Uterga to Uluru with Elena

Une histoire en anglais...
Which starts in Navarra...
And ends in
Australia...

The setting moon sat low above the Navarran mountains as the sun's first rays lit up the forested slopes beneath it.

From our vantage point on the Camino ridge, just outside Uterga, the scene was nature's own Cinemascope: vines, almonds, sunflowers.

The day would be hot, but at this hour, the air was cool and still. Any caminante who stood long enough to breathe could hear a skylark and, by stretching an ear and the imagination, a strange yet familiar ringing...

In the evening, after a day of adventures, I am drinking cold, refreshing San Miguel twenty-five kilometres down the track with an antipodean companion at the albergue in Lorca.

The mercury has nudged 38° today. We both say that we have not known such temperatures since the Red Centre, down-under...

Dark-haired Elena is in conversation with Marisol, the owner, at the end of the bar. She smiles and tells us that she lives locally, and teaches yoga.

"I have always dream of Uluru, Ayers Rock, ever since I am a little girl", she confides when she learns of our Australian connections. " I have never been there, and perhaps will never be able to pay a journey there. But I know every feature of this rock. I feel its history and its place in the... cosmos".

She asks if we have a few minutes to spare while she goes out to her car, and returns with a neat, leather carrying-case. Quietly, and still with a smile, she opens it on the bar, and removes the two tuning-forks it contains.

"This is the earth's sound as it go round the sun".

She strikes the larger fork gently on the inside of her wrist, and holds it to our ears.

"...and this is the sound of the moon as it go round the earth..."

From Uterga to Uluru, from my earliest memory until this evening, I hear the familiar ring. Behind the eyes, rising upwards and outwards, backwards and forwards in time, down into the earth.

Elena smiles again, and then tends to Harald the Berliner's aching knee ligaments...

Click on the Navarran moonset panorama pic for best wishes from aboriginal rock band Yothu Yindi. Muchas Gracias Elena...May you always dream of Uluru.

Brazil, Blackberrys & Ways

Click on photo for Roncevaux info...

Une autre histoire interculturelle en anglais...

The steep track which descends from the Alto del Perdon is strewn with smooth riverstones, mostly the size of Easter eggs.

Sun and rain and a thousand years of passing pilgrims have washed out the dusty Navarran soil, leaving a shingly scar on the westerly slope. The mark is visible on Google Earth as well as from Puente La Reina, which is ten kilometres distant on the fertile plain of the Arga.
One stone, hidden on the very edge of the path, under an almond branch, is flatter and darker than the rest.

I pick up the object, wipe away the dust, and show my Australian brother-in-law the underside.

"Crikey. It's a blooming BlackBerry".

"Es el Camino, amigo. The owner will not be far away".

Pressing its on-button, we note the owner's name: Mirna.

Then we are overtaken by Harald, a Berliner with whom we'd shared chocolate and a yarn under the wind turbines back there on the summit.

"Harald, you'll see someone called Mirna up ahead. Tell her we have her 'phone, alles gut"

"Keine probleme", and off he strides on teutonic, sunburnt legs.

Click on family photo for a Brazilian memory,
as Mirna (centre) is reunited with her Blackberry...

Half an hour lower, our family foursome is sitting in a pool of olive treeshade, drinking tea from a thermos when a beaming Mirna turns up in her cycling helmet but without a bike. Though we have never met, she greets us like long-lost friends.

She explains in elegant, effortless English that she is from Brazil, and that her daughter works in London. "I will send you a 'photo when I reach Santiago".

A month later, an extract on the computer screen reveals that Roncesvalles, Orreaga in Basque, Roncevaux in French, translates as "Blackberry Valley "...

A jingle hails the arrival of an email from Sao Paulo.

One click shows a smiling Mirna in September Santiago. She sends kind words and best wishes.

The message closes with automatically generated Brasilero: "Enviado do meu BlackBerry".

Old Devils, New Details

Juan's song, Click HERE 
"Je t'aime, moi non plus"...(Merci The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain)...

The Farmacia in Pamplona is doing brisk business on this June Monday morning in Pamplona.

The sun was already warm as we'd walked in the shade of the ash trees along the river Arga, and over the Puente de la Magdalena.

We pause to admire the Catedral, and to buy some blister patches for our Copenhagen companion, Heidi.
An elderly gent on the bench, who introduces himself as Juan, informs us that he is waiting for his carer.
There is a mildly diabolic twinkle of anticipation in his eye, and a smile on his face as he says something about "mejor que Viagra"...
Ten minutes later, Heidi emerges with a small package and a smile.
We collect Salado the Stick, and take a snap of the Farmacia as a keepsake.
Back home in France in October, as the photos are loaded from our clever little mobile 'phone onto the computer, the ash leaves are rustling golden outside the office.
It is only now that I see the bigger picture.
And the reason for Juan's grin three months before.
Click on the Farmacia for elderly care solutions 1971, then on this little pic

if you didn't spot the 2011 Pamplona approach...

Platforms and Souls

Click HERE for Elvis tribute, amigos!

Salado the Stick came across some unlikely peregrino footwear on the dusty western descent from the Alto del Perdon...Then two days later, he found a "lost sole", and spotted Elvis near Estella.

 

By The Way...

Reinhold is walking from St Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles. Again.
"Twenty-acht kilometres für der pleasure of it. When I haf walked here in April, it was snowing"

He is perhaps fifty-five years old, and has the bearded, weathered, lean, long-haired look of a lone long-distance pilgrim. He carries a compact light blue pack and tells us his story outside the Auberge d'Orisson as Patxi clears the table.
"I haf left my home in Bavaria in March. I walk to Santiago and now I walk home. My Mother died in my arms just before my leaving. Now there is just me."
"My father always told me one phrase when I was a boy: "Vorsicht auf deinem Weg. Take care on your Way"...
We ask him to write it for us, then we shake hands.
Alone on the asphalt, he looks back from the first bend on the uphill climb from the Auberge.
And waves towards us and the rising sun.
(Click on Reinholt's writing for an antipodean sunset.)