Juan Luis Rod

On my 18th birthday my parents had a surprise for my twin brother and me. They had bought us a restaurant so that we could continue the family tradition and dedicate ourselves to running the business. But I had a surprise for them too. Six months before I turned 18, I had already decided that I wanted to leave Germany in search of adventure and I ended up signing a contract to join the army. That's how my military service in the Marines began.

The first two years in the army were spent training in Germany, and after that period came my first mission in Somalia. There I spent 6 months with the blue helmets performing different tasks, including protecting the food distributions carried out by different NGOs.

In my second mission, back in the early 1990s, we participated with the French legion, American soldiers and other nationalities in the search mission for Milosevic (President of Serbia) in the former Yugoslavia. The missions followed one another in different countries of the world and I saw more and more atrocities. Until I became a PMC (Private Military Contractor), that is, military security hired by different agencies and governments to carry out high-risk operations. I can't talk about this part, because most of the missions I was involved in were secret and we had to sign a confidentiality agreement.

My desire for adventure led me to the army, and I admit I did a lot of harm during those years. When you are in a war context it is your life or the other's, you have no choice but to shoot if you want to keep yours. However, the worst time in a war is not the time of hand-to-hand combat or when you are being shot at. The really bad thing comes later, when you have to pick up the remains of your fallen comrades in battle, the smell of burning bodies, and the atrocities that are often committed on the civilian population. War is a business that brings nothing but misfortune.

In 1998 I couldn't stand it any longer and decided to stop my military life. During the next 10 years I dedicated myself to traveling to the countries where I was working as a military man, although now I was doing it in a different way, I was going in peace, as one more citizen with the desire to really know his people.

But, now, let's talk about the present. When I became a soldier, I made a promise to some of my comrades. The one who survived the different missions would be in charge of distributing the ashes of the comrades fallen in battle to different sacred places. It was then that I began my route on foot to fulfill my promise, which would take me to places like Lourdes, Jerusalem, Loreto, Zaragoza or Assisi among others, and which has as its final destination Finisterre. Just now, in May 2020, I have been travelling for 3 years and 9 months, walking as the ancient pilgrims did. Before I started the journey, I read a book called Die Pilgerin by Iny Lorentz, which told the story of how pilgrims used to travel. This made me imitate some of the patterns they used to make, so I started my journey with 350 euros in my pocket and no credit card. Along the way I am doing some work to get the money I need to continue my journey. I'm an artist and I have my tattoo kit with me, and that's how I earn enough money to continue.

Nine months ago, when I was walking along the Mediterranean coast, I found a man crying on a street in Cartagena. It was Klaus, who had been living on the streets for more than 20 years and had serious alcoholism problems. He used to drink about 20 beers and half a bottle of vodka every day. It was then that I told him if he wanted to travel with me. I promised him that I wouldn't leave him on the road. I only put one condition on him, no more alcohol. The first month was hard because of the withdrawal, but now he has 9 months clean and is happy. He has even regained contact with his mother whom he has not known since 2004, yet now they talk on the phone every week.

The other fellow traveler who's with me is Julius. He is 27 years old and is from Stuttgart but has lived for the last 6 years in Berlin, where he was studying wood technology at the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development. After finishing his studies, Julius realizes that he is not convinced by the pace of life in big cities and feels the need to live other types of experiences that will help him build his future. That is why, after finishing college, he worked hard for 4 months in an event company to save money, buy a bike and the four things needed to take an inspiring trip. So, he started with his bike crossing Germany, Switzerland, France and started going down the Spanish Mediterranean coast until he reached Almayate, a village in the Axarquía region of Málaga where we met the same family. He was doing gardening work for this family through the Work Away platform, while I was tattooing a family member. There was a good connection between us, and after two weeks with this family, Julius decided that he wanted to continue travelling with me and Klaus.

A few days after starting our journey again, we were at a campsite in Estepona. It was then that the state of alarm in Spain was decreed due to the coronavirus, and the Guardia Civil forced us to leave. Fortunately, a German who had one of the motorhomes that was staying at the campsite offered to take us to Portugal, which was where he was going.

We arrived at Rosal de la Frontera, one of the villages bordering the Portuguese Alentejo, with the bad luck that just the day before they had closed the border and we could not cross. We had no choice but to retrace our steps, and that night we spent on the outskirts of a village called Aroche. The next day we looked for a place where we could settle down until they allowed road communication between the two countries again. That's how we found this service area on National 433 between the towns of Aroche and Cortegana. After several days of uncertainty, the Guardia Civil told us that we could stay there until they opened the border with Portugal.

From the news we were getting, we knew this coronavirus thing was going to be a long time coming and we had all the time in the world, so during these weeks we have dedicated ourselves first to clean and adequate the service area, from which we took out more than 100 bags of garbage, and then to build little by little our Fort Bravo. We needed to keep our minds distracted and couldn't move from there, so after cleaning up the surroundings we spent our time in confinement trying to improve our facilities using fallen tree branches.

Since then we've spent nine weeks here, exactly 64 days. Many neighbors passing by on the road, civil protection and even the parish priest of Cortegana have shown us their solidarity and brought us food, bottles and some cooking utensils. Angel, one of the neighbors who has his farm next to our camp, brought us 150 liters of water every week to be able to cook and take a shower. Once a week Julius and I usually went up to Cortegana with our bicycles to do our shopping. It's a 16km ride between there and back, which also helps us as a training ground to keep in shape. In this way, we have spent these long weeks in a more bearable way, although there have also been hard moments like the death of my dog Brummbar, a puppy that had been given to me a few months ago and that died of poisoning when it ate a poisonous caterpillar, thus losing a pleasant company and an excellent travel companion.

After these atypical weeks of stopping on the road, we dismantled our Fort Bravo with some nostalgia until we left the service area as it was, well I lie, actually much cleaner than it was when we arrived. It was a change for the better, as we moved to a rural house left to us by Loli and Armando, a family of farmers who combine their work as farmers and ranchers with agro-ecotourism at Finca Montefrio. This will be our last long stop on our pilgrimage journey. Our idea is to spend the summer months here, when it is too hot to walk through the Portuguese Alentejo or the Extremaduran dehesa, and in September we will resume our journey to Finisterre.

When this adventure is over we will return to Germany for a few days to see family and friends. I also promised Klaus that I would not leave him and we have decided that when we return to Germany he will try to rebuild his life by working on my parents' farm. We both agree that it will be a good opportunity to start his life again. On the other hand, Julius and I have thought that we want to continue travelling together, but this time we are going to opt for a motor home to tour the Nordic countries. There the weather conditions are not like here in Spain, so it is better to accompany us with a motorhome, besides the bicycle and our own legs.

We will see what the road has in store for us on that occasion. The only thing I know is that I can't go back to my previous life, and I really like to walk and travel... so I hope to die on the way.