Cast of Characters

It's time to get to know some of the characters of The Begining of El Camino...get in a cozy chair and walk backwards in time down the Camino with me to Logrono...city of cafe's and pinchos and narrow streets.  Also, Papi Chulo, Alessea, Ulrik, David, and Ima, who had already left for home when this photo was taken.  

Papi Chulo was a doctor from Italy.  He carried a backpack that was more of a portable pharmacy than ruksack and wore all red, all the time.  PC was fond of showing us hand signs that meant, "You asshole, your wife is sleeping with another man."  He could also drink any of us under the table with a smile on his face, which is probably why he has that knowing and whimsical look in this photo.

Alessea was his long suffering and extremely tall, daughter.  She loved the equality of everyone on the Camino and was always prepared to let Papi Chulo indulge in his childlike wanderlust and demanding desires.  Her usual facial expression was one of bemused tolerance. She called her father Eduardo. She loved her job as an HR manager and general over-lordess and you could tell that everyone liked her right back.

David, the caballero sin caballo, never knew what he wanted if he could have anything and was fond of calling me 'una mystica'.  He loved Cataluna with all the passion his heart could muster and would spend hours talking about Barca and football with Ulrik. David was full of witty spanish one liners like, "Chulo chulo, mi pidulo" which roughly means, "Cool, cool, my dick."  

He and Ima were our fearless guides and translators for the first week until they and PC and Alessea had to leave at the end of Semana Santa.  David would occasionally wear his boxers on his head in the Albergues and liked to run marathons, but thought he was out of shape.

He loved Ulrik and Ulrik loved him. They were like a pair of best dog buddies who you knew would rip up chickens together and run to the ends of the earth howling with glee.

Ulrik, whom you have met before, Danish folk singer and attache from day 2 in Zubiri, was clearly not from this planet.  He was fond of playing his tiny guitarlele and gazing dreamily and lovingly at whatever his eyes beheld.  Though from Roskilde, he spoke English like an American and had a passionate adoration of the clawhammer banjo,  Hank Williams III, whom he called Hank III, and teaching me swear words in Danish like, "Run for fuck's sake, bitch".  He would move his mouth very slowly and precisely to show me how to say hard Danish words like Rød, and never acted like he was 22.  

He also developed a strange and troubling skin affliction on his hands that lasted the entire Camino.  He took cortisone from Papi Chulo, rubbed iodine on them, tried benadryl and anything else people might suggest.  No one knew he had chillblains until a couple days before the end of the trail.  He refused to see a doctor right up to the end.  He may have been from Jupiter.

And then there was Ima, mother to all and eternally young beauty.  At 37, all she had to do really, was just smile and make us all fall in love with her a little more. However, she never rested on her youthful laurels.  She was fond of making sure we were all ok, seeing the sights, and telling stories about our lives.  She lived in Tortossa and was a teacher who travelled the world in the summers, visiting places like Nepal and Africa. She communicated in the universal language of love.  Full stop.

There was Hanne the Dane whom everyone called Hannah Montana, and I met her in a herd of Danes one morning on the way out of Larrasoana.  She could walk faster than anyone I met and was on her second Camino.  Hanne had just started opening to the universe and magic and energy and moving with initiative through the world instead of always reacting.  She was probably half wood nymph and even though we only had a few hours on the trail together, she was one who lingered in the heart long after.  It wasn't until Santiago that I saw her again, but since coming to Denmark, we have corresponded and seen each other several times, so the story continues long after the walking stopped.  Hanne trains for triathalons, but I didn't know that then.







Then there were Max and Sana, two Germans who were walking for reasons I still don't entirely know.  I only know that Max was a fuzzy bear and Sana, a tomboy princess.  Together, they were like a walking fairy tale where the world doesn't know that they are royalty and only discovers it in the end, after trials and tribulations that they undergo with grace.  The last day in Santiago, I was wishing I could see them again.  I turned a corner and there they were, standing in front of a shop.  They told me I was the one person they hoped to see before they left the Camino and we have been in touch several times since.  They live in Lubeck, which is only 300km from Aarhus.  We will definitely see them on scene again. Max is the tall guy and Sana, the girl on the right.





Thus began the first week of Camino.  May it live a thousand years.