Friday again

As expected, we were busy today with mainly Spanish long weekenders and a sprinkling of Australian, Swiss, Italian and American pilgrims. 37 in all. Just when you think you know it all, something new comes along to teach you a whole lot of new lessons about life as a hospitalera. A large party of 4 Spanish families consisting of 10 noisy children and 8 adults arrived today. Barbara and I are so tired (too tired to even smile, as Barbara puts it) that we found them completely overwhelming and were not too happy with the way they overtook the place and changed its whole character with their noisy children running up and down the stairs and shouting to each other and we found it a struggle to be welcoming and accepting. We sort of judged them as weekend trippers. However, as it always happens, barriers are broken down over the dinner preparations of chopping, cutting and cleaning which they all joined in with marvellous enthusiasm from the youngest child to the oldest parent. It requires some team work and is an excellent team building exercise. One of the mothers assumed a supervisory role and took over the salad making and another one took over the cooking. Within a short space of time everyone was the best of friends and they noise level became less irritating and more jolly as everyone else joined in. Suddenly all began acting like true pilgrims. Even the children were so anxious to help. They sang some great national songs to us as well as pilgrim songs and created a very jolly atmosphere. We discovered that they started walking from Roncesvalles some years ago and walk a new stretch every year over long weekends. Easter is their next walking weekend. What is even more humbling is the profuse thanks we have had from them for helping their children experience being part of the Camino community and being able to break bread and share with other pilgrims. Tomorrow they set off for Tosantos. This has been quite a steep lesson for us in treating all pilgrims as equal in making them feel welcome. Barbara and I are mortified about how we had prejudged them and that we were reluctant to put out the welcoming mat and we certainly did not extend our warm hospitality to them in the same way that we do to other pilgrims. We are so glad that we had the opportunity to turn the situation around so that by the end of the evening they had felt that they had experienced the true spirit of the Camino and we could see how genuine and sincere they are. The lesson for us was not to make any judgments about any pilgrim along the road and to extend the same level of courtesy and love to all (except it was a bit hard with one old Italian pilgrim who definitely needed to take a shower!).
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