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

free so we didn’t even have to shift anything around in our day timers. The down side, feeling just so…so…common. The Lonely Planet claims that between thirty and seventy percent of visitors to India end up with TD (I’m currently working on a detailed point by point comparison between the affliction and the goofy but likeable underdog Canadian chartered bank – they aren’t as different as you might think) in the first two weeks. Setting aside the absurd vagueness of that numerical range, it hurts to be so much like everybody else. So predictable. So transparent. So shaved head/neck tattoo combo.
    “How was the beach?”
    In Varkala this is used exactly the way people in Canada might say “How’s it going?”, “How are you?” or “How’s it hangin’?” (if you were born in the mid-70’s and still work at a gas station). In other words, as a meaningless greeting that is less abrupt and empty than “Hi” but still safer and more generic than “What’s new with you?”, “How’re the kids?” or “Did you know we can see the outline of your clitoris ring through those shorts?” The first few times we made the mistake of explaining that we hadn’t, in fact, just come from the beach but had actually just been walking north of the village, and that we stopped for lunch at this place with a view, and that Laynni had a Greek salad and asked for no onions but, of course, it came with onions anyway, wouldn’t you know it? Eventually we realized, though, thanks to the blank looks and people literally walking away as we talked, that this was actually a rhetorical question based solely on the fact that going to the beach is the most popular activity in Varkala and that they no more want to hear the details of our day than you want to know about how the woman working at the lottery ticket booth hasn’t been sleeping too well, on account of the neighbour’s dog, and how once she’s awake she can’t stop thinking about how her ex is three months behind on the child support, and is it normal for a seven year old kid to collect cat ears and keep them pinned to a piece of plywood sorted by colour, age and how much of a fight it put up?
    Lifeguards
    There are a surprising number of lifeguards down on the main area of Papanasam Beach, although we’ve found their specific duties somewhat difficult to pinpoint. Automatically one would assume their main task would be to keep people from drowning. However, based on visual surveillance we suspect their mission statement may not actually be so straightforward. First of all, they don’t wear swimming gear but rather crisp, heavy baby blue tunics with very uncomfortable looking dark blue short shorts. Secondly, the only time we saw one of them get within ten feet of the water he suddenly realized his error and went scampering away from the incoming ankle high wave like a Greek from body wax. Thirdly, any time they resorted to blowing frantically on their desperate little whistles we were unable to identify any particular water related dilemma taking place. It was always the same – “tweet”, “tweet”, “tweeeeet!” eventually getting the attention of everyone on the beach and in the water who then alternated between looking at the whistle blower and looking all around in a confused manner trying to determine what the hell they were whistling at exactly. The answer to that, we have decided, is actually far less likely to have anything to do with safe swimming than with warning groups of Indian males that they have spent just about enough time staring at the blonde with her top undone and the very becoming thong, and that they will almost certainly not be allowed to finish working on the impromptu sand hill they recently decided to build at the foot of her towel. Not a bad gig, if you can get it, chasing off horny gawkers while being paid to search out the most likely victims of gawking yourself, although we never did figure out why they usually chose to sit two and three to a single plastic lawn chair, squeezed between the spindly legs of the guy behind them while locking in a third friend between their own sweating thighs like they were about to tackle the Matterhorn at Disneyland, or were posing for a Skinny Men in Uniform spread for Hindi Skin magazine.
    Power Cuts
    They happen a lot, and there is no way to tell if the power will be out for seconds, minutes or hours. Since we only saw approximately three clouds in all our time in Varkala we feel we