Friday, April 5, 2013

El Camino in Cantabria

Yes, my title is in Spanglish. In my defense, so are many things in Spain thanks to globalization.

This past weekend, I went with a couple girls from my classes to the northern coast of Spain in the region of Cantabria. This trip was quite different than the others I've been on for several reasons. One, we rented a car instead of public transportation. Two, we didn't step inside a city once after leaving Pamplona. Three, well, I think you can just see from reading the rest of the post.

Upon reflection, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into when I agreed to go on the trip. When they first told me about it, they said we were going to Santander, which is a city, and going to a cathedral. Well, we did go to a church and we were close to Santander. In reality, we went to several different pueblitos (villages) and didn't go to Santander at all. Which turned out just fine.

To begin, I'll tell you a little bit about who I went with. I traveled with three other girls--all American. Two of them, Claire and Mary Ellen, are in my Spanish classes and are just here either for the year or the semester. The other girl, Libby, is a full-time masters student here and permanently lives here. I met Libby at an event called "Theology on Tap" which is a semi-regular meeting to talk with priests about various theological issues. It was kind of funny, because none of us are the same age (28, 26, 23, and 20) yet we had a ton of fun. I'm getting into the years where I have friends who are of varying ages than me.

Before starting the trip, Libby sent out an outline of the plan. You see, the other three had kind of planned the trip and I was invited at the last minute. I was just along for the ride. We were going to do a part of the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James) and then go see this church that's pretty famous in the Catholic world. Libby had done the Camino de Santiago a few years ago and so she took us to her favorite part.

Santiago, or James, is credited with Christianizing the Iberian Peninsula. His Camino (walk) is something pilgrims (peregrinos) have done for centuries. They traditionally began from their houses and walked the hundreds of kilometers it takes to get to Santiago, which is in the Northwest of Spain. Now there are numerous routes you can take. The most common is the Camino Frances, which begins in France and goes to Santiago. We did a part of the Camino del Norte which is the route that goes along the northern coast of Spain.

We all met up in Mary Ellen's apartment Saturday morning to head out. Her apartment is conveniently located right next a car rental place so all we had to do was get in the car that they had parked outside of her apartment. It was this rather small VW, but we all fit in there comfortably. The standard car in Spain is manual/stick-shift. Luckily, Claire knew how to drive a stick so we were good on that account.

The fun thing about a car is that you have so much more freedom. We were able to listen to whatever music we wanted, stop when we wanted, and have our own schedule. Mary Ellen and Claire burned us a couple CD's to listen to, which was fun. If we hadn't had a car, we wouldn't have been able to randomly stop and watch a calf being born (more on that later).

The other three girls are good Catholics and once we were on the "autovia" or interstate, they did a rosary meditation. I had never seen that before and it taught me more about the Catholic faith. I now know how the "Hail Mary"s work and just more about the structure. It's been fascinating. The closest thing I know to compare the rosary meditation is to that scene in Gone With The Wind where the O'Haras are praying and Scarlett has that epiphany about Ashley. Which isn't probably the best comparison.

When arrived in Cantabria, we stopped in a little town called Galizano. We went to a little church/cathedral and looked around. The girls sang a few Catholic hymns and we did a praise song that I would know.

After that, we went to a cafe, got some coffee, regrouped, and then went to the car to get our stuff. Then we set off. We followed the Camino to the coastline and saw some of the most gorgeous scenery I've seen in my life. I think Cantabria is one of my new favorite places.

We spent most of the day by the ocean. We found a nice place on the rocks to eat our lunch. Then we climbed up this steepish cliff to get back out--there was really thick grass to hold onto so the climb wasn't hard--and then walked around some more.

We reached another part with a glorious view and stayed there to relax for a bit. I had brought my Kindle so I read a little bit (I was working on reading The Host in Spanish because of the movie). After a while, it was starting to be the time to head over to the albergue where we would be staying. So we walked back to Galizano, got in the car and drove to the little pueblito a couple kilometers over. The reason we didn't walk is because the only way to get there is to walk along a narrow, mountainous highway and we didn't want to do that.

Once we arrived in Guemes, the other publeo, we parked the car behind another church and then walked over to the albergue. Libby thought it wouldn't look great if we pulled up in a car to an albergue specifically for peregrinos. This was an albergue donativo, meaning that if we showed our peregrino credentials we could stay there for free/by donation.

The albergue was surprisingly nice and all the workers were extremely friendly. Once more people arrived, we were given a tour by the priest who runs it and he told us the history behind the place. Then we had a very nice, Spanish dinner. It was a great experience and we met really interesting people.

On Sunday, we left the albergue to head to Garabandel, the church that the other girls wanted to go to in the first place. It's a big Catholic attraction because there have been "holy apparitions," or visions there. The town of Garabandel was so quaint and adorable. It kind of reminded me of the "little town" from Beauty and the Beast that Belle lives in at the beginning of the movie. Except people say "Hola!" instead of "Bonjour!" We went to a Palm Sunday service there. My only problem with it was that it was absolutely freezing the whole service. You know something isn't quite right when you can see your breath inside a building.

On a side note, on our way to Garabandel, Claire spotted what looked like a cow giving birth. She pulled over the car and went over to check it out. Mary Ellen and I stayed on the other side of the road and watched Claire trying to get pictures with her iPad and Libby watching a little ways away. When the ranchers got the cow inside, we decided we better head back, but then one of the ranchers stuck his head out and hollered at us to see if we wanted to come watch. So we ran over there and watched that cow birth a calf. I can't say that I'd seen that before. It was kind of scary to watch because the baby was born in the wrong direction (feet first), so they had to pull the calf out.

Anyway, after the service, we talked with some Spanish people that were there and we ended up going to lunch with them. That was a lot of fun. I always love meeting Spanish people and getting to speak Spanish. After all, that's a reason why I came to Spain!

Around 4-ish, it was time for us to go. Yes, that was when we finished lunch, the Spain schedule after all. It ended up being a 6 hour car ride back to Pamplona, so it was good we left when we did.

All in all, it was a great last-minute weekend trip!


1 comment:

  1. Sounds like a great experience!! I am really enjoying your blogs!

    ReplyDelete