The Camino de Santiago
October 2023
“Buen Camino!” The first time I heard this phrase was from the cashier who checked us out at the local grocery store in Sarria. For a small town that only had one main road that passed through it, I was surprised by how large the grocery store was. Gomo and I purchased canned muscles, canned octopus, mini burger buns, bottled water, and Nutella cookies; this was our lunch for the following day, the first day of hiking the Camino de Santiago. According to the official Santiago Compostela tourist website, the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) is an extensive network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain.
It was Gomo’s idea to get the canned octopus. The YouTuber she liked to watch, who also partially inspired her to want to do the Camino, ate it when he did the Camino. Apparently he liked it so much that he ate it almost everyday of his hike. At this point in my Camino journey when we were buying canned seafood, I knew practically nothing about the Camino de Santiago. I did not know that I would mostly be hiking through farms and sleepy villages, that octopus was considered the regional specialty, or that the hike ended at a grand cathedral. This was the one part of my Europe tour that I did not do any research for, and I was happy to let my aunt make all the decisions.
It was actually because she convinced me to do the Camino with her that I even decided to come to Europe. Before Gomo proposed that I accompany her, my original plans were to backpack Southeast Asia for a few months, move to Australia so that I could surf, and then conclude my adventures in Latin America. Europe did not fit into this itinerary. I had no desire to travel to Europe anytime in the near future. Europe was something that I would do when I was older. I wanted to save it for the future, more delicate Katie, who I assumed will prefer to do more sight seeing in a Rick Steve’s tour group over staying at surf hostels in Central America. While I was mentally still willing to rough it out and my body was at its pre-30s more nimble and mobile state, I felt like I needed to do the more challenging and adventurous type of travel now. Europe seemed to be more for the more elegantly dressed travelers who preferred sipping wine and admiring Renaissance art. I was under the impression that in Latin America or Southeast Asia, I was more likely to engage with backpackers who planned their itinerary around the week’s surf conditions and were happy to live in their trekking sandals. Once Gomo successfully convinced me to join her, I bought a one way plane ticket to Amsterdam, and said f it. If I’m going to be all the way in Europe, I might as well make the most of my time there. Now that I was unemployed, time was no longer a constraint.
Gomo and I only completed the last leg of the Camino Frances route. I use the word “only” because the more that I learned about the Camino, the more I felt like I cheated. The length of the entire Camino Frances route is 790 km and takes about 35 days to complete. Our journey of hiking the Camino was completed over the course of 6 days, covering 100 km. This is the minimum distance required to receive the official certificate of completion from the Camino de Santiago tourist office. Our eligibility of the certificate was verified by the tourist office by checking our passport stamps in the city of Santiago de Compostela. Along the trail, each time we passed through a gift shop, cafe, hotel, or small business that catered to pilgrims, we received a stamp in our Camino passport, a sturdy foldable booklet that was titled, Credencial de Peregrino. Anyone who walks the Camino de Santiago is called a pilgrim, or peregrino in Spanish.
A fun game that I liked to play in my head was guess if a fellow pilgrim was hiking the minimum distance or if they were doing one of the 30+ day routes. One of the first telling signs that a pilgrim was doing the full Camino was the size and type of backpack that was used. Those that carried large backpacking packs were more likely to be doing what I considered the real Camino because they carried all their belongings needed for the entire hike. I carried in my regular sized backpack only water and food for the day because we used a luggage transport service, another reason why I felt like I cheated. Every morning after fueling up with yogurt and bread, Gomo and I left our luggage in the lobby, hiked the Camino all day to the next city, and then found our luggage patiently waiting for us in the lobby of the next hotel. Because this service was only available to in the towns within 100 km of the final destination town of Santiago, pilgrims who started their route farther away had no choice but to carry all their belongings. Another criteria that I evaluated a pilgrim by was the way they walked. People who walked at a brisk and rhythmic pace looked more seasoned. It was as if their minds and bodies were already broken in, accustomed to walking an average 20 km a day. They had tan, abnormally toned calves and seemed to walk with a more steadfast demeanor. This distinction between the two kinds of pilgrims seemed more obvious to me on my day 2 and 3. There were those the pilgrims who walked with more caution on their newly formed blisters, and those who reminded me of horses trotting up a hill, never missing a step.
There is only one person I can recall conversing extensively with that was hiking the full Camino Frances. I met her on my day 2 and on her day 35. She was a American with short red hair, looked to be in her early 50s, and was on her phone trying to get a hold of her daughter. We were both sitting at a picnic bench in one of the designated rest areas, which was just a few wooden picnic tables sectioned off by an unstable log fence. I learned that she came with her daughter to Europe hoping to complete the Camino together. But during the second week of hiking, her daughter injured her ankle, disabling her from walking further. After much deliberation along with numerous frustrating taxi and bus rides, her daughter managed to find an e-bike. It was not common but I did see biking pilgrims on the Camino. Her daughter’s new biggest obstacle in completing the Camino was fleeing the stray dogs that loved to chase her on the e-bike. This American lady continued to hike solo and met with her daughter everyday for lunch and in the evening at their hostel. “You’re smart for only doing the hike for one week. 1 month of hiking is too long,” the mom expressed to me with a heavy sigh. I wonder if I had talked to her after she completed the Camino instead of during her final stretch, would she still say she she wished she did not commit to doing the entire Camino Frances route?
On the other side of the bench, a young Asian lady sat by herself eating strips of prosciutto for breakfast. I was so excited to see another Asian female solo traveler who looked to be around my age because this was a demographic that I rarely saw during my entire time in Europe. I later learned she was actually 34 and was very diligent about covering her skin from the sun. l asked how long she had been hiking for and learned that like me and Gomo, she also started her Camino journey in the town of Sarria. We ended up crossing paths again on the last day of the hike, allowing us to exchange stories about each of our Camino experiences. I mentioned trying “Pulpa a Feira,” the specialty dish in the town Melide of boiled octopus served with olive oil, pepper and paprika. Her eating experience in the town of Melide was a bit different. She told me that when she arrived in Melide, she felt so deprived of vegetables and was so tired of eating the traditional meal of meat and potatoes, that she purchased a bag of salad for lunch. Forgetting that she did not have plates or silverware, she sat on the grass and used her hands to scoop the salad into her mouth. She also told me about sleeping in the traditional hostels for pilgrims, known as Alburgues. Since every guest spent their entire day hiking, the Alburgues had lingering scents of sweaty socks and the nights were loud from the snores of the exhausted hikers. Another reason why I felt like I cheated was because I stayed in a hotel instead of an Alburgues. Like the luggage transport service, hotels only existed on the routes closer to Santiago. She said that the hostels were a mix of people of all ages ranging from recently graduated university students to retired seniors. Based on my daily breakfast and dinner people watching, I probably was the youngest guest by 20 years at each hotel that Gomo and I stayed at. I felt fomo throughout the hike that I was missing out on the opportunities to meet other young pilgrims by not staying at the Alburgues.
Hearing about her experience made me reconsider the tradeoffs of feeling like I cheated in exchange for privacy, cleanliness and comfort. There is one part of me that feels like I cannot say I really did the Camino, and another part of me that realizes how trivial it is to evaluate the matter and that I should (and I am) be grateful that I was able to partake in an adventure that people have been traveling from all over the world to experience. Other people who I walked with for parts of the Camino included a recently married couple from Shanghai, a group of friends from a Boston based women’s hiking group, and an Australian couple on their 5th round of hiking the Camino in sections. The husband travelled to Spain frequently for work, and whenever his wife came along, they called a taxi to take them to the point where they left off from their previous Camino attempt. And with each Camino visit, they would get closer to finally reaching the town of Santiago, which they planned to do on this round.
After we finished the hike, Gomo and I spent a few days resting and exploring the city of Santiago de Compostela. We did a free walking tour that was led by a student at the local university and visited the Pilgrim Museum to learn more about the history of the Camino and how it led to the development of Santiago de Compostela. It is interesting to visit and learn about cities whose societies currently cater towards mass tourism, especially when these places were able to flourish and exist under an economic structure that did not depend on tourism. I think of cities like Cusco and Venice, which were previously the capitals of the Inca Empire and the Republic of Venice. What makes both of these cities so attractive to tourists today is the beautiful and unique architecture that each city was built upon during their former, not tourist dependent eras. In Santiago de Compostela, the city developed and was literally erected to feed, house, and nurse pilgrims who successfuly completed their pilgrimage. The first known completion of the hike by a foreigner was in the year 1100. Unlike the majority of the pilgrims today, the pilgrims whom the city of Santiago was originally built around partook in the pilgrimage were inspired by religious conviction or devotion.
During my rest time in Santiago, I caught a mild case of the “Camino Blues.” Santiago was small and relaxed relative to any major big city. But after spending the past 6 days walking mostly through farms and forests, it felt jarring to be back in a place where people wore suits and heels, choosing fashion over comfort. I was back in civilization, where the people I passed by all had their own lives, schedules and obligations. I missed the judgement free space that Camino offered. Everyone wore the same extra layer of dirt and sweat stains on their back from carrying a backpack all day. It was as if we were all in our most raw and unfabricated form. I missed the peace and quiet of the hike. We either walked on a dirt trail or alongside a quiet highway that only occasionally had Camino taxis and old pick-up trucks pass by. The most startled I felt was when I was walking through a village, and heard a man’s yelling in Galician. I turned the corner and saw a herd of about 10 cattle walking towards me, followed by a stern faced man with his walking stick. I missed the nature and greenery. We started the hike usually at 8 am, which was before sunrise at 8:30, so I had many views of the sunrise peaking through lush forests or over horizon of an expansive farms. And most of all, I missed the simplicity of each day. Each morning, the only thing I needed to do was walk. Every pilgrim I crossed paths with on the trail, regardless of their motivation to be there, we were all unified by the same singular goal of completing each day’s walk.
