Today was a day of pain. After negotiating a reasonably pleasant morning with the Gods of the Dew, I get to fascinating Guernica for lunch time and I am caught by the scorching sun when lingering in the city centre. From now on the sun is king and trees my last refuge. The afternoon is spent toiling at an hysterical pace through eucalyptus plantations and fir forests (coniphères et fougères... all sounds better in French) with techno music in my ears. Life is just a handful of pain.. my feet were telling me, as I was asking them to power the last stretches.
You need to exert power to maintain power. There's a price to pay if you wanna have an higher than average physical baseline at all times: sometimes you need to stretch yourself to ridiculous efforts. It is taking the baseline in your hands and giving it a good pulling. Like today's 45 km walk, testing the pain limit of my feet. When arriving at my chosen hostel, I discovered it was full (full of empty beds in that moment, fucking reservations!), so I had to march on to the next one. The 2km little walk ("es un paseo") announced by the hospitalero, revealed itself a taxing 5 km stretch of the most boring tarmac... taking away what life was left in my battered feet . But I finally managed to arrive, forgot to kiss the ground, put an end to my day.
Lezama's hostel was expected to be modern, decent and with a kitchen. It turned out to be the weirdest madhouse ever...A makeshift shack with flooded toilets, 12 bunk beds in a tiny common space and an improvised cooking corner...of which I took absolute control, by cooking pasta using a microwave, under prohibitive conditions. It worked marvelously (with the food simultaneously "al dente" and overcooked), but only because of the low quality of the pasta!
The hostel was a random place, a converted town-hall, with no signs, almost unfindable, hidden as it was behind a block of houses. The style was modern, but the horrendous type of modern. The door was locked and you had to figure out how to enter from the back after jumping a rack full of drying socks. Once you managed to get to the reception, crossing the waters flowing out of the flooding toilets, you were met by a nearly deaf hospitalera.
Everything is free-style, no rules. No plugs for phones, for Christ's sake. You need to unplug the microwave or the kettle. No space for rucksacks. Lots of free food in a cupboard of which very expensive olive oil which I used generously for my pasta. Everyone was going about their own different business at the same time...while I was cooking up a storm.. raw garlic was the base of my sauce and must have stenched the place, I later realized... Maybe that was the reason of the general pilgrim unfriendliness? I tried to start some friendly talks, but I was simply received with no interest and conversation was cut short in two separate occasions.
A donation-based hostel, how nice. Then you read: minimum donation 5 euro. Ok, then, is it a donativo, or not? When I see such signs I make sure I put the requested sum and not more, not considering it as a donativo anymore. It is simply a different philosophy.
The hospitalera made herself a room in the disabled toilet (which I found very funny), the rest of the place is a single space. There is a table in the middle, where if you eat around 6pm , you are under the inquiring eyes of some laying-down pilgrims and become very self-conscious of every small chewing noise. a few meters aside there is the reception corner.
Very spartan place, but someone with some initiative can find everything they need, even an external sink with about 20 plastic boxes to clean your clothes! Or an electric fryer in the cooking corner...
In such a beautiful location, right near an airport, there was even a squalid patio, where you could eat on plastic tables, enjoying the view of some popular houses (sovietic-style blocks)
Cherry on the cake, at 22h the hospitalera is still making and receiving phone calls, talking super loud about some technical issues with the reservations. The hospitalero at the other end of the line (on loudspeakers) trying to explain her that he's going to come tomorrow to show her how it works. She keeps calling him again and again with the same questions. All around me, roasted pilgrims are rolling in their beds, trying to sleep. Yes all pilgrims seem to be overcooked wrecks. All sent forward from the previous hostel with the promise of a relaxing stroll, which turned out to be the Hell's Highway. Not happy about her phone conversation, the hospitalera strikes up some chit chat with the only standing pilgrim left, while around the concert of snores is in full swing. The Truman show. A reality show going both ways...that's what it is. Those laying on the bed observing those at the table..and vice versa. Everyone actor and spectator of the madhouse show.