Santillana and Altamira

A Camino Adventure

Our bodies were tired, but not quite sure what longitude they were in last night. We fell asleep quickly by 9pm, but even my wife who has the gift of sleep woke up a few times throughout the night.

One time I woke up and she wasn’t in bed, and in the dim light I didn’t see her anywhere in our room. I called out, but heard nothing. She couldn’t have gone outside for a walk could she? I’m not sure how cogent my thinking was at the time, but I decided she must have done that, and I drifted back into the netherworld. Some time later I heard the door rattling like someone trying to get in. Of course I assumed it was her, so got up and opened the door… and no one was there. So I got calling her name more loudly and with some concern in my voice, and then heard her say, “I’m stuck in the bathroom.” Ah… now I was waking up and remembering the trick door that wouldn’t open right. “You have to pull it toward you before turning the knob” I shouted, perhaps a little too loudly for 2am. But it worked and we were reunited and collapsed back asleep.

We got hiking by 9am, finding the trail without difficulty. And then we walked… and walked… and walked. I think our longest training hike this time was only 8 miles. Today by the time we made it our cute hotel, my watch said 15.75 miles and over 34,000 steps (can that be right?). It wasn’t the most scenic walk I’ve been on. A lot of roads through town. But some rolling hills outside of town and very nice weather for walking: 65 degrees and overcast. We ended in Santillana Del Mar, which literally means Saint Illana of the Sea. But the joke around here is that there was no Saint Illana and we’re not really by the sea. So kind of like the Holy Roman Empire, which was none of those things. It is a very cute medieval looking village though, with the central avenue looking like Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter world.

The main drag in Santillana Del Mar

After featuring the guy next to us on the plane yesterday, I’ve decided to implement a recurring feature of these posts: El Character del Dia. It’s fun to meet people on an adventure like this, and perhaps you’ll enjoy hearing about them. Today’s character was Oscar. We first met him at about mile 11. He was calling out to us from 50m behind, waving his hands like we were supposed to go another way, but I was pretty sure we were going the right way because we were standing in front of a big sign about the Camino. But he soon caught up to us and said he was mistaken about the path and glad to meet us. Oscar is from Argentina and is walking the whole Camino. As of today, he’d been going for 16 days, starting back in France. He walked the first bit with his son, who lives in Madrid, but then has been going solo for about 10 days. I can tell that he was craving company. We walked with him for about 5 miles during which he regaled us with stories about the trail in mostly understandable broken English. For example, he talked about a beach that we really needed to go see. “Do you know the movie ‘Earth Monkeys’?” he asked. Hmm… “You, know, the last scene with Charleton Heston?”. Ohh… you mean “Planet of the Apes”? “Si, Si. The last scene was filmed on this beach.” OK. Good to know. Oscar has 22 days to make it Santiago where his wife will meet him. I’m rooting for him.

Oscar and Chris

Perhaps another recurring feature will be Misadventures in Spanish. I hope it won’t be every day, but I suspect it will be fairly regular. Today’s wasn’t a big deal, but kind of funny. In our very cute hotel room, the Posada Herran just outside of Santillana del Mar, there was a sign about the WiFi, which said “WiFi Contreña Posadaherran.” The way it was written with one word above the other, I assumed it meant that the network was called Contreña and the password was Posadaherran. But I found no such network. So I went to talk to the very nice lady who runs the place, whose English is evidently worse than my Spanish. So I practiced with my translator app to say “The WiFi isn’t working? I don’t see Contreña.” I showed her my phone open to the list of WiFi networks, which was just two different versions of the same one. She pointed to one and then said “Posadaherran”. Ah… It turns out that Contreña means password in Spanish.

I wanted to stay in this town because it is near the famous cave of Altamira, which was discovered in 1879. After making it to our hotel room, I hoofed it another mile up a hill to see the place. The story is that a father and his daughter were out walking in the hills (evidently that’s what fathers and daughters did in those days) and found a small opening in the rocks and squeezed through. They found a first chamber with remnants of a fireplace and bones, and then pressing on, a second chamber with magnificent paintings on the ceiling. After a bunch of science-y work, it has been determined that the cave was sealed shut by a rock fall about 15,000 years ago, and before that it had been inhabited for more 20,000 years. Let that sink in a little. We find it remarkable to see an old house that has been around for 200 years, or maybe an old castle that is 1000 years old. This place was used as human habitation for 20 times as long!

The paintings on the ceiling range from 36,000 years ago when someone put up a few marks of red as though they were trying out the new paint, to the stunning collection of bison portraits that cover one section (funny note: as I was reading back through this checking for errors, I found that the word “bison” had autocorrected to “Biden” — that would have been remarkable!). Now, only 5 people per week get to go into the original cave wearing hazmat suits. They are drawn from a list that has been closed for 10 years, so I didn’t get to do that. But about 20 years ago they completed a replica which people can tour. It’s really spectacular. The cave artists used the contours of the ceiling to emphasize different parts of the animals, and these were created first by etching the outline and using charcoal to make the lines, then a red pigment to color them. Also really moving to me were the negative images of hands, which are really cool calling cards of the artists themselves.

I walked back down the hill in the rain and was pretty exhausted. I showered, did my laundry, and sat for a bit. Then it was after 7pm, so we figured we could find some place to eat. By then it was raining pretty hard. Thankfully our hotel had a basket of umbrellas we could borrow, but I still made a tactical error by going out wearing my last pair of dry socks with sandals (perhaps tactical errors will become a recurring segment too?). There was a restaurant fairly close to our hotel, so we went there. But when I told the hostess “Two for dinner” (in Spanish, of course), I was greeted with a plastic, condescending smile and the words (I think, because they too were in Spanish), “we open at 9 for dinner.” Of course they do. It is Tuesday night after all.

At 8pm, this is how many people were in the restaurant

So we walked all the way back into the Diagon Alley part of town that was more touristy. Of course they would be open, right? The first place we stopped said they would open at 8. It was only 7:30, so we decided to keep going. We finally found a place who said they would feed us, and we were a little nervous about the quality, because there wasn’t another person in the place. But we ordered and ate well. And by the time left at 8:45, the place was beginning to fill up.

Being a night owl by nature, I wouldn’t mind that kind of schedule. But being on an adventure where you get up and walk all day, I’d sort of like to eat earlier and go to bed! But I’ll attempt not to think that they should conform to my cultural expectations. At least I’m not going to make the Ugly American a recurring feature of this chronicle! Now it is time for the recurring feature of the bamboo sheet sleep sack. See you tomorrow.