Languages

While I was in Spain and I knew I was expecting to hear Spanish but on the camino I heard many other languages too. The route is well known all over the world so you get people from all over coming and walking. I was  introduced to not only Spanish but also German, Korean, Italian, Japanese, Dutch and of course French; it is known as the 'French Way'.

The different laugauges I was immursed in was quite amazing, I´ve met heaps of people who speak five or more languages which was incredible. I would love to be able to speak another language or two. I am so inspired now and I wold love to keep up my spanish even though I am now back home. It is quite dificult because I learn French at school and there is not really any places I could go to speak Spanish. If you know of any places in Melbourne, Australia, like maybe restaurants or things like that I'd love to know! Post a comment!

It was good to practice my Spanish with other pilgrims and I also ordered in restarants and shops every day. It is amazing that after being in Spain, I´m sorry to say but my Spanish is better than my French and I have learnt it at school since year 1. That´s what immersion does for you! So I will hopfully be coming back to Spain every soon to practise!

I was also impressed with the amount of American people I met along the way who spoke fluent Spanish. Many people from California and Miami, because of corse Mexico and South America is so close, spoke Spanish! So I can also go there to skpeak Spanish! It is so exciting to know that I can speak Spanish in many other places in the world.

I will post another post soon!

This blog isn't done

To all my readers out there,

I just want to say that I am still posting on my blog and sorry for not writing lately. I couldn't post anything while I was in Spain, my photos weren't loading and it was a massive disaster! If you are wondering I am back on home ground! It's so nice to be home, I missed my family, friends and pets so much! I am back at school, which is going alright, I guess. After missing seven weeks of school I obviously missed out on a few things but I take it as a possitive because I gained so many other things that not every fourteen year old can experience. My teachers are great with healping me catch up and it's like I was never gone. I will still post about the rest of my journey and how I finished. This post is just a short one to let everyone know that I didn't die along the way and I am home, safe!

I'll write soon! (If I don't, it's cause of all the homework!)

sorry!

Hi,

Sorry I´m so behind in all my post and I havent posted in a while. It´s because I´m having trouble posting photos from my phone then on to a computer. Internet cafes are hard to find and I also don´t have time because my day is so filled up. We don´t finish walking till four or five in the afternoon cause we are so slow, then by the time we find the refugio, have a shower, do your washing and then find something to eat, the day seems to be gone.

Mum has walked this before and she knew I would have no time for any additional school work. So when my teachers wanted to give me work she said no and thanks god cause I can hardly post on my blog than do extra school work.

Adios

Just some pics!

Here I am with some hot Spanish guys. (jokes!)

 Mum and I way back when the sun was shining.

We had four gorgeous days of sun and then...

Snow!!

Me in my wet weather gear and I haven´t been out of it for three weeks!

Religion is everywhere.

 

Rural life:



This local guy who was probably ninety nearly over took us! We go lentamente!

A shepherd´s hut.

Give me five.

Yay, no blisters but in pain!

Stalk and it´s enormous nest.

Every church has one or four!

Main piazza.

 

Erica

It is amazing how many people you meet on the camino and with one thing in common, we are all pilgrims. We are walking, no matter how long we walk or even if we are not going to Santiago in this trip (many pilgrims walk it in bits), this doesn´t matter, it´s the time you spend with them. This is what binds you together.

We met along the way the hilarious Erica from California. I mentioned her in my post Zariquiegui to Cirauqui but I felt the need to talk about her further. She is an environmetal engineer and I learnt some really cool stuff from her. We started talking about the subject of wind-turbines because in Spain they are every where. She explained she worked on a wind-turbine project in the North Sea. It is a popular place to put wind-turbines beacuse it is only 20m deep! They dig down 50m into the earth to anchor them there. There you go Mr Stokes, that ones for you!

Erica has a postitive view of everything about life and she was heaps of fun to walk with. She made the camino kilometres disappear and kept me laughing all the way.  I was having a bad day and Erica seemed to turn every little winge of mine into something positive and it made me think how negative I can be sometimes.

Erica bought her own style to the camino. She wears this huge red sombrero which you can spot a mile way and know it´s her coming over the hill. Her backpack is enormous, it is like a Mary Poppin´s bag, you never know what´s coming out next!

One night we spoilt our selves and had a break from the communal dormitaries and got a private room in a hotel, so I could finally have a private bathroom. Oh it was so nice but there was one thing wrong, it was only mum and I in one room and no other interesting pilgrims to talk to and find out their story. I don´t mean that mum´s company in not fun, we do always seem to crack up over something but it´s more interesting in a hostel because you meet people from all over the world. People have such interesting stories and they are all different in their own ways. This was when I missed Erica and I realised that it´s the people you meet on your journey that really make it special. I couldn´t believe I´m actually saying this but the next night I wanted to stay with my fellow befriended pilrims in a refugio.

Here is Erica bobbing infront of a stone shephard´s hut, with her huge pack but sin sombrero!



Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

We caught a bus from Logroño off the camino route to Bilbao to visit the famous Guggenheim museum. Wow what an amazing building designed by the American architect Frank Gherry, it really is a piece of art in itself. The thought that has gone into this building is unbelievable. The main centre foyer called the atrium, acts like the heart of the building, pumping people in and out of the different galleries and spaces that are all accessed from the atruim. The building is made up of three materials, glass, stone and titanium. The titanium sheets are like the skin of the building but then Gherry has designed it so the outside titanium comes inside the building, connecting the outside with the inside.

We did an audio tour with Frank Gherry speaking about the process of the design and what he was thinking. I found it interesting when he was talking about his first sketch of the building, he had no concept yet so he just let is pen flow and didn´t lift it off the paper. He was talking about how he likes free flowing and movement in his buildings and this shows in the Guggenheim because there is not straight lines in the building, everything is curved. This was difficult so they used robots to achieve this in the design.

Gherry even thought about the history of the city of Bilbao, which was a fishing and shipping town that sits right on a river. He wanted to create the effect of the building being a bit like a boat, so he bought the building closer to the river by creating the Water Garden, which is a 30cm deep pool that comes up to the side of the building, giving the illusion of the buliding almost floating on the river. He also wanted the building to come to the river, so he designed a walk bridge that go out across the river to have the effect of a bow of a boat over the water.

He wanted the building to sit within the landscape of the city, so from the centre of the atrium you can see both side of the city looking through glass on either side, connecting it. 

Gherry spoke about his facination with fish ever since he was young. The titanium sheets on the outside of the building overlap and connect like the scales of a fish. Gherry tells the story of his grandmother keeping live carp in the bathtub until she was ready to cook them and as a child Gherry would always play with them. This started his facination with fish.

Me outside this unbelievable building, on the bridge walkway infront of the water garden.

The atrium.

The American sculptor Jeff Koons has two amazing pieces here outside the Guggenheim. At the entrance you can´t miss Puppy, the gigantic west highland terrier made of a steel skelton, earth and growing flowers. At the moment it is spring so he was in full bloom with multi-coloured pansies. Although he is so massive, he is still so adorable and just a cute puppy.

Jeff Koons-York, Pennsylvania,1955.

Puppy-Stainless steel, soil, flowering plants. 1992.

1.240x830x910cm

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

In addition to Puppy, Jeff Koons also has created Tulips, a bouquet of multi-coloured balloon-like flowers that are in a huge form. From his Celebration series, this work looks like those long sausage balloons that are twisted into all different types of shapes at kids´ parties. In the same series, Koons also created Balloon Dogs and after seeing Tulips and their vibrant colours I really want to see one of them. Its facinating because they look so light like a balloon but are made from heavy high chromium stainless steel. They they look so shiney and smoothe, I just want to touch them!

Jeff Koons-York, Pennsylvania,1955.

Tulips-high chromium stainless steel with stransparent colour coating. 1995-2004.

203x460x520

Version 4/5

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

An amzing sculpture this time by the Indian artist Anish Kapoor. Tall Tree and the Eye is a sculpture of glassy bubbles placed in an asymmetrical way. It looks similar to Jeff Koons´ Tulips in its shiny, smooth, glossy exterior.

Anish Kapoor-Bombay, India, 1954.

Tall Tree and the Eye-Stainless steel and carbon steel. 2009.

14x6m

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

The Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya has a fog sculpture installation under the walk bridge. It gives off fog every 20 minutes or so and it moves around in what ever way the wind is blowing. The fog moves over the water garden, then the bridge and even towards the river, it come right up to the building. It gives the impression of the Guggenheim actually moving like a boat through the mist of the sea, almost spookey but awesome! I love this installation and it was one of my favourite things.  It is the perfect piece of art to go with Frank Gherry´s vision of his building having movement and this intallation just makes it complete.

Fujiko Nakaya-Sapporo, Japan, 1933.

Fog sculpture #08025 ¨F.O.G.¨ 1998

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

French sculpter Louise Bourgeous created Maman- french for mother, it is a massive 9m high bronze sculpture of a spider, which sits beside the Guggenheim on the banks of the river. She said ¨it is an ode to my mother who like a spider was a weaver, also a srong but fragile woman. Like a spider my mother was clever. Spiders are a friendly presents that eat mosquitos and we know mosquitos spread disease and are thereforë unwanted, so spiders are helpful and protective just like my mother¨.  Unfortuantly Louise Bourgeous died in 2010, she just missed out on turning 100!!

Louise Bourgeous-Paris, France, 1911-2010.

Mamam-Bronze. 1999.

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

This was a wonderful experience, a highlight so far and I wont forget it.

Cirauqui to Estella

Another gorgeous but hot day as we walked to the next stop Estella (pronounced: Eh-stay-yah) across an ancient Roman road that lead out of the town in the very early morning.

We saw a beautiful sunrise.

It´s pretty awesome walking on a thousand years of history and knowing that thousands of pilgrims have walked it before me. The trail is not particulaly beautiful today but it is nice to be in the country and listen to the birds tweet as I walk on by in the sunshine. I don´t often get the time to be out in nature with all my homework and stress, so it is a nice change but I´m super tired.

Me and the Roman bridge.

Ancient Roman road, you never know Julius Caesar might have walked on it!?



The Camino comes with ups and downs. The dormitory sleeping arrangement gross me out! I find it challenging to share unisex bathrooms with strangers. You can imagine the snoring, farting, burping, sleeptalking in other languages, coughing and splutering in a room of 30 people. I woke up at 3am and given it´s holy week, I thought it was a procession down the main street but it was the guy on the bunk below me giving off plenty of gas.


Later that morning we crossed an old bridge and I thought that I just had to make a cairn-a little monument that pilgrims add stones to as they pass. I have added stones to cairns before but never constructed one so I decided it was time.

Here I am with my cairn.

I had just finished my cairn when two Spanish men, pilgrims from Madrid came by, just at the time we needed it. Our snack supply had run out and they generously stuffed our faces full of their snacks of chocolate and nuts.

This leaves me wondering if these chocolate bearers might possibly have been in the 3am procession and I judged them too quickly. I am now trying not to judge people so quickly cause they might become your best friend. This also makes me recall how other people judge you quickly as well. Now I am a pilgrim, in the boots and Ivé got the pack, people do look at you in a different way, a way I´m not use to. In Spain walking the camino you get two differnet looks, a good and a bad. Some are in awe, they look up to you and bless you, and some say to you ¨please pray for me in Santiago¨, this in most cases is a wise old person who respects pilgrims. The other look is rude. Thinking that they are at a higher level than you; a dirty pilgrim. They don´t know where you come from or what you nomally wear but they still judge. You can imagine the looks I got when I stepped foot in the Chanel store in Paris, the staff were nice but it was the toffie customers who looked you up and down and I could tell what they were thinking, but they are wrong! And now I have experienced this, I am stopping myself judging people so quickly. The lessons here are: ´not to judge a book by it´s cover´and ´that things are not always as they appear´.

Adios!



Zariquiegui to Cirauqui

Hola,

It was a long 19.5km, in the heat and hills to Cirauqui, our next stop. The route to Puenta la Reina crosses a mountain ridge (the Alto de Perdon) with wind turbines at the top ruining the natural landscape and an interesting sculpture of the silhouettes of pilrims made from rusted iron. I was nearly blown off the ridge getting these photos!

Finger in the way!



Me posing as a pilgrim.

On the way we thought we´d do the Spanish thing and have a siesta. We stopped in the town of Puenta la Reina and had our snooze right by the famous medieval Puenta (bridge) on the Rio (river) Arga. It was built by the Royal Command in the 11th century. Nearby were some Spanish pilgrims who were also enjoying a siesta. We struggled to chat, their English was a bad as our Spanish, but we managed to understand that they had walking with their dog from Madrid up the Via de la Plate.

I´m loving these ancient doors and couldn´t resist a little rata-tat-tat during siesta!

The old narrow streets of these walled cities are gorgeous.

We hauled ourselves up the last killer hill in the good company of Erica, a fellow pilgrim who kept us laughing all the way and into Ciraqui in the early eve. We were told off in the nicest possible way by the Hospitalario, the warden of the refugio, for arriving so late and she warned us that we would risk sleeping in the street if we came to refugios this late in the day. So we needed to either walk faster or leave earlier. We missed the provided pilgrim dinner but luckily found a shop open and got some snacks of ricecrackers and tomatos. We were happy to share our little dinner with our befriended pilgims, funny Erica from California and big Dave from Ireland but even after 19 years there he still considers himself English. 

I am finding the walking hard. My feet are killing me, my sholders are sore from my heavy pack of about 6k. I don´t want to mention this to Mum cause she warned me about how things add up in weight but I snuck in a third pair of undies and of course I couldn´t live with our my face shrub, cleanser, pimple cream and moisturiser. Oh how my vanity is crushing me!

Adios!

Spain and the starting point:

Hi All,

We flew from Paris to Biaritz, taxied to Bayonne and then bused to St Jean Pied de Port to get our credencials-the official pilgrim passport that get stamped along the way-and started the Camino. We didn´t do the pyranees because we had not done enough training to conquer it so we taxied from St Jean to Pamploma and started from there.

This is the starting point on the Camino but we started in Pamploma instead.

These are the signs to point you in the right direction. It is kind of like orientering, looking for them. 

The Pyranees Moutains.

In Pamploma we saw a guy busking, we stopped, listened and tipped him.

Following the camino signs through the city of Pamploma.

We have now entered the region of Navarra.

The long dirt road ahead.

Fields of wheat line the path.

Here I am a walkin´!

In the Spanish sun.

These are the waymarkers that show you the path.