Behind the Albergue Door: Inspiration Agony Adventure on the Camino de Santiago

heavy. Secretly wishing them ill will as I pack them up every morning.
    I think the Camino ha s started to affect me in ways I never imagined. It’s a bit concerning.
    Making Choices
    Sure, we’d all love to bring several changes of clothes so we only need to do laundry once a week and can occasionally surprise and delight our friends by showing up for dinner in a hilariously ironic t-shirt they haven’t yet had the pleasure of laughing along with. But if you want the six hours of hiking to be at least somewhat bearable you have to make some sacrifices in the six hours that follow. Just get used to the idea that when it comes to evening wear your only choices are jacket or no jacket. And, yeah, the albergue pillows are flat and smell a bit like raw yeast but you’ll make do. The local shop may be closed outside of 5:00 pm to 5:25 pm each day and only stocks one loaf of stale bread, two kinds of fruit you’ve never heard of and two full shelves of goat hanks but that is still no reason to be carrying two boxes of granola bars and a watermelon. You need to be brutal. A good rule of thumb is to take everything you are thinking of bringing with you and spread it out on the bed, then get rid of anything perishable, anything that comes with its own case and anything by John Grisham.
    But, just for argument’s sake, let’s pretend you did not set forth from St. Jean the very picture of a trail-hardened minimalist who can’t wait to grow a gnarly unkempt beard. All is not lost. We know a number of pilgrims who re-evaluated on the fly and decided to mail things ahead to wait for them in Santiago. From Roncesvalles, Pamplona or even Burgos we saw people put together care packages and send them off to themselves, newly invigorated to get started the next day one, two or, in one case, five kilograms lighter. The post office in Santiago officially will only hold packages for thirty days. But we know of some people who had stuff waiting longer than that and did not have a problem. If you are concerned, though, there is also a baggage storage service in Santiago that charges €25 or less per bag.
    If you happen to be doing some additional travelling before and/or after the hike you may want to send a package directly from St. Jean to Santiago. This is a little more complicated but can be done for about €50 in total by having Express Bourricot transfer it from St. Jean to Jacotrans in Roncesvalles, who will then take it to the post office and send it from there to Santiago for you. Both of these companies also offer a regular baggage transfer service for about €8 per bag where they pick up your backpack at your albergue and leave it waiting for you at the next town of your choosing. We saw a number of people taking advantage of this, especially those suffering from particularly troublesome physical ailments like sprained ankles, sore knees, spasming backs or runner’s nipple. Or sometimes they just didn’t feel like carrying anything that day.
    A better option than packing too much and ending up sending some of it ahead is to err on the side of less and then hope you can pick up anything you need along the way, the way the U.S. military does it. There are a decent number of well-stocked hiking shops along the Camino as well as a gigantic Decathlon sporting goods store in Burgos where you should be able to find whatever you may need – more hiking socks, a pair of gloves, a bike.
    Another thing to remember is that while we have generally been happy with any of the high -tech hiking gear and clothing we have purchased over the years, spending hundreds, or thousands, on indestructible toothbrushes and ultra-light sunglasses is by no means a pre-requisite to having a fun, successful hike. One of the friends we met on the Camino was among the least technically prepared hikers we’ve ever met, other than her expensive leggings which I suspect were chosen more for comfort and style purposes than for their more practical benefits of warmth and versatility. The waist-belt on her backpack had broken a couple years earlier and not only had she not bothered to have it fixed, but I’m pretty sure that to this day she still doesn’t believe it would have made any real difference, despite my vehement, and increasingly shrill, claims to the contrary. But, while she clearly dealt with her share of discomfort like all of us, she had no problem finishing and probably ended up in better shape than most. So, the moral of the story is