El Camino
During summer 2014,
after much research and anticipation, my roommates and I set out on a two week
hike across Northern Spain, walking El Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage known
as "The Way of St. James".
The entire trek from Saint Jean-Pied-de-Port, France to Santiago, Spain can take upwards of 40 days to complete so we opted for a lighter version, walking from Pamplona to Logroño and then hoping on a bus before walking from Sarria to Santiago. All of that took about 12 days.
The Preface
My roommates were
the ones who were planning for this trip for months, and I thought it was a
cool idea but I just "didn't have the time" to backpack across
Spain. Jobs decisions were made and all of a sudden I wasn't moving to a new
city and I had the entire summer off, so I began to reconsider.
I watched the movie
"The Way" with
Martin Sheen and I was convinced that this was a trip I needed to take (I
highly recommend it, it is on Netflix!).
I went into the trip
not knowing what to expect. We booked flights, researched hostels and had a
tentative itinerary. I prepared gear-wise, got all my supplies, got my hiking
boots broken in and borrowed a backpack.
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| Backpack I SHOULD have taken...I took a larger one. |
We discovered
quickly that this wasn't the type of trip you could really plan the day to
day for, which I'll go into later. The parents at home weren't thrilled with
the loose scheduling of our trip, but we convinced them it was a good idea,
packed up our packs and headed to Spain!
The Way
After a two day stay
in Pamplona during San Fermin (The Running of the Bulls), we headed out.
We hike about 20-25
km a day (12-15 miles) through the "rolling" hills of Northern Spain,
passing in and out of little villages and towns with various degrees of
mountainous land, forest and rural plains. We would drag into our destination
town every afternoon and find open beds at an albergue (pilgrim hostel). We
didn't camp at all, so for anywhere between a donation to 10 Euros we had a
bed, access to a shower and a kitchen, and sometimes dinner! It was a pretty
cool set up, and we stayed in albergues ranging from converted monasteries that
could hold over 100 pilgrims to tiny parish hostels that slept 14 and were run
by volunteers. We had great experiences at some and not so great experiences at
others. But it was often the same routine after finding a hostel. Register,
shower, nap, explore, eat dinner, prepare for tomorrow, sleep. Sleep by 9 and
up by 6. The day to day was rough, both physically and mentally exhausting. We
met some amazing people from all over the world on the trail, all of whom had
"character" names. There were tears of laughter and tears of pain,
lots of blisters and lots of laughs, deep conversations and long periods of
silence. The camino was in the moment. You dealt with what you were given, at
that time, whether you were given energy to walk and talk or whether you were
given solace to reflect. There are so many stories and so many memories, but
I'll just leave a few pictures for now.
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| Sunflower field outside of Pamplona |
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| Rocking the leg brace tan |
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| Camino trail selfies |
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| Basque Country side |
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| 130 miles later..... |
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| Official Compostela |
Santiago
We finally made it
to the city of St. James a few days before his feast day. We CRASHED before
making our way to the square outside of the Cathedral, the final stop on the
Camino.
We explored the
city, turned in our Credencial del Perigrinos (our "passport" stamp
book of El Camino) in order to get our official Compostelas (certificate) and
ate a GLORIOUS dinner.
We explored the city
a lot and attended the Pilgrim's mass the next day to celebrate what brought us
on this journey...St. James and his journey with Christ. It was a blessed
experience.
Finisterre
Santiago
is about 90 km from the coast, so some pilgrims continue their walk to the
coast, to the town of Finisterre, which translates roughly to mean "End of
the Earth". From a point at the lighthouse, you can look out a just see
receding coastlines behind you and the Atlantic in front of you. Ancient
travelers believed they had walked to the world's end at this point. One of my
friends and I took the bus there for the day and spent our time eating and
reading on the beach, hiking to the lighthouse and marveling at the views, and
then some naps and more eating. Even though Santiago was the end of our walk,
Finisterre was the end of the "journey" and was a peaceful way to
reflect on the experience that had just passed.
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| Finisterre. The End of the Earth |
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