Days 11-15 - Another week in Roncesvalles

What a week. A full house every single night, over 300 pilgrims. The Spanish spring break started on Tuesday, resulting in hordes of locals wanting to spend their week on the Camino. Our dryers started to protest; It became increasingly difficult to dry all that laundry properly and we often needed multiple runs on the same batch. But! I also got to do some work at the reception: Registering new arrivals, allocating beds, selling some practical stuff. We have a small store where we sell stuff like ponchos, socks, slippers, ear plugs, sleeping bags, hats, sea shells and the like. I loved doing that and answering people's questions largely improved my linguistic skills - except Spanish, I just can't get that into my head.

I washed some of my clothes in way too hot water the other day (including my pants and my new expensive hiking socks), so they shrunk. I thank the snow and rain for completely ruining my shoes (that is to say, the cheap sneakers I got especially for my time at the refugio). So I spent most of the week wearing a pair of Adidas sports pants, green crocs and some white t-shirts - stuff other pilgrims left behind. I sure hope no-one took any pictures, I looked ridiculous. But in the end this isn't a fashion contest, so I should probably just be happy with what I got :)

Last Sunday, there was some distress after a 47-year-old pilgrim had been found dead from cardiac arrest five minutes from here - the long distance through the snowy mountains had gotten the better of him. A little while later, a girl came in not feeling very well, a co-worker drove her to a doctor in the nearest town. When they returned, she was feeling a lot better.

On Tuesday, we really tried to make the most of the Queen's Day celebrations back home. We put up a portrait of the king and queen to be at the reception, decorated the place with orange garlands and wore weird orange hats throughout the day. We even had some orange chocolate sprinkles for breakfast (how Dutch can you get), and asked the restaurant owner to change the channel on his television set from the usual football match to the abdication and inauguration ceremonies. I saw some of it with unintelligible Spanish commentary; I didn't get to see all of it as we had a lot of work to do as well, but Paul kept me up to date by sending me texts. The restaurant owner was much impressed by our enthusiasm and gave us access to a special suite with a TV all to ourselves :) And at the end of the day, the building manager had left us a bottle of champaign and a plate of petit four cakes to help celebrate our new king.

Some interesting things happened on Wednesday. In the early morning, a procession of St Mary's passed by our refugio. Various people clad in black robes, carrying large wooden crosses on their backs. Beautiful sight.

There's a little museum on the premises here, and the owner is always very happy to see us. He offered us a free tour, which was very nice. There's an old little chapel right next to it, where they bury the local brethren. This place also served as a mass grave for pilgrims in earlier times. They just literally stacked up any bodies here they'd found along the Way. Wow.

By the end of the week, a new hospitalero arrived at the refugio, and another will be coming after the weekend. The management team back in the Netherlands is sending over reinforcements, because there's simply too much work for the six of us, with all those pilgrims. The weekend brought us more good news: The sun is finally here! After all that rain, snow, wind and even a tight fog, these rays of light are more than welcome. So the team's out on the terrace enjoying a drink.

I finally managed to upload some more pictures, so check out the Lourdes report again, and the one after that too. I can only upload a 150 pictures to this thing, so may have to take some of them down again when I want to put up more. Enjoy!