Here are only a few of my observations and random thoughts – with some explanation if I feel like it – on our experience walking the Camino de Santiago.
Everyone has some sort of limp
Let’s be honest, shall we: Walking 800km is not completely healthy unless you are a world-class athlete focused on proper body and nutrition management, especially when most people have no clue about such things, or even proper gear and footwear. Add heat, rain, 10kg of gear on your back, and shoes that were only designed to hold together for about 500km, and you have a recipe for lasting physical damage. That leads us to…
Physically, most people that do this have no business being out here
I’m in good shape and have spent a good deal of my life hiking in the mountains, and I hurt after doing 800km in 35 days. Some of these people can’t walk at the end of every day. They need to stop.
The Basque Country is stunningly beautiful
The little towns are immaculate and the mountain views are more than peaceful.
There are a ton of people
The Camino de Santiago sees up to 300,000 pilgrims a year now. That’s a shit-ton of people to cruise through these little towns. And much of it has become overrun, packaged, marketed, and presented to the world as an experience. It’s a little like Disney World – an escape to a magic place, away from your daily lives. I would like to have seen it before there were billboards everywhere, advertising the nearest bar, souvenir shop, or alburgue.
House wine is generally excellent
But, seemingly has no alcohol and, oddly, is cheaper by the glass than by the bottle. That said, I was a happy consumer on most days and rarely wanted anything else.
One becomes accustomed to the concept of single serving friends
Much more on this philosophy later, but life on any thru-hike is an experience in single serving friends. You meet (or at least share the standard introvert greeting – a subtile nod of the head in acknowledgment), usually during a break, lunch, coffee, or beer. You chat, exchange peasantries, share a quick story or piece of info, and generally enjoy the company of someone who is clearly as fucked up as you…and then you move on, never seeing each other again. But, then again…
It’s comfortable seeing other pilgrims
And I found myself enjoying seeing some of the same people, on and off, for a couple months. Pilgrims who start around the same day are basically on the same schedule, so you pass each other, or run into each other, every few days or every few sections. It’s strangely peaceful. That said…
People are generally boring
This one is on me. We tend to want people to be fun, intelligent, interesting, playful, exciting, have good stories or experiences to share or something else. In the single serving format, everyone you meet is a shiny new object. But, once you’ve run into this person every day for the last month, you realize the only thing you have in common is your proximate location. They all have one of a few select and pretty generic stories, none of which are like yours.
Break time…Wanna see some of our pictures from along the way?
Back to reality: It’s not all romance and pretty scenery
Walking though the Mesetas (seemingly endless wheat fields in the center sections of the journey) and industrial sections of the larger towns aren’t things that are shown in the movies or talked about in blogs and books. Definitely forgettable. Oh, and the smell of livestock is pretty much everywhere.
Speaking of the journey – It only begins when the vacation ends
And that takes at least a week or so…
It’s gonna be a cold day in Hell when Lael has her next Tortilla de Espanola
And, while we’re on the subject of food…
Advise to the cooks of rural Spain
Seasonings, spices, and veggies are good, pizzas can be made from scratch, there are people that don’t eat meat, olives are not an ingredient on a Margherita, and, for the love of God, tuna is not a fucking vegetable. All this leads us to one inevitable conclusion…
I am definitely Italian
Pizza and pasta are better. The espresso in Italy is better, as are the pastries, and Jesus, can someone in this country learn how to make gelato? When you say you have ice cream, I don’t expect the world, but I do expect more than a Nestle Crunch Ice Cream bar or some other ice cream bar in a wrapper. I didn’t have a single good ice cream experience…and I was looking.
Still more on that…
I am broken for food choices
I am accustomed to seeking out and getting what I want, when I want it. That’s privilege. But out here, you don’t generally get to choose. You enter a little town with only one bar or one cafe, and you take what they have. You don’t, and you go hungry.
I can, with very few exceptions, tell where people are from by their choice of gear and shoes
Everyone has a line
We walked the entire French Route from St Jean in France to Santiago de Compostella in the western part of Spain, carrying our shit on our backs. Others start and stop in different places, take other routes, ride bikes, or have services cart their luggage between stops. People even book tours on buses that take them from town to town, letting them out for a couple hours to walk around, shop, and get their pilgrim passports stamped before getting back on the bus. Ask anyone out there what they think about people doing things differently and they will say the right thing: “Everyone walks their own path,” or some shit like that. But everyone has a line. Everyone judges everyone else. Didn’t carry your bags? Only walked the last 100km? Slept in really nice hotels? Rode a freakin e-bike or on a damn bus? Sooner or later, everyone compares their experience to others…and not favorably. And, speaking of people’s opinions…
People out here have way-elevated senses of self importance
Seriously, how about a little humility. This is a pilgrimage, after all (oh, yeah, I forgot…maybe it’s Disney World). Don’t bitch about your $25 room in the middle of nowhere not having enough towels, or the $12 3-course pilgrims menu offered by the locals not having gluten-free bread. And, don’t expect everyone to speak your fucking language, want to talk to you, or let your dirty, smelly, dirtbag-looking ass use their clean restroom if you don’t buy anything. You might be king shit in your world, but out here, you’re just another pilgrim. A wise man once said, “It might be your Camino, but it’s not JUST yours.”
As far as vacations go, this is cheap as hell
We stayed in relatively “nice” places; private rooms in hostels mostly (and most of them were beyond wonderful). We ate what we wanted and drank what we wanted and really didn’t have to think about money. When your main activity is walking, life is pretty affordable.
Speaking of wonderful
Galicia is fabulous, with cool, foggy, rolling hills and pristine mountain valleys…and don’t forget the Albariño. Best in the world. I think I could live in Galicia pretty easily.
More advice to the cooks of rural Spain
Or, more to the gardeners of rural Spain – Pickled white asparagus is disgusting. It’s okay to let the asparagus touch the sun and turn green.
This Camino Family thing is crazy
Again, more on this later, but it seems trendy for pilgrims hook up with others on the first couple days out and then proclaim themselves a Camino family…walking together every day, sharing the planning, accommodations, and meals every day. It’s actually kinda creepy. Maybe it’s the pop culture surrounding the Camino, but everyone seems to be looking for personal connections the second they get going, almost to the point that they look on any soul that takes a more personal journey with some sort of wonder or, dare I say, judgement or contempt. Is the urge to be together so powerful? That said…and I am aware of my contradictions…
It is comforting to gravitate to the familiar
Finding someone who is from your city, state, country, region of the world, or even simply speaks your language or, as we discussed before, walks on the same relative schedule as you, becomes comforting.
I have no idea what I’m going to do when I stop walking
When all you do for several weeks is wake-pack-eat-walk-eat-walk-drink-sleep, you tend to get used to it and completely lost when you try to do other things. Probably for the first time in my life, I was mostly in the moment; only thinking about where I was and what was directly in front of me. The outside world evaporated for the most part. I want that back…hopefully without having to do laundry in the sink. Oh, and speaking of that…
No matter how much money you have or what status in life you think you have achieved, it is completely humbling to wear the same clothes every day, become accustomed to looking bad and smelling bad, and washing your dirty socks and underwear in random sinks every day.
Would I do it again? Probably not.
Will I do something like it? Absolutely. As soon as possible. Italy in the fall, Scotland and Portugal next year, hopefully.
Buen Camino.
