The first stage of the Camino’s “French Way” between St. Jean Pied de Port and Roncevalles is known as the Napoleon Route. Steep and challenging, this is the climb the French general’s army undertook in 1808 to enter Spain during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Not long after, the future self-crowned emperor, marching his way around Europe to expand the borders of France, made darn sure to annex-in a slice of Switzerland that seriously, who wouldn’t want? That prize, in the Upper Valais, lorded over by the Matterhorn, contained a town that even in his day captured the imagination: Zermatt. Once upon a time a pastoral oasis of pastures and crops that the mad-about-mountaineering British transformed into a sporty resort, Napoleon’s plum pick of places didn’t portend a satisfying, sweaty climb on the Camino, but still: the very idea that “the little corporal” had to have it gave me confidence I would still be on the Way, loosely speaking, if Candy and I parked our car in Täsch, a town away, and took the train there, per the protocol. Entirely car-free, Zermatt runs on golf carts dolled up as hotel shuttles and taxis – and pedestrians. So, again beasts of burden with our ski gear and bags, we soon were all aboard the pristine-clean, shiny-red train that whooshed us up into the fairyland that nearly every US ski resort has tried to replicate. Yet, unlike the fake alpine villages and faux European squares of our acquaintance, Zermatt was so real, so true, so authentic, that disembarking we could barely contain our wonder.
“Pinch me!!” Normally chatty Candy had no words at first sight of it all. The genuine chalets of wood dating from the 15th or 17th centuries; the cobbled lanes along the fast-flowing Gorner river; the bars and restaurants, hotels and inns of styles original to the days when mule tracks and huts defined the town’s life. No fake copycat we had ever known felt so fabulous.
“Is this for real?” The golfcart/taxi ferrying us and our gear hummed its electric way to our spa-hotel; it, like much of Zermatt, promised to be Swiss-modern, Swiss-clean, Swiss-chic, and surely needed only kitty Camino to rampage around our room for it to feel flawless. The two of us buzzed with excited anticipation, that is, until a text arrived from Fatma – the first of her how-it’s-going photos. My heart stopped.
“Does this look like things are fine, or is this a cry for help?” The photo showed Camino at the tippy-top of a curtain he had climbed, fine shreds showing in the fabric.
“Fatma is a professional,” said Candy, leaning toward things being fine. “She knows how to handle a kitten his age.”
“But he’s Spanish!” We glided past a view of the ski area – a spectacle of high-speed gondolas that appeared to be the absolute latest in storied Swiss engineering. “How will someone from Turkey understand him?” Fatma’s photo also gave a glimpse of sofa – velvety rich and sumptuous like a sultan would like, with gilded gewgaws for arms and, beside it, a golden lamp as ornate as an Ottoman empire art piece. My sister was too enthralled by the natural wonder that is synonymous with Zermatt – the Matterhorn – to comment, and really, I had to admit the legendary pyramidal peak rising 14, 692 feet into God’s heavenly-blue sky was quite a stunning sight. I would reply to Fatma in time. At the spa hotel our golf cart disgorged us: our Zermatt odyssey had begun.
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Candy was honest-to-God on her way to Italy before I could stop her. To ski Zermatt is to experience 98 square miles of glaciers, glades, and alpine valleys blessed with 120 miles of skiable slopes and 76 trails; one run alone is 16 miles long. My sister had cleared the ridge that kicks off the 16-miler that ends in the Italian resort of Cervinia (where the limoncello is supposedly luscious) and, if she hadn’t heard my frantic yelps to stop and wild gestures to climb back up, would have found herself – who knows? Cervinia was not on our ski pass, so perhaps the ski polizia would have seized her. Zermatt is like that: an adventure. Six cable cars, 18 gondolas/chairlifts, two funiculars, and a cogwheel train – a train! – exist to lift you, whisk you, rail-you, and even choo-choo you around a resort whose runs swoop by restaurants mid-slope where children’s-book heroine Heidi would feel at home. That “girl of the Alps,” a throw-back this cold January day to Candy with her ski-girl braids, might have agreed with us as we skied around, contemplating a stop: the real Swiss fondue on offer at the restaurant Finderlof was sure to be the most deliriously delectable thing to order since we just missed Italy for lunch.
“Can you imagine? If it weren’t for Camino, today you might have been in Spain, trying to find something to eat that wasn’t ham.” My sister and I were seated on deckchairs with genuine sheepskins thrown over them for comfort, and the gourmet Finderlof lunch menu (porcini mushroom risotto, black-truffle ravioli, spaghetti aglio e olio) spoke of zero suffering. For dessert there was even warm rhubarb compote with vanilla and cinnamon ice cream. The Matterhorn smiled down upon us, and we, like true Zermatters, took the sun on the terrace of an old-wood structure probably a stable in the 17th century, rested our ski legs, and dreamily mused: does it ever get better than this?
“Speaking of Spain, the trekkers ought to be closing in on Santiago de Compostela pretty soon,” I said, over yet another forkful of drooling, wine-rich fondue, probably my fourteenth. “I’d like to check in, to see how they’re doing.”
Angela Leslee, somewhere outside the town of Melide, is trying to be brave as her alber-goo’s pilgrim dinner is served with pride, for upon her plate is the cultural emblem of the Galicia region of northern Spain: pulpo. This culinary jewel consists of “chunks of off-putting octopus legs, complete with suckers on the bottom,” she reports. “They taste like greasy pencil erasers, and I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around eating what I know to be a very intelligent creature.” What’s more, the Coca-Cola she ordered as a special treat after a hard day’s hike isn’t tasting that great. “A few sips in,” she says, “I get a vision of a burly guy, with hard, calloused hands, pouring it on a trailer hitch to get the rust off.”
Meanwhile, Bill Bennett blogs-in from Basque country, which is, he posts, “that unique part of Spain just behind San Sebastian and west of the French border where the language is different, the culture is different, and the cuisine is definitely different.” When in Basque-land, do as the Basque, he figures, and helps himself to some apple cider, the region’s specialty known locally as sidre. He finds it cold, fizzy, sweet, delicious, and hears not when told it is also alcoholic. “Basque sidre packs a subtle punch,” he cautions his readers. “But when you have four Basque sidres, four HUGE Basque sidres, the punch loses its subtlety. So, by the time I walked out of that bar, I was smashed.”
Bill regrets his indulgence, for how would this boozy interlude interact with the Ibuprofen he was taking three times a day for knee pain – “the kind of dosage vets would give horses?” But Angela is grateful to hers, for it helps her get through the pulpo unpleasantness. Thank goodness that, she notes, “with enough of this delicious sangria, I will stop caring pretty soon” that she is eating a creature she might otherwise befriend and admire if they had met in the wild.
Here in Zermatt, Bill’s and Angela’s adventures certainly sounded miserable in the context of our own warm rhubarb compote-provided well-being, so as we again hit the slopes to ski and ski with all the gusto and gratitude for a place not Spain that still meant pilgrimage, I sent them and my fellow trekkers vibes I hoped they’d feel.
Bon courage! They always say this in France to mean, hang in there, a little pulpo and booze won’t hurt you. I look forward to joining you soon…that is, if Zermatt doesn’t prove to my sister and me that heaven is real and really, as long as we’re already here, let’s just stay forever.
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