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

plummeting eight feet to land with a noticeable thump and bounce, legs now tangled slightly in a long mane of brunette hair, before disengaging itself to lay inertly on the pillow. Meanwhile, its now alarmed pillow buddy struggled to her feet in search of a light, apparently in shock and trying not to wake her husband who still slept soundly a couple feet away. But then there was light! And her worst fears were confirmed! And death, wild shoe-throwing death, rampaged among the sheets, and innocence was lost forever.
    Next up: a spot of sarong shopping. I bought my first, and only, two sarongs back in Bali over ten years before ever setting foot in India. One was like my attachment to clean underwear - long gone - but the other was still in use, although definitely looking worse for wear – threadbare, torn and with little bits of debris picked up from hundreds of questionable guesthouse sheets all over the world. The big question, though – how to find a sarong masculine enough to match my rugged, virile, kicking-rocks-down-the-road persona? I hate shopping and definitely never look forward to long, drawn out searches, but it needed to be just the right sarong, something in a coal black or security guard blue, and ideally patterned with something sufficiently male like maybe a bunch of swords, or some fierce rhinoceroses, or maybe just a lot of penises. Something manly like that. Well, rest easy, one and all, the quest has been successfully completed. And how. Picture, if you will, a bright lilac background, interspersed with patches of faded mauve, lavishly decorated with an abundant collection of blocky white sea turtles with dreadfully misshapen heads and extraordinarily muscular legs, a disarming combination that skillfully serves to emphasize the cartoonish design and, therefore, enhance the overall irony of the piece. And the little tassels on the end tickle my neck when I sleep.
    The food in Varkala was also quite good, that wonderful sort of place where a person almost never needs to actually resort to eating Indian food (I had a system where I alternated between Thai and Italian), although Laynni inexplicably chose to spurn this auspicious omen and took to trying at least one Indian dish per day. Show off. Anyway, one thing we found interesting, besides the shapes of people’s breasts, was that unlike most other places in the world where finding an actual vegetarian restaurant generally involves a lengthy search and a terrifying parking lot in a dodgy part of town, in Varkala almost everything comes sans carne (English, French and Spanish all in one sentence, how far I’ve come) and it’s the tiny list of meat options that is usually hidden away in a small section on the back page of the menu. Not surprisingly, while in Argentina we didn’t notice a whole lot of Hindus scarfing down eight pounds of assorted muscle and entrails at 11 pm like everyone else. Probably wouldn’t find as many in the cardiology ward either.
    Anyway, time rolled on in Varkala with us up to a whole lot of not much, with the occasional bout of very little, interspersed with a pinch of almost nothing every now and again. Sure, we went to the beach a few times, went for some walks here and there, played some cards, watched some shows, wrangled the odd herd of cattle, walked the restaurant circuit counter clockwise one day, and sent a postcard of an old Hindu woman with her boob sticking out to Ellen DeGeneres, but for the most part we just took it easy. Then I went and got sick. Yeah, so much for “I suppose we’ve just been lucky, but we’ve never really had any stomach problems on any of our trips”. Never mind that I was following a strict diet of fried eggs for breakfast (universal) and a free-flowing mix of Thai and Italian food for all other meals. Delhi Belly, they call it. Even though we were still almost three thousand kilometres away from Delhi. Or Traveller’s Diarrhea, to use the medical term. Why they had to focus the name so much on that one small part of the ailment I’m not sure, but I suppose it’s for the same reason a headline will read “Will Ferrell Murders Prostitute!!”, instead of “Will Ferrell Gets Free BJ!!”. Nevertheless, in addition to the so bluntly stated symptom built right into the name, I spent several wonderful days laid out in a tense fetal position anxiously battling fever, chills, headaches and debilitating stomach pains. The bright side was those days were already surprisingly