Day 13 - walking from Belorado to San Juan de Ortega (24km)

Leaving Belorado there was frost on the ground and a thick fog. The type of weather with which you can´t see far outwards, so it makes you look inwards. The trail got off to an interesting start because as I followed the arrows they led me straight through the middle of a gas station and then to a large pile of turnips that were piled high in the parking lot. From there the path went upwards and I spent most of the day walking through a forest. During the fog in the morning it was comforting having the faint light of the sun to my left keeping me company. I started thinking about my breakfast conversation the day earlier in Grañon. Some others were talking about dreams so I mentioned that I had had a dream the night before in which I saw a person that I knew in high school, but that I hadn´t seen or heard from for a very long time. I was surprised to have thought of her and it made me want to talk to her to see how she is doing. The hospitalerio who also works as a psychiatrist in Mexico suggested maybe the dream was telling me that there was a part of me that I haven´t been in touch with for a long time and that I wanted to talk to. He said if you remember your dreams you should try to search for their meaning and then try to complete them. So I started asking myself questions about who I had been in high school and how I had changed.

Later on when the sun came out it was great to be walking through the pine trees, listening to the wind and having rays of sunshine fall accross my face. I have always loved being surrounded by trees. Occasionally when I am walking I have a small pain in my right foot. I sort of use it as a benchmark of when I need to stop and rest a little while. One of the pilgrims I met in Eunate was reading a book called ´La enfermedad como camino´ which would translate to something like the path of sickness. The idea he explained was that illness sometimes correlates to events in your life and the example he gave me was that he needed to get glasses at a time in his life when he was having difficulty planning into the future. I started to think about that and reflect on what the cause of the pain was from and when it had started. I know a year ago the bursitis in my hips had caused me a lot of pain and that it probably was stress related. I was scared at that time that I might not be able to walk and maybe not be able to do the camino to Santiago. Starting running was very good for me because the exercise I think helped me deal with little stresses. While I was thinking about this two French men walked past me and they suggested that perhaps my shoe laces were too tight and that after about 10km you should loosen your laces because the foot starts to swell. That helped considerably, but it was still an interesting point of reflection.

That evening I caught up with the French couple who were quite cute with their matching outfits and the three of us spent the night in San Juan de Ortega. I had been reccomended to stop there because of the Garlic soup that the hospitalerio makes every night for pilgrims. The church was beautiful, the town small (17 inhabitants) and luckily for us the bar opened that evening so we could sit somewhere warm. The bunkbeds were in a stone room that was freezing cold. You could see your breath and it was best to wear winter layers. We had the soup that consisted of garlic, white bread and red peppers. There was no where else to get food in the town so the priest had started making soup for the pilgrims. The soup did not sit very well for me, but it was nice and warm. The night was very cold I had tried to make a tent of wool blankets around my bottom bunk, but it did not really help. In the morning one of the French men said that probably 5 or 6 monks died every night there in the middle ages and I was happy to get up and start walking.