A wizard hikes the Camino de Santiago
Day 4
To my anguish, I was woken up at 5.30 by ethereal choral music coming from Brian’s bed. I looked to see what was going on, and saw him sitting with folded hands humming along to the chants stemming from his phone.
I almost hit him over the head with my walking staff, but then decided to aggressively eat a biscuit instead and instantly felt better.
After doing some gentle morning yoga and getting my embalmed toe blessed by Brian, I was ready to seize yet another day!
I started walking, and I’m startled to tell you that after walking less than 5 km my new trekking sandals BROKE!!! The plastic thing keeping them together just cracked and fell right off.
Let this be a warning to you: DO NOT buy any pair of shoes that look sad and lifeless, they will break!
Luckily, I was able to buy pink jogging shoes at a discount in the next town. Much better! I put them on and kept on walking.
When late afternoon came about, I was absolutely starving and ready to settle down for the day. However, when I arrived in the next village it was completely deserted. You see, in Spain they’ve apparently got this thing called ‘siesta’, where they all simultaneously go inside and decide not to speak to anyone for a couple of hours. It actually sounds quite nice now that I think about it, but in this moment my roaring gut was not happy with this.
I sat down on the entrance stairs to a pizza-restaurant, again, waiting for this siesta-thing to be over. Honestly, at this point I desperately missed my oatmeal and was feeling kind of, well, homesick. I tried some spell-casting to cheer myself up, but my noisy stomach made the spells go all “hocus-brooooooar-pocus-brrbrllb”.
While I was sitting there in my dismay, a young American man came by. He was in so much pain from walking, that he was waddling slightly like a penguin. Always remember that no matter how bad a time you’re having, there’s always someone who has it worse hehe.
He sat down beside me, and we decided to take our shoes off and compare wounds.
His feet were ugly and in a bad state, yes – but the sight of my feet made us both gasp in terror. Besides the zombie-toe, I had also developed huge blisters the size of walnuts.
“Woah dude, what are those things?” the guy yelped.
I’ve since learnt that, apparently, you’re supposed to break in your new shoes before your trip to avoid situations like these.
But luckily it is quite easy for a great wizard to remove even the most enormous of blisters!… Under normal circumstances anyway. You see, I was in a bit of a hazy, hungry state – not optimal for spell-casting at all. Unfortunately, instead of shrinking the blisters, my spell made them grow to the size of tennis balls! Let this be a lesson to you all – never, ever practice magic on an empty stomach! (Magical tip #1)
Soon the locals came out from their siesta and some of them started gathering around in a circle to behold my inflated foot. They were very impressed by the colour and size of my blisters – they had apparently never seen or heard of anything like it in the history of the Camino.
A lady elbowed her way through the horde. She was carrying a red box with a white cross on it, apparently a sewing box of some sort, and from it she pulled out a needle of intimidatingly large dimensions.
“I will thread blister.” She firmly declared.
I explained to her that I did not enjoy being threatened at all! But alas, she would not listen, and as she drew nearer and nearer with the gigantic needle ready to stab, I yanked out my wand in a desperate attempt to defend myself. Regrettably, I ended up poking myself in the eye instead, just in the moment when she attacked. She must have cursed that needle, because then everything turned completely black.
When I regained consciousness, the good Spanish people had had enough of my suffering. They kindly persuaded me to go home to heal my injuries and restore my strength. I decided to turn my walking stick into a broom and fly home. But seeing the sorry state I was in, they would not hear of me brooming around, and so they set up a charity collection for my journey home. In the end, they were all so concerned that the whole town made donations.
And so, with toes in every colour of the rainbow and threads sticking in and out, I travelled home by rather ordinary (but admittedly efficient) human means of transportations, such as taxi, bus and flight. A little bumpy and slow, yes, but otherwise not bad at all.
Thus ended my Camino quest. Thanks to the kind Spaniards, I returned safely to my forest and my tree-hut. Brian bless them all!
I must admit I am a bit relieved that I didn’t have to walk for another 30 days. It does feel very good to be back home where there’s always oats in the kitchen cabinet and a pair of warm, fuzzy slippers waiting by my armchair.
And now, I think that I’ll make myself a cup of chamomile tea and take a long footbath. You know, on the bright side of things, all that Vaseline made my feet very smooth and beautiful… In the spots where there aren’t any bleeding blisters, that is.
Healing foot bath for tormented feet:
Ingredients: Warm water, unicorn milk drops (advised, but not necessary as they can be difficult to obtain for humans)
How to: Softly chant messages of safety to your feet, e.g.:
“Poor feet so weary and sore, thou shan’t hike no more mmmm”
Not to be continued.
