{"id":3291,"date":"2014-08-01T17:35:13","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T17:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3291"},"modified":"2014-08-01T17:35:13","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T17:35:13","slug":"the-80-km-7-day-hike-from-lisbon-to-fatima-by-bernie-lopez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=3291","title":{"rendered":"The 80-km 7-day hike from Lisbon to Fatima by Bernie Lopez"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Filipino author hitchhiked 25,000 kilo\u00admeters, drifting through 18 countries in Europe and North Africa for 3 years. This is a true story, excerpts from an upcoming book Wings and Wanderlust.<\/em><\/p>\n

New York City is a paradox. It is for the best of the best \u2014 musicians, actors, writers. It is also for the worst of the worst \u2014 derelicts, drug addicts, crime gangs. Or perhaps it was I who was a paradox. In spite of enjoying it, I hated New York. I was searching for something spiritual. Yet, how could I find it, when I was so decadent? Some of the things I did cannot be written here.<\/p>\n

New York was a spiritual desert for me, a dead end. But that was me. New York is actually neutral. It is what you make of it. It is really up to you. And so I left New York. I wanted to drift through Europe to \u201clook for myself\u201d. [The penname] Eastwind was born not because of a romantic dream but an escape from the spiritual desert. I took a plane to Brussels, the starting point, and the end point after 3-odd years on a tailspin.<\/p>\n

After six months on the road from Brussels to Canary Islands on a frenzied pace, I hit Lisbon like a lightning bolt. It was time to stop soaring and to start gliding gently. I embarked on a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Fatima, a 7-day 80-kilometer hike from Lisbon. This was the time of meditation and soul searching, to pray that I could \u201cfind myself\u201d somehow, to pray for light in an era of darkness. This pilgrimage was an important phase of my adventure. After the spiri\u00adtual desert of New York, I wandered aimlessly, looking for an oasis somewhere in the vastness.<\/p>\n

I left half of my things in Lisbon, keeping my backpack weight to 1.5 kilos for the long distance hike on beach san\u00addals. I had a sleeping bag, no tent (my guardian angel made sure it would not rain, except a drizzle on day 4), no cooking gear, extra pants and shirt, wine skin bag, matches and candle (no flashlight), a map, and food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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I took the bus to the outskirts of Lisbon. As I walked north, the city gradually faded; the traffic vanished; the noise dwindled. I was tired at the end of day 1, but it was good for the soul. After dinner, I slept early. I slept in the open air most of the time, anywhere convenient in the farm fields. In the early morning of day 2, I was in the purity and magic of the Portuguese country\u00adside. All of a sudden, there were quaint villages. The road narrowed but never ended.<\/p>\n

I prayed the rosary about 4 times a day. I did about 2 kilo\u00admeters per hour, or one kilometer in 20 to 30 minutes. I walked about 5 to 6 hours or 10 kilometers a day, minus rest and lunch, from seven in the morning to five in the afternoon. I hiked the 80 kilometers to Fatima in seven days.<\/p>\n

In the morning of day 2, I brushed my teeth in a quaint village fountain at the cen\u00adtral plaza, as if it were my hotel suite. I awoke at six o\u2019clock and did not have breakfast until nine. I bought provisions in small village stores, fresh fruits, bread, tomatoes, sausages, and occasional canned sardines, a luxury item. I pre\u00adferred milk from wine in my skin bag during this gruel\u00adling work out.<\/p>\n

On day 3, entering a small village, a bunch of children ran to greet me. They were all shouting \u201cPeregrino, peregrino<\/em>\u201d (pilgrim). They crowded each other, giggling and staring at me. They suddenly dis\u00adpersed into a nearby orchard, and came back with 2 kilos of peaches. I could only take half a kilo. An old woman came out of a house, shouting at the children. They stole the peaches, I surmised. I waved and smiled at her. Her anger dissipated into a smile. I had to eat them right away because they were getting heavy. The children followed me to the edge of the village. They were singing and shouting and I felt embarrassed because people would come out of their houses and stare. After the village, the silence screamed at me.<\/p>\n

At late afternoon of day 4, it started drizzling. I saw a sheep shed. It smelled a bit of sheep shit, but I had no choice. The farmer let me sleep there. I remem\u00adbered Jesus born in a manger inside such a barn. Imagine, the Creator of the Universe in a sheep\u2019s cot. Now I prayed to Him to guide me, not so much to Fatima as I knew the way, but to the cruel world out there as I did not know the way.<\/p>\n

On day 5, I spent the night under an olive tree on top of a knoll. I could see the panorama of the valley below, olive trees all around, reminding me of Gethsemane. There was a stone fence down below twisting and turning, vanishing into the bluish mist. It looked like a paint\u00ading. I heard the faint peal of sheep bells. I wondered if the bells were tolling for me, not for the end but for the beginning of my life.<\/p>\n

It was here that Our Lady of Fatima gave me the gift of inner peace. It was overwhelming. I was almost in tears. It was my \u2018reward\u2019 from Our Lady, her way of showing her pres\u00adence. The moment was intense and magical. I can never forget that feeling because it was so clear, so overpowering, and so rare in a lifetime full of schedules and tasks and storms and whirlwinds.<\/p>\n

On day 6, my pace was faster to make it to Fatima by day 7. There it was at a distance, the gothic spires reaching up to the heavens. I reached Fatima at night, and ended up sleeping outside the giant portals of the church. Every hour, until dawn, the huge bells rang and echoed in my soul. I could hardly sleep.<\/p>\n

At the crack of dawn of day 7, I was up, afraid the early church goers might see me sprawled at the door step of the church. Everything was grey and misty. At a dis\u00adtance, I dis\u00adcerned a crowd. It was an early out\u00addoor Mass near where they had a spring of the miraculous water that had cured thousands of people in the last few decades. After Mass, I put some water from the spring on my forehead. That was the end of the pil\u00adgrimage. I was not expecting any miracles. After the pilgrimage, I was no longer worried about \u201cfinding myself\u201d. I somehow knew it would come in its own time, this self-discovery. After the pilgrimage, I knew eastwind<\/em> would end in a nice way. I lost my angst at Fatima. I would later on write many articles on Fatima.<\/p>\n

It was strange. I could go from total dark\u00adness to blinding light without flinching. It was as if I was longing for it and was expecting it. It was like the ice-water shower after half an hour in the steam room at Amsterdam\u2019s Melkeweg. Life on the road was a pendulum swing, from the chaos of Las Palmas to the serenity of the Papagayo <\/em>cave, from passion with Vicky to prayer at Fatima, from total solitude in Madrid to total immer\u00adsion in Andorra. I took the bus back to Lisbon, picked up my stuff, and hitched north with my guitar towards Coimbra and Santander and the mystique of the Basque people. I was sporting a brand-new soul. (<\/strong>eastwindreplyctr@gmail.com<\/strong><\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Filipino author hitchhiked 25,000 kilo\u00admeters, drifting through 18 countries in Europe and North Africa for 3 years. This is a true story, excerpts from an upcoming book Wings and Wanderlust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,78],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}