The Wild Horses of the Primitivo

The most famous (Or infamous) stage of Camino Primitivo is Campiello to Berducerdo. There are two paths and once again the beautiful path is a grueling one. My Camino family opted to go a couple kilometers further the day before, so we started our day in Borres. I knew that my normal 1L bottle of water was going to cut it for today, so I also carried an additional 1.5L. This stage was to feature a long stretch with very little coverage from the sun and nowhere to fill up my water.

Right near the albergue I spotted some cats enjoying the view. One thing that consistently slowed me down on the Camino were my stops to photograph animals.

The etapa started out with a steep climb out of Borres, a town that appeared to have roughly 6 houses. It probably wasn’t smart to have a Camino Fam party the night before the hardest stage of the entire Camino. A pilgrim who shall remain unnamed had to “Call Rauuuuul,” which is my new favorite euphemism for vomiting.

The route we chose to walk is called Los Hospidales because it it passes through four medieval hospitals. More accurately, it passes through the sites of four medieval hospitals. It was not clear to me why the hospitals were in such remote mountainous locations but I’m sure they had their reasons. The view as we climbed higher and higher was astonishing. It was hard work, and the rocky path was particularly hard on the soles of my feet.

I thought I would spend this etapa alone in the vast wilderness of this mountainous region of Asturias. The wide open stretches also made it possible to see most of the people ahead, creating the illusion that there were far more people on the route than there actually were. As I would later learn when I arrived at Camino Francés, busy is relative.

We passed by the different hospitals as we walked. Some of them would be impossible to notice were it not for the signs placed there.

We had heard about the wild horses on this route, but were told that they can be quite rare. During one of the ascents we saw a bunch of horses, but they didn’t look very wild standing next to a metal pen. When we first caught a glimpse of the wild horses it knocked the wind out of me. We passed by two groups of wild horses before coming across a herd near a water source just off the Camino. I stood there with Kath and Andrés, just taking in the view of the gorgeous creatures. Since it was spring, there were a number of foals in the herd. Watching these very young foals clumsily run around was extremely cute.

There wasn’t much shade on this route, so when we found a tree we immediately took the opportunity to stop for some lunch. We knew this was coming, but as we spent so much of the morning ascending, we were of course due for some steep descents. The sun was at its absolute hottest and we had to be really careful with the loose rocks that we wouldn’t slip while descending. I go back-and-forth on whether or not I hate going up a steep hill or going down a steep hill, and it usually depends on which I’m doing at any given time. Going up is obviously very strenuous from a cardiovascular perspective but going down makes me question whether or not I’m doing longterm damage to my joints. The sticks I reluctantly bought in Bilbao certainly came in handy.

It was as I was exciting this route that I had one of my most surreal encounters with wildlife during my Camino. A cow started posturing aggressively toward me while I was walking along the path. This might not sound scary but like many cattle breeds in Spain, it had gigantic horns. It bent forward to point its horns right at me and pawed the ground with its front hooves just like they do in the movies. I slowly walked back and put a tree between the cow and me. Kathleen was right behind me and we both paused for a minute before making our move. Andrés shrugged at us from the other side, he had no issues with the cow. Kathleen and I walked below the path and carefully watched the cow for any signs for aggression. We passed the cow safely.

Andrés enjoyed this show safely from the other side and quipped, “I had no problem with this cow. Why didn’t it like you? Were you singing?” This was a ridiculous question because there’s no way a cow could be triggered by ABBA.

I had long run out of water and was getting extremely dehydrated. We were arriving at a town called Lago that, according to the Buen Camino app, supposedly had some sort of bar/cafe. It did not. We were still 5km away from our intended destination of Berducedo. I was not going to walk any further until we figured out how we were going to get some water. We spotted van delivering some sort of kitchen appliance to a house. We patiently waited for the right moment and then Andrés asked in Spanish if someone could refill our water bottles. When an eldery man returned with our three full water bottles I actually had to stop myself from drinking the entire 1.5L so I would have some water for the next 5km. (Authors note: I’m not using the metric system to be pretentious, I swear!)

When we got to Berducedo everywhere worth staying was full, mostly due to reservations. We debated overpaying for a bad albergue or walking the additional 4.5km to La Mesa. We all figuratively held hands and went the extra distance to the town of La Mesa. We celebrated with vino and a 3-course pilgrim menu.