Lost and Found on the Camino de Santiago: Part 2

Chapter 1: Part 2

I began packing up my clothes about two weeks before my departure for Spain. I bought a lightweight hiking pack, a sleeping bag, a pocketknife and some brand new trail sneakers. I read about the Camino online, combed the Internet forums to absorb as much information as possible about doing the walk from Roncesvalles to Santiago in about twenty-five days. 

The penultimate step before leaving was contacting my friend Raquel in Madrid to ask her about stashing my bags at her place for a month. That’s all I asked, nothing more. 

I wrote, she said yes, but sent no address. Two days passed. Nothing. I wrote again. Nothing. I checked my email every day, at least ten times a day over the course of a week, but got no response. Where is she? I had no other way of contacting her—no phone number and she wasn’t on Facebook. Then seven days before my departure, her name finally appeared in bold black letters with this message:

Miguel…Miguelito…querido amigo…

I am really really sorry. I just got your message (i have been at a chicano lit conference all week...I am not sure when you are arriving. But here is the problem: I am in the process of breaking up with Andrés so I am not sure what is going to happen. Please let me know when you will be here and I will try to make arrangements as soon as possible., Again, I m’ really sorry :( 

Seven days… oh, damn. Seven days and nowhere to store my luggage for the month. I walked home and then walked out and thought and worried and then worried some more. Where am I going to leave my bags? In desperation, I returned to the Internet and went to forums about the Camino and posted pleas for help. A few ideas appeared in my email, but not much else. Some told me to lug my heavy bags to the city or town where I planned to start the Camino, leave them there and then return for them at the end. That was unfeasible. Time was short. 

I prayed and ventured out into Prague’s cafés for answers once again. Coffee had lost its jolting effect on me, but the act of sipping the hot liquid calmed me. And then, just five days before my flight to Spain, I received an email from Luis Carriedo:

Miguel, 

My name is Luis. I’m a pilgrim, well at least I try to be, a resident of Madrid, I read on the online forum, your request for help, I answer you privately, instead of in the forum, in case you decide to accept my hospitality I prefer not to publish all my private information, as you know and should understand, the Internet is just as good as it is bad. You say that you’re in Prague at this time, two pilgrims come to mind, a married couple, that I met a couple of years ago on my last pilgrimage, they live in Prague, their names are Tomas and Petra, if you are going to be there sometime still, I could give you their information so that you can contact them. 

Send me an email and tell me about your plans, where you are going to start the Camino, what date, etc. and about your luggage and those two nights that you need to stay in Madrid, don’t worry, my house is big, accustomed to giving hospitality to pilgrims. 

I ended my internship early, so that I could leave for Spain and give myself time for the pilgrimage as well as then time to get back to Chicago and then to my sister’s wedding in México.  

The final days in Prague flew by and I found myself at the Barajas Airport waiting for my first host on the Camino, Luis, the fifty-something father of four who had answered my plea for help. In an email, he said he would be wearing an orange polo shirt. I looked up and down the hallways, but I saw no one fitting the description. Ten minutes passed, then twenty and then forty-five. I looked around, got up and walked around but saw no one wearing orange. I dug into my bag for my notebook and cell phone.

“¿Luis?” 

“Sí.” 

“Hello, I’m Miguel.”

“Hola, Miguel, where are you?” 

“I’m here at the airport and where are you?” 

“I’m here also. What terminal?”

“I’m in terminal four and you?”

“At terminal one. I was mistaken, I thought you would arrive here.” 

“I can walk over there.”

“No, stay there, I’m on my way…It won’t be more than ten minutes.”

I put my cell phone away and sat down again wondering what this guy would be like and why he was willing to take in a complete stranger with all his baggage. A tinge of fear shot up my spine. I pulled the luggage cart close as people approached and I sat back down to observe the people walking in and out—hugging and making plans. I had been here just a few years before, the beginning of a trip I could have scarcely imagined. It changed my life, and now I was back. I touched my pocket and felt the envelopes that held her letters, three of Beatrice’s letters. Two she had sent from Italy and one she left in my journal to surprise me on a return flight home. “Caro Miguel, mio amore,” she would begin every letter. I caressed my pocket hoping to take in some of the love that remained in her words. I had carried those letters in a plastic bag and in my pocket for a year.

My cell phone rang about fifteen minutes later; I stood up and looked down the hallway where a tall man was marching up the terminal, a cell phone glued to his face, wearing jeans, sunglasses pulled over his gray hair, and the unmistakable orange polo, the flaming color of a traffic cone. When he saw me on the phone, he put his away and came straight to me. 

“¿Miguel?” 

“Sí.”

“Hello, pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

“Let’s get going. ¡Hombre! You do have a lot of luggage.” 

“I’ve been living in Europe for three months now, so I had to come prepared.”

“I can see that. This stuff must weigh eighty kilos.”

The blanket of heat enveloped me and the sunlight was so intense I squinted, even with the sunglasses. He breathed hard, and walked fast. He beeped open his white van, and we threw in my bags. We both got in and he slammed the door shut, started the van, and the AC immediately blew its cool air into my face. He shifted into reverse, backed out, reached for a CD, pulled down his sunglasses and lit a cigarette all in one motion. His cell phone rang through the stereo’s speakers. “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi. No, you’ve got to be kidding! It was a business call. He spoke, confirmed meetings, made plans and joked around with his employee. We sped away from the airport for the small suburb of El Álamo about thirty kilometers from Madrid, and after about ten minutes, he relaxed and asked questions. Where are you from? What were you doing in Prague? He asked about México, mentioned some Mexicans he knew, drawing smoke between questions and answers. 

“You know, I really don’t smoke much, just once in a while.”

He lit another cigarette. 

On the dash I eyed a figurine of a knight with a red cross on his shield, and some pins with weird symbols on the ceiling of his van by the sun visor. Though they could not completely dim the light, the sunglasses could hide my curious eyes.

“You said in your email you were coming to think and for emotional reasons. That’s good; you’re coming with your heart in the right place. It’s seeking. But I will give you some advice. Don’t ask the Camino for anything, instead give yourself entirely.”

The smoke filled the entire cabin and I coughed. Instead of opening a window, he turned up the volume on the stereo, so that we could hear a kooky song. And then, he started to sing. What the? It was embarrassing, but he didn’t stop, singing louder, emphasizing lyrics he thought I should hear with his right hand and cigarette. The smoke lingered in my face.

Then finally, he cracked open the windows, put out his second cigarette and lit a third. He turned up the volume on his stereo even more. The metallic notes of a squeaky synthesizer rang out. 

I couldn’t believe he was singing in front of a stranger, but he didn’t stop. 

“‘He, who walks the Camino as a tourist, is blind to so much mooore….’”

The song went something like that. What’s up with this guy? I coughed again. Hint, hint. We pulled up to a tollbooth and still, he continued singing. The attendant grinned awkwardly. I reached for my wallet. 

“Miguel, what are you thinking? No, put that away. And don’t worry about any money this weekend. I want you to relax. I want you to be ready.”

He paid, we lurched forward then took off as he switched into second, and then into third gear. I looked out the window trying to ignore him; he still sang, now softer and to a song about yellow arrows. I turned away to look at the olive groves standing over the golden grass and parched earth as we traveled further from Madrid. The sky was cloudless. Prague’s skies had been gray and rainy for most of the time I had been there. Sunny days were gems. As we zipped down the highway, I spotted a shopping center and El Corte Inglés.

I was here in Spain, then went to Italy and that’s when I met you in Modena. We had wondrous days in Cortona and in Rome, a new romance on the ancient streets. The August sun seemed to say that we would last forever, but it was truly a waning sun, and presaged the early autumn of our love. Luis snapped me out of my memory.

“Are you ready?”

“What?”

“Are you ready for it?”

“Physically, yes. I lost about eleven kilos in the past three months. And I can walk for hours,” I said with an air of accomplishment. 

Luis shot it down. 

“Good, but that’s not all you need. Do you have a guidebook? When do you want to start? Do you? Forget it.”

“Huh?”

“We’ll go over everything at the house.”

We pulled off the highway and into a sizeable suburb sitting on some hills. We drove into his small garage where his dog Lua, a small biscuit-colored mutt, barked loudly until she sniffed my shoes. Elvia, Luis’ wife, shook my hand, introduced herself and showed me to my room. 

“Have you ever walked the Camino?” 

“Yes, but in parts,” she said. “It was my idea to walk the first time, but now it’s all he thinks about.”

“You look tired,” Luis said. 

“I am, and hungry too,” I answered. 

“We’ll eat when I come back. I have to take care of some business, but I’ll be back soon. You relax.” 

He asked her for a shopping list, gave her a peck and was off again before she could reprimand him for smoking.

“Luis, ¿fumaste?” 

I closed the door to my bedroom, unpacked some clothes, and set my old laptop and my new iPod to the side, stretched out on the bed, and scrolled to the Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack. I had been up packing until 3:00 am the night before, so I expected to immediately fall asleep but couldn’t get comfortable. In and out of shallow sleep, I tossed and turned—while Elvia cleaned in some far corner of the house, the distant whoosh of a vacuum and the rasp, rasp, rasp of a broom. Everything seemed fine: The house was well kept and new, no more than a few years old. They might be normal, but this guy is obsessed with the Camino. The music, that cheap, goofy music. I just want to walk; I don’t care about any of this other stuff. None of that mattered to me—this was supposed to simply be a time for reflection and healing. 

The unease returned. What if these people want something? What if they take my things or do something else? Why would they allow a perfect stranger into their home? Why wouldn’t he allow me to pay for anything? What did they want? I reached for Beatrice’s letters, but a plane flying by caught my eye.

I wondered about its direction and final destination, and it also brought back a memory from a couple years before. My parents had always welcomed strangers or a friend in need to our home. Once, on a return flight from Mexico City, my father met an old man who was traveling to North Carolina, though he had no idea how to get there. He had never traveled to the United States and there were no direct flights from Mexico City to the Carolinas, so my father offered to help. That meant we took care of him for a few days, got him some medicine for a horrible cough, and got in touch with his grandson. We found a flight and then took him to Midway Airport. Afterwards, his grandson called us from Raleigh to thank us for the help and even offered to send money for our hospitality. My father refused and told him to spend the money on his grandfather. 

My father. I touched the letters and also remembered the day I returned home from Italy. He showed up at my apartment in the late evening just as the sun was setting. He rang my doorbell and I came down not expecting to see him, and slowly opened the door. He didn’t say one word, and all I said when he held me tight was, “Thank you.” The plane flew up and out of sight, but the memory put me at ease. Certainly, some of those seeds of kindness and generosity had blown across the Atlantic.