Pilgrim hostels, also known as albergues de peregrinos are the accomodations reserved for pilgrims walking El Camino. In order to gain access to an albergue a pilgrim passport (also known as a credencial) as well as a government issued passport are required to be shown. There are albergues typically every 10-20 kilometers and most are directly on the El Camino route, although a few are a small distance away . The albergues are generally bunkbed dorm style rooms but they vary, some variation for good and others not so much.
There is a definite rhythm to staying in an albergue. When arriving at an albergue after checking in the receptionist often assigned me a bunkbed number. Generally a bottom bunk was considered preferable, because the last thing that I (or my fellow pilgrims) wanted to do at the end of a long walk was climb a ladder to get into and out of bed. Some of the top bunks didn’t have any side rails or the side rails were very partial and shallow. I heard of pilgrims falling out of top bunks with hard thuds in the middle of the night. There were rumors of a pilgrim that fell out of her bunk and broke her arm, although this is not verifiable and it may be part of pilgrim myths and folklore.
The bottom bunk however was not always preferable. There were a couple of times when I crawled into a bottom bunk and had to immediately switch to a top bunk because I felt like I was in a coffin, the top bunk was so close to me that I was afraid that I would be squashed in the night. When I couldn’t change from a claustrophobic bottom bunk I dreamt of small spaces, crowded elevators, clown cars, telephone booths, and caves in vivid various crushing scenarios.
Many albergues provide plastic sheets and pillow cases to put over the actual mattress and pillow. The plastic covers were a weird medical plastic fabric that remind me of disposable examination gowns. They crinkled in a similar way. After I spread out my sleeping bag liner on my assigned bunk (over top of the mattress cover if provided) I headed to the shower.
Gratefully, every pilgrim hostel that I stayed at had hot water. The dispensing method of the aforementioned hot water was variable. Most places dispensed the water in limited doses. Each dose of water required a button to be pushed. It was a joyous moment in my pilgrim day when I arrived at an Albergue where the shower would stay on for as long as I wanted. The other problem that I often ran into with the showers (and bathrooms in general) was that with the energy efficient culture of Spain most of the lights were on motion censors. I got caught in a shower while wet and covered in soap lather and then suddenly the lights went out more than once. It was actually such a frequent occurrence that I started to check where the motion censors were before I got naked so I could whip my towel around in the general direction of the motion censor to motion the lights back on.
After taking a shower I then needed to clean my clothes. Many of the municipal albergues were extremely basic and had limited facilities which meant that I washed my clothes by hand on a washboard. At the albergues there were deep sinks with washboards built into the sinks. The water ran out of my clothes a dirty grey-brown through the washboard groves and down the drain. The level of my daily filth never ceased to amaze. I scrubbed each clothing item multiple times on the washboard and then rinsed. I found that the best soap for my laundry was plain bar soap. Several of the albergues had bristle brushes as a washing aid that proved useful. I never mastered the washing. I felt like I had just taken a few layers of dust off but I wasn’t ever able to achieve a true clean. The scent of my stink lingered in the fabrics, faint but present. Some of the albergues had washing machines but they were expensive (generally 3-4 euro for a wash and another 3-4 euro for a dry). A couple of times I broke down and washed my clothes in a machine, but generally my frugality (others have called this ‘being cheap’) prevailed.
After washing my clothes came the drying. I would wring and wring to get as much of the water out of each clothing item as possible before line drying. Some of the albergues had drying racks, which were awesome because the clothes tended to stay on the drying racks better than the drying lines which often were very bouncy and would sag in the middle with the weight of clothes. If a fellow pilgrim was not careful laundry would often go flying off the line into the dirt or on to the pavement below. I had six clothes pins, however when I started wearing multiple socks each day I would have more clothing items than pins. I got creative with using one clothes pin to hold two clothing items and link my laundry together, the edge of one sock overlapping my pants and getting a single clothes pin.
Almost all of the albergues had WIFI, or at least they advertised that they did. I think that there were certain limitations on the number of users allowed to be online at a time so there were several occasions that I had difficulty with getting on-line to upload photos, update my blog or check my e-mail. This was irritating and inconvenient. I had gotten into the habit of uploading daily updates and I didn’t want people to worry about me when that pattern was broken. I realized that it was probably just my parents that were worried, but still.
The rest of the evening at an albergue was devoted to preparing food or finding a place nearby to eat. If there were limited eating options in the town or village that I was staying in I would typically purchase a can of beans and some tomatoes or mushrooms from the local supermarket and prepare a simple meal in the albergue kitchen. Many other pilgrims would make pasta or rice, some were very creative with various egg dishes but the majority were single pan style meals that required minimal clean up.
The smells in the albergues can only be described as complex and layered. Onion or garlic from a pilgrim cooking. Body odor in various degrees of ripeness. Earthy dirt being tracked in on shoes. Flatulence. Tiger balm, so much tiger balm in all its mentholated glory, and Vaseline. I appreciated the albergues that had air freshener a or that had burned incense prior to the pilgrim’s arrival, a pleasant addition to the olfactory experience.
Around 10pm there was an unwritten expectation that pilgrims were in bed with the lights out. Some of the albergues actually had rules around this, others were more lax and lenient. This is when the cacophony of snoring began. I had never heard so many different snorers in my life. The wispy light breathing snorers, the snort and gasp snorers, the rumbling train snorers. Intermixed with the snoring sounds were the squeaking bed noises. Inevitably the bunkbeds would squeak every time a pilgrim rolled over or shifted sleeping positions. Earplugs were often inadequate. My noise cancelling headphones, a last minute addition to my pack, were amazing and helped me block the night time cacophony in the albergue.
The morning was its own type of dissonant symphony that generally began around 5:30am. A phone alarm. Someone grunting to get out of a top bunk. Flip flops slapping against the bottoms of feet on the way to the bathroom. A phone alarm a second time. And then the pack rustling. A Ziploc bag being shut. A plastic food bag being opened and closed again. The zipping of zippers, a whole variety of pitches and sounds from small pants zippers to large pack zippers. The clang of metal of walking sticks against each other. A thud of something being dropped. Small moans from pilgrims still trying to sleep and the bed squeaking when they rolled over forcefully away from the light. I generally would haul myself out of bed around 6:30am when I finally accepted that I was awake and the morning cacophony volume was continuing to amplify.
And then I started another day of walking and I wondered what the next albergue would be like at the end of that days travels.