you recognize which is not too often.  You just walk and try to take in what you can as you scan the shops and at the same time try to keep clear of the oncoming mule with his wide load and while you’re trying to shake that kid off your leg who wants to be your guide through town you’re telling the shady looking guy who talks in a hushed voice that for the last time you do not want to buy any ‘good stuff’.  It’s amazing. And you can tell that it’s always been just like this here in the Medina. 

‘Now go away…yeah’.

Marhaba min Al Magreb

Hello from Morocco, which is what the title of this post means.  I arrived in Tangiers yesterday, taking a boat in from Algericas in southern Spain.  I spent most of the day walking all over town trying to help my friend John (British bloke I met on the boat) withdraw some money.  It was quite the adventure and I highly recommend it as a way to see a great deal of a city in under a day.  Find a guy that is completely lost and unable to dial home from his mobile phone and whose bank card doesn’t work.  I saw a couple of places where they filmed The Bourne Ultimatum on sight including the cafe where the American girl who is now on Bourne’s side is sitting when her cell phone rings.  It’s right before the big explosion.  If you need more details than that I’d suggest watching the film.

I only spent one day there but I really liked the vibe in Tangiers.  You can feel the life there, if that makes any sense.  People all around, moving, talking, trying to earn a dollar even if it means begging or walking with you for 10 minutes and then asking you for money just because.  My horoscope the other day said I would be approached with an excellent business opportunity, which I got pretty psyched about.  Then yesterday this guy Mohammed (everyone here is named Mohammed) tried to sell me hash but I told him I didn’t smoke.  Then he tells me to buy 1 kilogram of it anyway because I can sell it and make ‘good business’.  Ha!  I am hoping that was not the opportunity that had been predicted for me.

In the evening we sat at a small cafe sipping Moroccan mint tea, eathing shawermas and watching Manchester United beat Chelsea (yeah!) in penalty kicks.  It seems like the entire town was watching the game as later in the evening everyone who spoke to us was talking about the match.

Then today I caught a bus out of town and into the mountains to a small village called Chefchaon.  Where I was reserving the ticket, I spoke to this travel agent who spoke great English and insisted I speak Arabic, or at least try to.  I’m gaining a bit more confidence by the hour with my Arabic, and it helps that I understand French since most people here speak that as well.  I’ve found it helpful to tell people I speak no Arabic so their expectations are extremely low.  Then it can only go up from there. 

I still have my walking stick and people have been amazed by it.  Most people just laugh or give me a puzzled look, several people have called me Moses and one guy told me to throw it away because he said people will think i am crazy.  He was completely serious.  I love it!  I imagine I will pitch it as soon as it becomes impossibe to travel with it but until that happens, why not bring it along for the ride?

Three days ago I had never heard of Chefchaon and now I’m here.  Kind of cool.  I’ve met a few Americans and Canadians who have already been here a few days and they say they love it.  A lot of hiking in the mountains and then in the village you get lost walking through the narrow, windy streets of the souk (market) where all the walls and doors are painted blue and you can buy virtually anything, from bras and underwear to apricots to rugs.  And of course if you need some of the harder stuff, you can talk to my man Mohammed in Tangiers.  It could be ‘good business’.

On the move

Greetings from Malaga, a city in the Andalucian region in southern Spain.  We had a enjoyable last night in Santiago yesterday as I, Anton, Leandra and Julianna (two sisters from Brazil) ordered in Pizza Hut pizza, drank wine and just hung out in the hotel.  Anton flew back to Barcelona where he was going to work this afternoon (ugh) and Leandra and Julianna were going to rent a car and drive to Finisterre then down to Portugal.  I flew out around midday and arrived into Malaga around 7 pm and decided to spend a night here and check out the town.  It´s an interesting blend of really old with modern shopping plazas and shady graffiti covered streets.  I went looking for a hookah bar but it was closed by the time I got there around 11 p.m.  I plan to check out the Picasso musuem tomorrow (he was born here) and then walk up to the fortress before leaving town.   Then I hope to take a bus to Algericas from where I will then take a boat ride about 30 minutes to Tangiers.  I spoke to some Moroccans here as I was enjoying some kebab and they were telling me how much I was going to enjoy it.  They were also kind of drunk so we´ll see if they were telling the truth

I am still carrying my walking stick with me as I wasn´t able to send it home.  So now I get all sorts of interesting looks from people as I walk through town.  I feel like Moses coming to part the Red Sea.  It was quite humorous coming off the conveyor belt in the airport as everyone is picking up suitcases and I collect this dry piece of wood.  This man came up to me laughing and we chatted about the stick and the Camino which he wants to do one day.

So hasta la huega for now and the next time I write it will be from Morocco, inshallah.

Camino Completo

I arrived to Santiago two days ago on Saturday, May 17th. I walked into town with my friend Anton (from Barcelona) who I walked with for much of the last portion of the Camino. We walked to the Cathedral and when we got there, we just stood there for a while and took it all in. We had arrived after one month and almost 800 km (500 miles) and countless pains and aches and glasses of wine and cafes con leche with chocolate croissantes for breakfast. You can eat anything you want on the Camino and you´ll still lose weight. You´re walking that much.

It´s a strange feeling to be done. I find myself still looking for yellow arrows to show me the way. And more than once I´ve reached for my walking stick as I was leaving a restaurant only to remember that it´s resting in my hotel room. It´s a bittersweet ending I guess. Walking the Camino was the best thing I ever did and it was exactly what I needed to do right now, but I didn´t want it to end. I want to keep walking and talking to people about life and what we´ve thought about and learned on the Camino. I became very accustomed to the simple lifestyle of walking 10 hours a day and being thrilled when I could take a hot shower.

The first day after I was done I found it really strange to be in a city with everyday life happening. I found myself rejecting all of it. I found it hard to relate to other non-pilgrims when I´d be talking to them. People wearing clean clothes, traveling as part of an organized tour group, shops selling all sorts of goods you just don´t see or need during the Camino. Excess. That´s the best way to describe how all of it seemed to me. Most everything around was not needed. I had become used to the simple villages with one restaurant, one bar and open land for raising farm animals. I found it far more interesting to watch a sheep chew grass endlessly than talking to these tourbus ´pilgrims´ staying in their fancy hotels wearing scarves with the word ´peregrino´printed on it. Ugh. Sounds a bit harsh I know but it´s the truth. And sometimes the truth hurts. Not as much as jumping on a bicycle with no seat, but it hurts.

One thing I learned early in the Camino is that material things weigh me down and I was much lighter both physically and mentally when I shed all that weight in Burgos and sent it along. Then today I picked up the THREE packages I had sent to the post office during the Camino and I can´t believe how much crap I had! And now I´m going to take that crap and send it back to the U.S. So effectively I brought 15kg (30+ pounds) of stuff to Spain just to mail it from one city to the next and then to the U.S. That is amazing.

It´s been over a month since I´ve been in a car, bus, train or been moved in anyway besides my own two feet. Kind of strange. It´s also been a month since I´ve put any hair product in my hair. Just some random factoids I thought I´d share.

There´s a lot more I want to write about but I´m still digesting everything.  To put it in technology terms, since everyone loves a good technology metaphor, I´ve collected a lot of data and now I need to process all of it.

And now that it´s over, I need to find my own yellow arrows to follow. I had originally planned to go to Barcelona after the Camino but one day as I was walking I got the idea to go to Morocco and go down to the Sahara desert which I´ve always wanted to do. So now, those are my next steps. I booked a ticket to Malaga in the south of Spain for tomorrow afternoon, and then I´ll find a way to get to Tangiers, inshallah, where I look forward to partaking in a fine hookah and continuing on my own Camino.

Leon in Leon

Greetings from, you guessed it, Leon.  As some of you know my middle name is Leon so it was pretty neat to celebrate my 5-bit birthday over here.   And I spoiled myself with a luxurious 4 star hotel, the Alfonso V where they surprised me with a chilled bottle of champagne with a Happy Birthday card.  Very cool gesture.  And I bought a bright red tshirt with LEON on the front to wear out last night for the birthday celebration. 

I have been walking solo the past few days and trailed off of my original group, both because I physically needed to slow down but more importantly because I didn´t feel like I was walking at my own pace.  I had been making plans at the outset of each day as to where I was going to have lunch, rest for the night and countless other things.  Instead I have started not planning beyond the next hour or so and just seeing how I feel before deciding whether to move on to the next town, or staying put or walking into an open field and just sitting down for a while and enjoying the surroundings.  I finally, finally feel like I am walking my own Camino now.  It´s yet another lesson from the Camino, one which I have found everyone on this trip has encountered.  You need to figure out your own pace, figure out what you want to do, where you want to go, and then whoever you see there you´ll see.  No need to make concrete plans at the start of each day as to where you´ll meet up and stay etc.  We each take our own paths and when they cross with someone else´s, great.  And if not, then maybe next time.  And it´s way more exciting to run into someone by accident who you weren´t expecting to see.

Because of this newfound approach to traveling I had dropped off completely with the original group I started off with.  But I´ve met some great people recently who had started the Camino a couple days after me.  And then last night as I was walking to the cathderal in Leon, I spotted Dave and Ernie (Bert and Ernie) sitting outside at a bar.  I joined them for a beer and gradually over the next couple of hours people I had seen throughout the trip started walking by and before you know it, we had a solid group of 15 people going out to celebrate my birthday.  Completely unplanned and impromptu and we had a great night.  Turns out this other guy in our group, Babas, a Hungarian, has the exact same birthday as me, same day and year.  Very neat.

I hadn´t posted in a while because I´ve chosen to stay in smaller, more remote villages along the way which usually means you´re not going to find modern facilities like the internet.  But there´s no shortage of mules or roosters if that´s what you´re looking for.  I had always passed through these villages and wondered why anyone would want to stay in a place that had two mules, one bar and one restaurant and that´s it.  Then after talking to my friend Jacob about it at dinner, he told me he prefers these places way more because they´re so much more intimate.  And it´s true.  One place I stayed in a few nights ago, Calzada de Coto was amazing.  The town is 300 people and the albergue has no one working there!  So it was me and three other guys, Anton, Jim and Manel running the whole show.  And the best part was when Jim started snoring, Anton and I grabbed our sleeping bags and pillows and went to the other room.  You can never do that in a regular albergue.

Speaking of which, in Fromista, the town I stayed in the night before, the albergue got so packed that I could only get a mattress on the floor right near the bathrooms.  Great.  This means people would be stepping around me all night long.  So I, along with a couple of Swedish girls Emma and Anja, took our mattresses outside and we spent a night under the stars.  I had been wanting to spend one night outdoors on this trip and I got it.  And of course I still didn´t have a sleeping bag because I shipped it off to Santiago.  BUT my Brazilian friend Rachel lent me this space-grade NASA-certified aluminum foil that you wrap around your body and that keeps you super warm.  And it worked amazingly well.  Within minutes I was warm and completely wrapped in shiny foil.  I felt like I was going to be slid into an oven at any moment.  Emma commented that I looked like a falafel.  Great.  Now however I do have a semblance of a sleeping bag as my German friend Ankst lent me the liner sheet from his sleeping bag which has been working great.

Actually a falafel would be really good right now.  I´ve been making lists in my head of all the foods I´m going to eat when I get back and so far I´ve got Indian, Thai, a steak dinner and sushi.  The food has been good here but you can only eat pasta and fish so many times.

And finally, thank you everyone for the birthday wishes.  I love being continually reminded that I am now 32  

A lighter load

Greetings from Castrojeriz, a little village that exists solely due to pilgrims passing through and seems to be in a constant siesta.  My type of village.  I walked just 10 km today as I wanted to take it easy after a pretty grueling 32 km day yesterday.  Yesterday was the first day starting across the Meseta and so far I’ve loved it.  It is quiet and solitary and at one point I couldn´t see another person in any direction I looked in.  That doesn´t happen to often no matter where you are.  The clouds were constantly moving so you’d be in the sun for a few minutes and then you’d see the shadows rolling in up ahead.  And the reason it is so quiet is that so many people completely skip it and decide to take a bus or train from Burgos to Leon because they’ve heard it is so boring.  Better for me.  Actually there is a part in the middle that is supposedly hard to walk in, man made hard gravel road or some sort of surface like that.  Maybe I’ll bring out the rollerblades for that.  That’s about the only thing it feels like I didn’t pack on this trip.

Speaking of which, I took a big load off my shoulders in Burgos.  My backpack I had brought was just too big and heavy and I had had enough of lugging it and the extra weight around.  So i shipped it and the sleeping bag and some clothes off to Santiago.  That is now the third time I’ve gone to the Correos (post office) to shed some weight.  And instead I bought a small backpack and I decided to go with no sleeping bag.  That may be a questionable move as just last night the albergue I stayed in not only didn’t offer blankets, and not only did they not have heating in the rooms, but it was the coldest night of the trip so far.  I put on all my clothes and, get this, slipped on an industrial garbage bag around my legs to keep the warmth in.  Every time I would move in bed you would hear this rustling sound and people were literally cracking up.  I am now ‘that guy’ that people look at to feel better about themselves 

Ok it is now bed time.  The sun is setting, the church bell is ringing 9 o’clock and I need to bring my clothes in from the clothesline outside.

Bonas noces.