The Mountains of Cantabria

A Camino Adventure (and misadventure)

Today the trail kicked our you-know-what’s. The distance was about the same as yesterday — almost 16 miles from start to finish. But this one was basically a stair master workout. This is the elevation profile of the stage today, which included the beyond category climb (in Tour de France lingo) going up to Trasierra.

The good news was: the scenery was a lot prettier today. We got our first glimpse of the ocean (technically the Bay of Biscay), and although the hills were brutal to walk, they are quite lovely to look at.

We also saw a lot more pilgrims on the stage today. That gave many more candidates for my Character del Dia bit I’m trying to keep up with, but we didn’t spend a lot of time with any of them. 

There was the guy from Taiwan who was nervous that he didn’t have a room reservation for tonight, and Booking.com didn’t show that any were available in our destination town of Comillas. He started almost jogging, looking like he was in a rush, and we saw him up ahead fail to make the turn when the Camino went left. Maybe he knew a shortcut? I’m not sure this qualifies as a Character del Dia. 

I had about a half-mile conversation with a guy from France (that’s how you measure time out here). He started yesterday in the same place we did, but he hopes to go all the way to Santiago. More likely, though, he thought his boss would call him and say that he needs to come back to work. That’s kind of funny that you’re hiking the Camino while on call, but also not enough to be featured as the prime character of the day.

And then there were the girls (sisters?) from Italy. We swapped places with them on the trail several times today, mostly just nodding to each other. But then we stopped at the same place for lunch, “The Bar Cañard”, which in English means “The Canard Bar” (it had a picture of Homer Simpson on the menu). We talked with them a bit more there. They have been hiking for 12 days so far, and plan to go about 5 more. That’s very cool for them, but not really the stuff of an interesting newsletter.

So instead, I’m going to combine the Character del Dia with my other recurring bit: Misadventures in Spanish. These took place in a laundromat. First the setup.

We usually wash out our clothes by hand in the evening, and by morning they are mostly dry. Last night, though, it was raining, and so our air was moist. Everything was still damp — especially all three pairs of my socks. It may qualify as a tactical mistake on my part to bring wool socks. They are very comfy for walking, but are too thick to dry quickly. So I used the hair dryer on one pair, putting the nozzle down into the sock so the air is forced out through the material. That is not ever going to work as an air freshener. But eventually I was satisfied that I could walk in the socks. The rest of the wet stuff went into my day bag.

It also rained a good deal of the morning, so stuff in a bag inside a backpack that is covered with a rain fly is not going to get much air. But just a block before our hotel, was saw a laundromat. So I thought it would be great to do a load later and have fresh clothes again. So after showering and stretching, I took a bag of clothes down there. It turns out the laundromat is a pretty popular place in the evenings, and it is not the crowd that is very fluent in English. I had to use my Google translator to learn how to say “are you waiting for the dryer?” and “the change machine doesn’t accept 20s?” (The answer to that question forced me to walk out across the street and buy a can of Coke with my 20 so I had a 5 and a 10 to use for the change machine.) Then a bit later, I thought I developed a nice rapport with an older lady who was trying to put a 20 into the change machine. “Solo cinqo o diece” I helpfully told her. She looked at me a little cross-eyed and tried the 20 again. So I pointed to the sign that said 5s and 10s. And then she pulled out a 5 and got change. I thought I might get a “gracias” out of it… but no.

The misadventure part of this story comes not so much from the words, but the cultural norms of a Spanish laundromat that I could only guess at. It seems like there should be some intuitive system for determining who goes next when there are more loads of laundry waiting than machines available. But evidently there are subtleties at play that escaped me. My clothes came out of the washer, so I put them in a cart and parked it in front of a dryer that was currently in use. I had seen someone do that before me, and everyone seemed OK with it. I took their tacit ascent which to mean that I was next in line for that dryer. Then that dryer finished, but the people whose clothes were in there weren’t in the room, so I looked at the same woman I thought was my friend to see if it would be OK if I emptied these other people’s clothes into a basket and put mine in. She seemed to understand and nod to what I was doing. So I emptied the dryer and started putting my clothes in the dryer. Then she started yelling a bit — not in anger, but in the sense that she was being wronged. I made what I thought was the internationally understood charades for “Oh, wow, I’m not sure what the problem is?” She motioned to her basket full of wet laundry. So I did the international charades for “ No, I think my basket was here first, and if we can’t agree to this convention of taking turns, I’m afraid all of civilization might collapse.” The issue, I think, was that she had two loads from the washer that she wanted to put into one dryer load (the dryers being somewhat larger in capacity). And evidently her first load of wash came out before mine; but my load of wash came out before her second load of wash. So in my mind, I had the complete dryer load ready before hers and waiting in line, and that should be the principle of priority in such a situation. But evidently in Spanish laundromat culture, the priority is determined by when the first article of clothing you intend to dry is ready and waiting, no matter how long it takes the others to become ready. I thought we were going to need a UN peacekeeper to come and arbitrate, but she took a look at my smallish load of synthetics and her double-load of cotton towels, and said something about my load being mas pequeño, so I should go ahead. I did the international charades for “thank you so much for seeing the wisdom in this, and may your grandchildren flourish.” 

It’s about 8:30 pm now, so it shouldn’t be too long until the restaurants open. We need a lot of calories and a lot of rest.