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The Way of the Octopus in Galicia — Page 2
Story and photos by Beebe Bahrami

Soon, wooden plates piled with pulpo á feira, crispy fries, and pimientos de Padrón arrived, along with a white ceramic jug of the house wine—a local unlabeled production of the crisp, effervescent, sea-salt-and-granite Albariño grape. Our waitress poured it into wide-mouthed ceramic goblets. As we lifted our clay chalices, the whole bar raised theirs and made eye contact with us and uttered a robust toast before returning to their merrymaking. I drank and then took my first virgin bite of octopus.

It was tender and rubbery at once and immediately made my taste buds open up with pleasure to their firm but almost-oystery flesh and the perfect balance with the smoked paprika. I tried a pimiento de Padrón and then chased it with a fry and took another sip of wine. Sea and land made love in my mouth, the octopus tentacles wrapped tenderly around the grape vines, peppers, and potatoes.

The next morning was Sunday and Sunday in Padrón is both church day and market day and not in that order. Our hostess had already done her market shopping when we arose and took us with her to church to see the post where Saint James’ purported boat from the Holy Land had moored. She then let us loose in the market.

Along a spacious common park, rows of merchants had set up their wares, farmers had piled their produce on long tables, and fisherman had arrayed their catch, including a sinuous row of just kissed, or spiked, octopuses. From the park center we saw steam rising and walked toward it, huge pots on single burners under large white canopies. A person at each cauldron stirred while another pulled out a well boiled creature, cut its legs into disks with scissors, and seasoned them with oil, pimentón, and salt and then poured red wine into ceramic goblets and took the order with a basket of thick slices of rustic bread to a waiting table nearby. For the non-wine-and-pulpo-for-breakfast-crowd, a nearby vat of hot oil churned out coiled arms of churros and served them with thick hot chocolate or strong dark coffee.

Over churros and pulpo, coffee and wine, we determined to make good on our intention to head to Santiago de Compostela and catch the next bus heading that way.

But.

As the bus entered more deeply into that jutting finger of land out into the ocean, the land touching the deep blue Atlantic the way God touches Adam’s finger in Michelangelo’s masterpiece, ethereal light radiating off of both water and earth as in a Maxfield Parish landscape, mesmerized, hypnotized, and obsessed by this unreal earthly beauty, we both felt in our limbs and I heard myself say, “stop the bus.” We got off in the middle of nowhere, the driver shaking his head, but at least delivering no expletives.

Water and Manna in the Wilderness

Only after the bus departed did we realize what royal idiots we were. We had no idea where we were and no food and worse, no water.

Miles, being the more optimistic member of our team, said, “Don’t worry. This here is a pilgrimage, right? Let’s trust the path to give us what we need when we need it.”

With that sketchy plan, we began to walk. Three hours later, seeing no one and no café, feeling the increasingly dry texture in my throat, I began to doubt Miles’ approach. Right then, a woman drove past and stopped her car on the roadside to check on something. I took that chance to hail her and ask where we could find water and food.

“You’re in the middle of a protected natural park,” she said, “so not very near here. Except,” she smiled, and got out of her car and opened the trunk and took out a large unopened bottle of mineral water and two sandwiches. She had just done her shopping and, thinking of going for a hike later in the day, on a whim, had picked up the bocadillos. They were ours and she refused any payment. “This is pilgrimage,” she said and drove off.

This is pilgrimage. Christened pilgrims here on this wild finger of land in the middle of nowhere was a game changer for me, the moment that turned me into a lifelong pilgrim. But that is another story.

Gratefully hydrated and nourished, we walked more deeply into that park and our path. We saw no one. We passed through wild coastal lands with no human occupation and along scalloped beaches covered in colorful shells and wind-polished boulders that felt good to the touch in the warm sun. As the day grew long, we began to worry about finding a place to sleep for the night, and a good meal for dinner. We were on a remote dirt road and walking through green forest when a clustered hamlet of gray granite stone homes appeared in the crook. And like a mirage that grew larger as we neared, four women—three in black and the youngest in bright colors—walked toward us, arms interlinked, across the narrow road.

Out for their late afternoon constitutional, they saw us a few hundred meters before we arrived in their slate-roofed village and were curious about who were these two bedraggled, definitely lost, strangers. They reached us and their chain circled and closed around us, a circle made up of a great grandmother, grandmother, mother, and teenage daughter. Here was a creature like the octopus, with eight arms and four, not three, hearts. The eldest spoke.

“My god, you two are a sight, like what my cat drags home after a night of hunting. Where are you coming from?”

“Padrón.” I said.

“Why would you do that?” She asked.

“Adventure,” I began, and saw the granddaughter smiled, “and to experience the real land and people,” I finished. The other three smiled. They decided to help us. They directed us to the seaside settlement of Corrubedo, five kilometers away. The inns were all closed out here, until the summer, but they knew one particular innkeeper, a husband and wife, who would likely open a room in their hotel for the night. 

We found the innkeepers. Horrified we might sleep out of doors that night, they not only opened a room for us, apologizing profusely that it would have only cold water this time of year, but also insisted we join them for a simple dinner.

We enjoyed freshly caught grilled red snapper fished out of the Atlantic that day by the husband, and just plucked and pulled red peppers and potatoes from the garden and fried in olive oil. We sat to the sumptuous feast and I wondered what she meant by “simple” as she poured from a jug of their homemade wine.

We slept deeply and well and after a breakfast of thickly buttered slices of rye bread with strong coffee and whole milk, our hostess directed us to the granite boulder on the side of the road.

The bus arrived.

The fisherman let us board first before stepping up and handing over lunch. The driver thanked him, asked after his mother-in-law, said they’d be by on the weekend for Sunday lunch—everything has to do with eating and eating well—and after asking about the night’s fishing conditions, let his brother-in-law head home and to bed.

The driver set the octopuses gently in an indentation to his left side between his window and the steering wheel, closed the door, and made for Noah and then Saint James.

In Santiago de Compostela, pulpo were arrayed in nearly every other window of the streets lined with bars and restaurant. They looked like pink wigs in a costume shop window, their cooked bodies inverted over a large vase to hide the bulbous body and array the eight legs like overflowing rose toned tresses.

And though they tasted good, they lacked the immediacy of where they had come from or the hands of the sashimi-scented man who had fished them out from the sea. It was then that I realized two things from the journey. That real nourishment came from contact with the land and sea and the people who worked directly in it. And that Saint James was not here in the cathedral tomb, but out there, his boat lapping along the shore, his fishing nets casting out onto the abundant sea, and his trail magic opening doors, and trunks, and arm-linked guidance and generosity.

Beebe Bahrami is a freelance writer, anthropologist, and author of two travel memoirs set in France, Café Oc—A Nomad’s Tales of Finding Home in the Dordogne of Southwestern France and Café Neandertal—Excavating the Past in One of Europe’s Most Ancient Places, and several travel guides, including the forthcoming Moon Camino de Santiago. In addition to here, her work also appears in Wine Enthusiast, Archaeology, The Bark, National Geographic books, Michelin Green Guides, and the Pennsylvania Gazette, among others. Read her work at Beebebahrami.weebly.com.

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Related Features:
Trail Magic on the Way of Saint James - Beebe Bahrami
How to Accept Your Donkey - Robert Reid
On Beauty and Foie Gras in Southwestern France - Beebe Bahrami
Untitled Story, from Asolo, Italy - Edward Readicker-Henderson


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