Wait, I thought you were hiking the CDT? Why is this post about Spain (Hint: Read my first Post).
Check out “Tanz Mit Uns” by My Dad vs. Yours . Its a great instrumental song perfect for hiking across countries and well the name of the band says it all.
I am not going to do an entire separate blog for the Camino de Santiago hike/journey/pilgrimage, but did want to do a recap. In the end we did 530km across Spain (I love using kilometers instead of miles because it makes it look like you covered so much more ground). We started in León, Spain and hiked apart of the French Way. The names of the trails can get a little confusing to people who are not familiar with the Camino de Santiago as there are dozens of trails that have different starting points and names. The Camino is a pilgrimage that ends in Santiago de Compostela and technically is supposed to start from your door step. There are a network of trails that radiate across Spain and Portugal that end in Santiago and are all part of the Camino. The start of these trails vary from official starts in Spain, Portugal & France but people have been known to hike all they way from Eastern Europe and beyond to Santiago.
We did not know how long it was going to take us to hike from León to Santiago. My dad has never done any sort of long distance hiking, is 72 years old and just had knee surgery 3 months before the start of the trail so we were super conservative when planning the trip. Turns out that was not a problem….We ended up actually getting to Santiago way ahead of our plans. I actually had to tell him several times a day to slow down, and had to check him occasionally to make sure he wasn’t wearing a runners bib. We had an extra week in Spain after getting to Santiago so we walked out to the coast to Finisterre and then to Muxía and then walked back to Santiago to make a 7 day “lollipop” trail.
The trail was an amazing experience mixed with ever changing landscapes, an extremely rich history of both the trail and the country and a cast of solid human beings we were fortunate to run into. We walked wine country, small villages, large cities, cow pastures, mountain towns and were able to touch the Atlantic from the “other side”. People have been walking to Santiago since the 11th century. While the destination of the early pilgrims is the same as today we are fortunate to have used a system of lodging and food they never had. We would stay every night in hostels specially designated for pilgrims called albergues. We had to carry a card that was stamped by each albergue so they could see you were a walking pilgrim and not someone trying to take advantage of cheap accommodations. The towns along the way would have special pilgrim menus which were low cost and high calorie and more importantly they would serve food at 7pm which is super early in Spain. When we would grab a bite to eat at 7, the restaurant would be empty except for other pilgrims and a lot of the time it was just my dad and I eating in the restaurant alone.
We met people from all different nationalities and if you were eating a group dinner there could be 4 languages flying across the table. I did my best to translate as much Spanish and German as I could and was proud that I can still tell bad jokes in those languages. Most of the time if I met someone on the trail I could speak a little of their language or they could speak a little English. Whether its an American hiking the PCT or a Hungarian hiking the Camino the topics of conversations between hikers are always the same: how many miles are you going to do today; when is this rain going to stop; how far to the next town; is it time for a beer?
Walking into town to find a beer
Climbing up the trail to cross into Galacia
Took a detour today to check out some additional small villages
I think we are on trail?
Stuck behind a parade of cattle on the trail
Light house at Finnisterre, km 0.00