The Camino, the ultimate pilgrim’s trail in Spain gets into your blood. I, Kees, walked it with my brother many years ago. I walked it by myself again later and Margriet joined me for the last 120 KM. Now I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to walk it with our 15 year old grandson Nico. It’s special to share this unique experience with him. But since he is still going to school we have only limited time and will just do the last 120 kilometers from Sarria to Santiago. That is enough to obtain the official certificate (or ‘compestella’) from the church.
So, carrying small packs with only necessities, Nico and I departed on the ferry, then flew from Vancouver to Amsterdam. There, we stayed overnight near the airport and the following day we flew via Frankfurt to Santiago. We found a bus that took us to Lugo and from there a taxi took us to Sarria where we would start our hike. We had arranged, via a specialized pilgrims’ website, our overnight accommodation as well as luggage transportation for the entire trip and that turned out to be excellent.
Sarria is overrun by tourists, many of them not pilgrims or hikers. But the economy is based on it so the local people are friendly. They know they need us. The first day we stayed in Sarria to get used to the 9 hour time difference and to buy a few supplies for the long walk ahead.
Day One: We left around 9:30 after breakfast. On the trail it is occasionally busy, sometimes you have to wait before you are able to pass a group. There were several groups of school kids, often with music blaring which was rather annoying. But we also hear many different languages around us and meet many nice hikers. A 16 year old girl with the same braces as Nico, from Chile, wants to test her English and walks with us for almost an hour. Nico looks for geocaches and soon finds a second geocache, with the aid of the Chilean girl. We also meet a student from a university in Tennessee.
The going is rough at times, and we’re glad we have solid boots. We see some poor souls in agony trying to make it to Santiago. We make faster progress than I expected and will be in the next hotel well before 3 PM. We stop for lunch and Nico goes to get our food. He's not afraid to try it even though sometimes the servers don’t speak much English.
Day Two: After more than 20 km we make it to Palas De Rei but we are both hurting. My knee started to act up and I put a elastic knee support around it which helps. It was an old injury I got in Cuba a few months ago and I thought it had healed, but not so. After 15 km our feet started to hurt pretty good. No blisters but my soles are hurting and the tops of toes. Hopefully by tomorrow it will be better but right now I am hobbling along. Nico also complains about his feet. Today was a 22 km day and tomorrow only 15. So fingers crossed.
Still having fun!
Portomarin
Day Three: Left at 8:30, lunch at 11 and twice a stop for a snack and drink. At 3 PM we got to the hotel here. It is perfect hiking weather, again a beautiful day, cool and overcast in the morning, sunny and warm in the afternoon.
Beautiful surrounding although we both said that yesterday was prettier. Today we walked quite a bit along a road, even though it was a quiet road. At times there are so many hikers that it looks like a parade, but still enjoyable. We met up with folks from Victoria, BC and two girls from Brazil. We past some school groups fairly early and left their music behind. There are quite a few people who are being picked up by taxis and ambulances along the road….
Nico is finding lots of geocaches along the way. Neither of us is very talkative while we walk but we are having fun along the way and it’s pretty special to do this together.
After day 2 my feet are still hurting and it turns out that my boots are too tight in the front. I was forced to buy some sandals to give my toes some more space and now the hiking is fine! The next two days are 14-15 km only. The sandals work very well except I don’t have the ankle support I am used to with boots. I had removed the SAS insoles (the best!) from the boots and put those in the sandals. That works great. Nico says it has a big blister, that is his right of passage on the Camino :-)
We make sure we eat good meals because we are burning calories: pizza, spaghetti carbonade, ham & cheese sandwiches, spaghetti Bolognesa, excellent breakfasts. Bacon and eggs on toast, always lots of OJ, coffee, jams, croissants with chocolate - we walk it all off.
Nico walks like a puppy - darting ahead or behind, using his hiking poles as swing toys. Always finding water to splash in and running up the sides of the road as if he has energy to spare (which I guess he does). He had a pain in a knee but our tube of Voltaren took care of that. We have 2 more days to go to get to Santiago, 19k and the last day 22k.
Day 4: The infrastructure here has at least doubled since I walked it 26 years ago. Everywhere the cities have expanded. Large new hotels, many more refugios, more restaurants and bars. The tripling and quadrupling of the camino hiking numbers have had a huge impact on the entire economy of northern Spain over the-last few decades. The pilgrim/hiker numbers have gone from 20.000-30.000 to 500.000! At this time of the year (May) there does not appear to be a shortage of places for people to eat and sleep.
I am surprised that I have heard Dutch spoken only a few times. Most of the languages you hear in passing is Spanish. Also lots of German and occasionally some Italian. Quite a bit of English, but often with a heavy accent indicating that the person is not a native english speaker. And, of course, the Portuguese from the many Brazilians, still the result from the famous Brazilian author Paulo Coelho who wrote the book The Pilgrimage.
Away from Sarrio there are not nearly as many other hikers.
This morning there was a tremendous thunder storm all around us. When the rain hit hard we walked into a church to shelter and to light some candles for loved ones who passed away recently. Nico took a long video in the church. I wonder if he has ever seen anything like it before because he seemed quite impressed. It was just a very old church in a village, but with lots of statues and flowers.
We have arrived!
Cathedral de Santiago
Day 5: Finally we walked into Santiago. I recognized many places from the times I walked into the city before. We celebrated our arrival on the big plaza in front of the cathedral and then quickly found our hotel a few blocks away.
That night we attended the pilgrims’ mass in the cathedral together with thousands of other church goers. The next day we had a nice lazy day after days of hiking a lot of km’s. We had a long breakfast, Nico went out to look for geocaches. By now he has found 40 of them!
I went into the cathedral to light some candles and just sit and watch. Back at the hotel we relaxed for a while. Went for lunch and looked for souvenirs.
The next day we took the bus back to the airport, found our flight to Barcelona and back home.
All together it was a great time to have had a chance to experience this adventure with my grandson. But I did not get the camino ‘out of my system’ as I had anticipated (and Margriet had hoped). On the contrary, I want to do the whole thing again next year. Who knows if that will happen but we’ll keep training for it! Walk on!
RESOURCES: BOOKS - click here, then scroll down to Spain.
There are many hiking caminos in Spain. The Camino to Santiago is the long red one in the north.