A wizard hikes the Camino de Santiago
Day 2
The next morning, I woke up and stretched my aching limbs. In addition to being sore in every single muscle in my body, I also felt a weird pulsing in my left little toe. I looked down and to my horror discovered that my toe was red and triple its normal size!!!
Had I been at home with my herbs and cauldrons, this would be absolutely no problem at all, but here alone in Spain it was NOT good.
I decided that the only sensible course of action would be to go buy a pizza while contemplating my next move. (I ignored Tip #12 I was vulnerable… and I do love pizza.)
I hobbled down to Domino’s only to discover that they didn’t open until 12.30. Dark sorcery no doubt.
I tried a few “open sesame”-spells, but to little effect as I was very tired after yesterday’s ordeals.
After waving my fists angrily at the sky, I sat down on the sidewalk and waited for Domino’s to open the door. A few people passed me by and tried to hand me coins. I have no idea why, it was rather odd.
At some point a jolly couple with colourful backpacks and ski sticks came by. They spotted the seashell on my hat and asked me whether I was a pilgrim. I grunted yes and told them about my aching toe.
“Oh no!” The woman exclaimed. “But don’t you worry, I’ve got just the thing.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out some sort of strange band aid.
“What is that?” I asked her.
She explained to me that it was called a ‘Compeed’, and that it would, supposedly, fix all my toe-woes.
“That sounds rather like some nonsense goblin tricks to me.” I murmured.
“No, no, it really does help. Ben here had loads and loads of blisters, but then he put this on and it made them all go away! Well, that and then soaking his feet in a bunch of Vaseline each morning. And this foot cream I have helped too, I’ll give you my spare tube here – but don’t go waving it around, people will KILL for this stuff!”
She handed me the band aid and the foot cream and when Dominos opened, we all ate a pizza together. It was very nice.
And so, with a compeed on my enlarged toe and my feet soaked in Vaseline, I squelched on.
During the walk I met many different people – one young man needed to be back for work in two weeks and thus had to speedrun the Camino. One lady had quit her job and described to me in detail the gruesomeness of working a 9-5 job. I sure am glad that we wizards aren’t on that sort of contract!
On my way I also heard a few bone-chilling stories about the ‘German snorer’, who supposedly terrorised the albergues at night. They were tales of a pilgrim with a snore so powerful, that not even the most well-isolated pair of ear plugs could keep out the noise.
At 4pm I arrived at the albergue. It smelled a lot like feet but seemed nonetheless inviting. I settled down on an empty bed next to a very nice German man. I hung up my walking slippers, took a shower and then went straight to bed.
I managed to get a few sweet, sweet hours of sleep until some horrid sound woke me up in the middle of the night.
SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE
At first I didn’t understand what was going on. In my daze, I thought that a fire breathing dragon was attacking the albergue and I seized my wand, ready to counterattack!
Then, I remembered the stories of The German Snorer. It seemed I had come face to face with the legend.
After a few unsuccessful attempts at stuffing my beard in my ears to keep out the awful noise, I decided I had to do something about this. I stood up, pointed my wand at him and spoke:
“Abracadabra our sleep is in minus,
bless this poor man with clear passage through sinus!!”
One final waning snore left the German snorers’ mouth as he breathed in the pink, sweet smoke from the spell. He let out a slight cough, but then rolled onto his side and slept on… in silence.
I nodded in approval of myself and then crawled back into bed and slept until sunrise.
To be continued…
