•Pyrenees + Protectors – John Baptist
•4 passes over Pyrenees: e.g. Lepolder (1 440 m)
•Stronghold, frontier town + commercial crossroads
•Wine and cider made here
It’s going to be a challenge not to tackle the Camino as a Go article. I want to write as little as possible, actually.
To test my problem knee, I climb the 269 steps to the viewing site at the top of the Citadel. Here I can see the whole of the little town with its white buildings and terracotta roofs spread out before me, with the mighty and bloody intimidating Pyrenees on the horizon.
There’s a quotation here from Aymeric Picaud, the twelfth-century monk and pilgrim who wrote the Codex Calixtinus on his own Camino pilgrimage. This is regarded as the first guidebook for pilgrims. Picaud writes about the Pyrenees: “It’s eight thousand miles high and as much down.” Look, he’s exaggerating a lot, but I’m definitely going to have a hard time climbing up and then down that mountain on my first day. It’s a full 25 kilometres from here to Roncesvalles in Spain.
I’m going to have to keep calm and walk myself fit – quickly.
I make a line drawing of the Pyrenees in my notebook, really to stop myself from making more Go-type notes. All along the outline of the mountain I write: So the plan is to climb this fucken high mountain tomorrow in one wild go because I am not a German who booked a room, for example, at the very cool hostel Orisson back in January. Now I and other walkers like the friendly Canadian Bill, for example, just have to put our heads down and get over the ± 27 km of bloody mountains down to Roncesvalles and get to the other side hopefully with our knees still in one piece and be okay.
Another walker, a middle-aged woman, also comes to stand at the viewing spot. I really want a photograph of this moment, so I hand out the first of my Go business cards. My plan is to take no photos myself, but every now and again to ask a stranger to take one, hand them a business card, and then keep an eye on my inbox when I’m back in Cape Town.
* * *
During supper in the garden we play a kind of getting-to-know-you game – call it a Basque icebreaker. Not the weird icebreakers I remember from the CSA camps at Jeffreys Bay in the nineties, luckily, when we had to pass apples to one another with our chins. For our game, everyone at the table throws an imaginary ball to someone. If you “catch” the ball, you call out the name of your country and then throw the ball to someone else.
After that, everyone has to say why they are doing the Camino. Joe from the USA is almost 70 years old and is walking his third Camino. “I have to come back every year. It’s the Camino,” he says, his face a picture of peace and calm.
Chris and Ann from Australia do it to spend time in the outdoors and reflect on the past. The large and kindly Canadian Bill says confidently: “I know it sounds strange, but God wants me to be here. He has a plan for me.”
Michelle, an Irish woman, has been caring for her mother, who had cancer. Her mother passed away two months ago; she is walking the Camino to process her death. “I will meet myself,” is all that the wi-fi-less German Karl-Heinz says with great certainty.
My answer: “I hope to find out along the way why I’m doing it. I’m looking for new answers and new questions. And as a journalist I always travel with my camera and mobile phone. I’ve decided to leave it all behind and go for a digital detox.”
Dinner is vegetarian and healthy: cabbage soup, carrot salad, green salad, brown rice and lentils. For dessert we have yoghurt, almost a kind of sorbet. And we drink red wine.
Josele is an inspiring host and calls us a “planetary family”, from all over the world, of people who come together to walk.
He emphasises the importance of silence and a sense of “landing and grounding” that one should experience on the Camino. He points in the direction of the Pyrenees. “Don’t be anxious. The mountain is ready for you. It’s waiting for you.”
Josele tells us about the Basque language – it’s even older than Latin and developed entirely independently of other European languages. And he describes the Basque people’s constant struggle for self-determination – the border between Spain and France cuts the Basque region in two.
He teaches us the word “ultreia”, a word you can take with you every step of the way on the Camino. It means “onwards, forwards”.
Or on with the corpse, I think to myself.
Years ago I heard this little anecdote from a friend’s mother. There was apparently an old man in a little village, let’s call him Elias, who was exceptionally lazy. Uncle Elias was such a lazy good-for-nothing that the congregation decided it would be better to bury him alive. He was so lazy that he regarded this as a relief.
The day of the funeral arrived and, after the church service, the congregation headed for the cemetery. The pall-bearers solemnly bore Uncle Elias, lying very much alive in the coffin, towards the open grave. But one of the ladies from the congregation could not bear the thought of Uncle Elias being buried so prematurely. “Is there not even one little job that Uncle Elias wants to do around here?” she wanted to know. “Could he not chop a bit of wood, or …”
But before she could even finish the sentence Uncle Elias grumbled from the coffin: “On with the corpse! On with the corpse! What’s this wood-chopping nonsense?”
* * *
By eight o’clock we’re all in our rooms, getting ready for bed. Plastic bags and rucksacks rustle. No one talks; a time of quiet has descended. The sun is still bright outside.
I can sense the excitement, the light tension, in the room – the gnawing uncertainty. My plan is to get a good night’s rest. I’m still exhausted after the three days of travelling and the chaos of Slagtersnek and everything I had to sort out in the week before I left.
“Would you mind if we walk up the mountain together?” Bill asks me, tentatively.
I immediately agree. Although I plan to walk mostly alone and can’t see myself dealing with others’ expectations or pressure, Bill seems like a good companion for the first leg. And, if I walk with someone, hopefully I won’t push too hard on the first day.
* * *
No one complains about my snoring, so hopefully I didn’t keep anybody awake last night.
We eat a quick, simple breakfast: croissants, biscuits, cheese and jam. Josele reminds us to visit a tree at the bottom of the garden. From it hangs a huge bag of small plastic balls. In each ball there is a slip of paper on which walkers have written what they wish to achieve on the Camino.
After breakfast I go and sit next to the tree in silence for a few minutes, take out a pen and write on one of the slips of paper: “To learn to love myself, be present, know my worth, walk the earth.”
* * *
One Friday afternoon in November 2014 I was sitting head in hands in Go’s Skukuza conference room at my six-monthly performance appraisal with my editor, Pierre, and assistant editor, Esma.
I had just sketched out my difficult situation stemming from a personal crisis, not very elegantly or coherently. Maybe it was a desperate attempt to justify my inability to meet deadlines.
At that stage I was so messed up I no longer really cared. I had prepared myself for something like an official warning, or for someone in high heels from HR to stride up here to the fourth floor and set some process or other in motion.
I have always been bad with deadlines. My saving grace was that, when I did eventually submit something, it satisfied expectations and often even exceeded them. In fact, a previous editor gave me the nickname “Late but Great”. Not something I’m proud of, necessarily, but at least I didn’t lose my job.
But instead of taking disciplinary action or delivering a tirade (not that he is known