cell phones

[Robert Spenger]

Since I was traveling alone and my wife was home alone, I felt that the
least I could do was to call in every couple of days or so to let her know
that I was still among the living. This wasn't always easy, especially
since there were limited times of day when it was appropriate to call.
There was one section of my first trip when I had to go for 5 days before
I had an opportunity to make a call. The one public telephone in Urdos did
not accept cards. In Canfranc Estación, my French calling card was no
longer valid, the post office was closed for the weekend, and the stores
with cards had them only for Europe and Ibero-America. In Jaca, I got a
valid calling card by waiting until the post office opened at 9:00 A.M. on
Monday, although I wanted to get on the way much earlier. However, it was
midnight in California and definitely not a good time to call. At Puente
la Reine de Jaca and Artrieda, the public telephones did not accept
calling cards. It wasn't until Yesa that I was finally able to make my
late afternoon call - early morning in California. I suppose that this
could be called emotional baggage, but at that time a cell phone would
certainly have made it easier to fulfill what I considered to be my
responsibilities. If I were a more experienced traveler, I no doubt could
have coped with using the coin operated public telephones and with the
language barriers, but I wasn't up to that.

regards,

Robert


Anthony Dyson wrote:

> Surely the Camino de Santiago is ONE place where we could hope to be
> free of the tyranny of these intrusive, irritating devices.
> Walk the Camino, leave your emotional and physical baggage behind. And
> that includes cell phones.
> How long will it be until we see a message seeking the GPS co-ordinates
> for all the towns along the way?