Day 4 A Pilgrim Once Again

Happy I am to be a pilgrim again.  (My feet ache, of course.)

Argentina has been good to me.  The pilgrimage progresses, a little slowly because of my new stiff boots, but beautifully.  Springtime here brings scented blooms of jasmine in gardens, magnolias bursting out on bare branches, lambs, calves, and colts in the great fields.  The humidity has surprised me and mosquitos are everywhere - each swat on my bare arms brings a half dozen smashed cadavers tumbling to the biomass of the earth.  Such is the world.

The days have been pretty warm and sunny - so I'm again sunburnt, more on my right half as I walk westward.  Sadly for me, the evenings have brought on the cloud cover and I have yet to see the southern constellations.  I've got some time ahead of me.

Some oddities of Argentina - greetings are made by pressing the right cheek, kissing sounds optional, no handshake involved.  Although most people are clearly of European stock, the number of times I've been pointed at with the delighted squeal of 'Rubia!' suggests that they find fair-haired blue-eyed folks something worthy of note.

Foot pilgrims are a rarity, even in Luján with their precious Nuestra Señora and hoards flocking there each year, bus pilgrims or enormous groups walking in particular week with all the logistics taken care of.  A few times now I've been told that it would be easier to find accommodation if I were in a group that called ahead.  Nonetheless, kindness prevails, sometimes with a heavy dose of persistence, and accommodation is found - a Catholic school, a mission, a hostel, a convent of retired nuns, a village church.  It's been easy as always to receive water from anyone I ask, generally accompanied by offers of food, more than I can carry, and comfortable conversation, even with my halting Spanish.

I'm happy to be a pilgrim again.

In Transit...

Greetings from Miami...
Transit is a trying time for a pilgrim.  I want to begin, yet I have to get there first.  Denver - Charlotte - Miami.... 36 hours... onward to San Paolo (I had to check; earlier I thought I was going through Rio) - finally, if all goes well, I'll arrive in Buenos Aires, get to the Santuario San Cayetano and begin the pilgrimage.  I'm biding my time for the prolonged hours in Miami.

I was quite preoccupied with buttoning up the pilgrimage I led to Chimayo, which included writing a book describing the route.  [Visit caminotochimayo.blogspot.com to find the link to Tattered Cover Press for El Camino del Norte a Chimayo.]  Now, my focus is shifted and affixed on my style pilgrimage: walking village to village through remote corners of the world toward a well-known destination.

The sketched plan for the first great segment has me crossing Argentina to Mendoza, over the Andes to Santiago, Chile, up the coast to the great desert, back to the mountains to enter Peru and aiming for Cuzco for Christmas.  Even by my standards, it's ambitious and will require a pace of 45 km per day without a break; realistically, I'll need to up it to 50 km per day to enable me to take a few short days and in so doing, rest and repair as needed.  The motivation of speed is not that I need to reach the Basilica of Guadalupe at a certain time, but more practically, I'm aiming to enter the jungles before the rainy season of spring.  If I can't maintain the pace, I'll enjoy some other destiny.  I've got to start with some plan in mind

By this time tomorrow, transit will be over; I'll have left mugginess and humidity behind and step out in late winter under the skies of the southern hemisphere.  I'll try to blog when I can and ask people to post the photos they take of me so everyone knows where I am.

Boot Resolution

The biggest anxiety in the pre-pilgrimage planning is consistently getting the boots right.  Can I get boots to go the distance (~8,000 miles/13,000 kms)?  I've got a plan...

Last winter's boots - Scarpa SL M3 - held up fairly well for their 3,000 miles/4,600 kms of rocky mountains and sandy deserts.  The two weak points are somewhat resolvable.  Firstly, the lack of cushion in the insole made for overly tender feet.  While my feet generally always recovered by morning, by the end of the daily marathons, they ached pathetically.  To resolve this, I conferred with the ever-helpful guys at The Custom Foot on South Broadway in Englewood, Colorado and got semi-custom fitted Sidas insoles designed actually for running but meeting my needs for repeated impact cushioning and arch support.  The difference was noticeable immediately.  I have great confidence that my feet will be happier.  I hope they'll last as long as the boots.

The second weakness of the Scarpa boots last pilgrimage was that the heels wore more than the rest of the boots.  I had anticipated this and carried new Vibram heels with me, supplied by the old world cobbler at Phelps Shoe Repair, to replace the worn heels when necessary.  Necessity reared its head somewhere in the Egyptian Sahara, but no where could I find someone with the skills and machinery required to do the job either in Egypt or in Israel.  With new heels, I'm sure I could get at least another 1,000 miles out of the boots.

Two right feet: 3,000 miles (top), new (bottom)

Now, with the brand new Scarpas, old Mr. Phelps devised the solution of nailing crescent-shaped heel extenders onto the striking point of the boots and sent me off with an extra set, nails and all, with which I can make my own repair along the trail with a small tube of contact cement.  I'll still carry the extra set of heels I took for the long walk last winter, though I have comparable hope of finding a so-skilled cobbler in Central America as I did in Egypt.  Can I get 8,000 miles out of these soles? I inquired of the cobbler.  Sure, why not? he resounded studying the old boots.  I feel obligated to the challenge of finding out if they'll really be able to go the distance.  Keep the heels maintained and the leather conditioned...

Part of my standard kit has always been Teva sandals that I've used as shower shoes, eveningwear, and house slippers in addition to water shoes when fording streams and rivers.  They dry quickly, soothe my aching feet after the long booted day's walk and allow me to more comfortably totter around villages or monasteries in the occasional hours between the walk and sleep.

My recent experience on the pilgrimage to Chimayo has introduced Abeo hiking sandals into my modis operandi.  They held up remarkably well during the break-in period and the 350-mile/550-km mountainous and desert-ous walk.  Their featherlight weight, openness and coolness made the miles a pleasure to walk.  The mid soles compressed a bit for the wear and the lugged tread of the outer sole wore completely down, but The Walking Company, who owns the proprietary brand, replaced them for me gratis and they'll serve as my second shoes for the big walk serving the same function as the Teva's have, but with greater form-fittedness and arch support.  They may better serve me as the primary walking shoes through the jungles of Central America than the heavy leather boots...

Plans Coming Together

I'm caught in a realm of absurd contradiction: I'm so busy planning the pilgrimage to South and Central America  that I hardly have time to write about it.  Further into the absurdity, I'm so motivated to begin the pilgrimage (ticket in hand; weather window about to open), I hardly have time to capture all that was accomplished on the last.   The pilgrimage to Chimayo successfully forged the Camino del Norte a Chimayo.  Read about it here.  It's our hope that the camino to Chimayo will be used by many pilgrims and that the pilgrimage by the Our Lady of Guadalupe parish will become an annual event.  Time will tell.  More on the other website; book to follow shortly.

I've been studying the history, geography, and UNESCO world heritage sites for months now.  I have tickets in hand to leave on September 11th to head to Buenos Aires over Miami to begin the pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe.  I walked there already from the north and now I'll walk from the south.  There's no singular route connecting the starting and ending points, but the whole region is steeped in a myriad of cultures linked by the legacy of the Spaniards over the last five centuries.

I intend to exit Buenos Aires in the direction of the famous shrine of Our Lady of Lujan then westward to Mendoza (800 wineries), over the Andes to Santiago, Chile, to the coast at Valparaiso, then ever northward to Peru, driest desert on the planet - Anacama - to be somehow crossed.  Of course, the Nasca Lines, Cuzco, and Machu Picchu are cultural must-sees, but the intervening villages are hugely interesting to me.  After Lima, I'll continue to Quito, Ecuador, and to Colombia.  Tackling the Darian Gap should be a fun diversion, and then strolls through the history and geography of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatamala before entering Mexico and enjoying the climb to the Basilica.  Except for Mexico, all of these countries will be new entries in my passport.

Maybe 12,000 to 15,000 kilometers  in total; maybe 8 to 10 months... the constraints are not too numerous.  A few vaccinations, the standard 3-month visa limitations.  No ongoing wars; pretty standard travel warnings; this should be stress-free travel compared to last winter's pilgrimage.

It's interesting that in Spanish, pilgrim is also used as a verb - peregrinar.  I'm happy that I'll be 'pilgriming' again soon.  Once I do, I'll update weekly-ish as I'm able.  I hope you'll enjoy tales of the extended winter walk this year.

What's New?

I've been back at my home base in Denver for a few months now and my silence on the blog has been my way to transition back into 'normal' life. I've been far from idle, of course, and just walking around the city to all the things I keep myself busy with adds up to about 50 or 60 miles every week.

Three exciting announcements from winterpilgrimland:

1. I'm developing a camino in the US!  Denver, Colorado to the Santuario de Chimayó, New Mexico.  I'm collecting the information about it in another blogsite - caminotochimayo.blogspot.com.  It's a camino for everyone, stylized after the Camino to Santiago with regard to a network of pilgrim houses and support facilities.  There's a lot to organize, but I think there's sufficient interest to give it a try.  The Santuario is America's most visited pilgrim site and of the 300,000 pilgrims who visit annually, more than 30,000 walk there during Holy Week, so there is a long tradition of foot pilgrimages, but as of yet, no network of pilgrim houses exists.  Because it's new and the land is rugged and vast - 550 kms/350 miles - the pilgrim houses will only be opened for a week-long season... well, wait, enough here, go visit the site to get the details.

2. I'm a solo pilgrim through and through, but for 18 days this summer, I'll be a pilgrim leader and guide a group of pilgrims from Denver to Chimayó on the above-referenced camino.  I've got to walk it to mark the way and test out the shade stations and pilgrim houses, so I'm happy to guide all the pilgrims who leave Denver on 22 July, or hop in along the way to arrive in Chimayó on 8 August.  Anyone who's interested should sign-up on the other blogsite or contact me directly.  I think we'll limit it to around 15 or 20 pilgrims, so don't wait too long, and as I'm starting from Our Lady of Guadalupe church, there will be a lot of Spanish spoken.  The parish pastor will come along as the spiritual guide of the group and say daily Mass on the trail (in Spanish).  Any pilgrims who leave Denver in the days after the 22nd, will still benefit from the trail markers and the trail descriptions I'll leave with each pilgrim house.

3.  Finally, I'm a winter pilgrim, aren't I?  Winter will be upon us soon enough, so I'll be off again on another epic pilgrimage.  I was hit with unbounded inspiration one Thursday morning walking to a neighborhood coffeeshop to meet a friend - South America's calling... Argentina to the Basilica of Guadalupe... following the spine of the Andes right on up, through the Darien Gap, the rainforests of Central America... leave mid September, arrive late spring-ish.  Map to follow soon... A long one it will be, perhaps 13,000 kms/8,000 miles -ish, I'm not really wrapped up in the distance, just the number of villages I can visit, the cultures, the fun people, the astonished children... stay tuned for updates.

I'll be better at updating this blog to wrap up the last great pilgrimage and develop plans for the future one.