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

son’s circumcision. And to be steady about it, too.
    Washed Underwear for the First Time (Day Fourteen)
    I carry six pairs. But, as I so patiently explained to Laynni, some days I only wear swimming trunks, so…
    “How Do They Live Like This?” Moment
    Based on both my research and a real, live search, to the best of my knowledge the Super Bowl was not televised in Varkala. Maybe not in India. Not live at 5 am, not delayed to a more reasonable hour, not as part of a sports blooper clip like we do with Japanese game shows. Epiphany moment right there. It is a hardship like this that really makes a person realize how privileged we are in North America, where millions and millions of people sit blithely around on their sectional furniture eating chips and dip (made with real trans fats), watching their giant screen TVs, taking for granted HD so vivid that they can tell at a glance exactly how much bigger the tight end’s left testicle is than his right, drinking beer that comes in a reasonably sized bottle with no shrimp pesticide, all at a pleasant time in the early evening, not at some ungodly hour normally reserved for perverts, degenerates and dairy farmers. For ninety-nine percent of those carefree drunks it won’t ever even cross their mind to think about the poor traveller, lazily wasting his life in India, complaining about too much sun and Thai fried rice that wasn’t quite spicy enough, and how he might be suffering, powerlessly staring at his netbook screen waiting for ESPN Gamecast to update, making do with the most rudimentary of descriptions (“TD GB – 15 yd pass / Rogers to Jennings”) only to realize the internet has cut out again and he is going to have to start over and (shudder) sit through the entire trailer for Gulliver’s Travels again. These, my friends, are the truly forsaken. Where’s that portly Sally Field now?
    First Indian Penis Spotting
    Not surprisingly this one was all Laynni (she has such an eye for detail, that one). Well, her and just a small portion of the old umbrella hawker on the beach caught attempting to surreptitiously adjust his lungi, or maybe he was just trying to give the old sock puppet a quick bit of air. Either way, while the sighting may have been accidental, I found the suggestive winking fairly inappropriate. Although it’s possible he didn’t even see her doing it.
    On a completely unrelated topic, honest, it appears that over time we have developed a new favourite past time – people watching. Not sexually, like your old lamaze instructor, or even suspiciously, like the eighty-four year old Walmart greeter when he sees you walking out with nothing but a travel-sized tube of toothpaste. More just observing , you know? Sometimes with a beer in hand, though not always, especially in Kerala where alcohol is generally frowned upon and very few places are licensed so even though they will serve it you usually have to keep the bottle hidden underneath the table. Nobody seems to mind, though, as long as you don’t overdo it. Like slow dancing at family reunions. Anyway, there are few things better than being comfortably ensconced in a lounge chair in the front row of a cliff-side restaurant, watching people from all walks of life stroll by, the sun glinting off the ocean as you sip beer from a coffee mug while listening to the Backstreet Boys threaten to “sex you up”.
    More Spiders
    Different hotel, same hairy nemesis. Not, not Robin Williams, not this time. Spiders! Again! Even bigger than the first time. Well, truth be told there had been many, many spiders since that first rudely exotic introduction to southern India back on day one but all smaller, and most now dead (it was early in the trip for me to have reached the level of Stern Faced Efficient Killing Machine). Long story short, it was about five inches across (from toe to hairy toe, so to speak) with a body the size of a golf ball. We had chased it around earlier in the day but lost it, really hoping it had gone out the door but deep down knowing it was still around… somewhere… lurking. Like Jack Black after the Teen Choice Awards. Then at around 11:30 pm, in our darkened room, while we slept on obliviously, he must have been making his way across the ceiling, or maybe the top of the curtain, possibly struggling from some glancing blunt force trauma picked up earlier in the day at the hands of a dusty blue Puma, when suddenly he lost his grip, or maybe let go, we’ll never know for sure,