After taking a week of Spanish classes in Salamanca and exploring Extremadura by car, we headed down to the coast and Seville. We had enjoyed driving throughout Portugal and Spain, and now decided to crash on a beach for awhile. Hoping to avoid crowded shores with high rises, we booked an AirBnB apartment in a small town called Matalascañas on Spain’s south coast.
Spain offers many wonderful hiking trails. But Kees found it sometimes difficult that he did not speak Spanish, especially when hiking in more remote regions. Along the Camino the Santiago you can get by with English, but elsewhere our Spanish was limited to “una serveza por favour!” So we found a school that teaches Spanish at all levels., in groups or to individuals. The city of Salamanca was recommended because of the pure Spanish spoken in this area. And we were happy to have a good reason to spend some time in this glorious city.
Don’t ever think that you’re a pretty suave traveler, because you’ll immediately be punished. I felt that we were doing pretty good - having driven all over Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, New York; all over Costa Rica. We’d found our way in old Jerusalem and survived Bangkok and Shanghai.
But then we visited Granada.
Back in 1999, hardly anyone had heard of this 1,000 year old pilgrim’s path which runs from the border of France and Spain to the city of Santiago de Compostela in north western Spain, a distance of over 700 km, or about 450 miles. Kees and his brother started training and never stopped hiking again. In fact, Rob ended up hoisting his pack onto his back, closed his front door in Amsterdam and walked to Santiago - over 2000 kms in 16 weeks. Years later, Kees hiked the Camino for a second time. I joined him for the last portion. Now, more books have been written about this trail then, probably, about any other. This is his account of walking that now very popular trail.
