It’s Your Camino

The hotel was incredibly comfortable, which made for a solid night's sleep before starting the day. Breakfast was pretty good too. But I began the day with a little dread, wondering what the trail would be like with all the people starting out in Sarria.

It didn't take long to see a dramatic change in the concentration of pilgrims on the way. Large groups of teens traveled with teachers, bus loads of senior travelers were dropped off and picked up periodically to avoid difficult segments of the trail, and there were many electric bicycles that wove in and out of the crowd during the day.

Everybody does the Camino in their own way. A recurring theme is the question being posed, "Whose Camino is it?" The response is always, "It's my Camino." Or, "It's your Camino." So whether someone rides an electric bike, or starts hiking 62 miles from the finish, or from 1,000 miles away, it’s a singular experience. Each person does it in their own way. 

I admit I’m a little judgmental when it comes to the electric bikes, however. They are hard to hear and they come up on you quickly. In places the trail is very narrow, and the bikes muscle their way through as people struggle up hills.

At stores and coffee bars on the trail, people were scrambling to get the required two stamps per day to qualify for the certificate of completion. The stores kept stamps near the register to draw in customers and make sales. There were some restaurants and coffee spots that simply placed the stamp out near the trail so pilgrims could help themselves. By the end of the day, it was obvious that it would not be difficult to get the two required stamps.

As we traveled through the countryside, there was the same mixture of wooded trails, open fields, and cattle. Periodically there would be dogs, tied up or running free. Of course there had to be hills, and some incredibly steep descents as we approached the city.

There were so many strangers and first-day travelers on the trail. It felt like the difference between hiking a lonely country road, and being on the highway during rush hour.

At times there seemed to be less intimacy among the people. The standard greetings were sometimes dispensed with entirely. On occasion, you would see a familiar face from days or weeks before. Even if you didn't know the fellow traveler’s name, you felt a bond of shared experience and time on the trail that ultimately the Camino delivers.

As our friend Beth from Chicago said, “The Camino is the only place where it is appropriate to sit at lunch and rub your feet with one hand while you eat a sandwich with the other.”

Under the heading of Small World: Spence and I ran into a woman who is still actively flying for the same airline from which we retired. It's pretty standard procedure when you meet someone like that to play a game of, “Do you know … ?” And it turns out that Jean, who is traveling with Bonnie and Leanne, knew one of the pilots I first met during Air Force pilot training in 1980. The pilot fraternity is fairly small and it's not unusual to make a connection.

A little further down the trail, I met a mother and daughter from England traveling together. We probably spent more than an hour together talking about many things. Since I'm from Florida, they were very curious about alligators. When I told them it is very uncommon for gators to attack people, they asked me if I knew what animal kills the most individuals in Britain. I did not. They explained it was cattle that turned on the farm workers. That struck me as a very British thing.

Later, there were some strange brick buildings I'd never seen before on the trail. They weren't really big enough to do much. Some of them had crucifixes affixed to the top, and I thought they might have religious connotation or serve as some type of family crypt. It turns out that they are in place to dry corn and keep animals away from it as air passes through the small building. Mystery solved.

The descent into town was incredibly pronounced. There were two routes. Spence took the historic route and discovered a very tight gorge had to be passed through. I took the other route that was off the road and encountered an incredibly steep hill. But at least I didn’t have to suffer claustrophobia from sheer rock faces.

The entry bridge is constructed over a man-made reservoir where they flooded the original town. Unlike many of the villages where we have stayed, this city has no long history to it, as it was constructed during the 1960s. The one exception is a cathedral that was moved, stone by stone, from a lower elevation to the site of the new town.

Many of our hotels also have a section that is considered an alburgue. That’s the case here in Portomarin, and there are bunk beds for some pilgrims. 

Our window looks out on the town with a picturesque view. The room is small but private.

Each night Spence and I try to arrange the furniture as best as possible to ensure that we get a good night's sleep. One of us snores. Okay actually, both of us do. The only difference is that one of us snores early in the night and the other does so early in the morning. I don't know if that is balance, détente, or possibly courtesy, but we have worked things out after a month together.

In a town with a population of less than 1,300 people, there is not a huge selection of restaurants. There were more here tonight than there were last night. We were all ready for an early dinner, but some restaurants did not begin to serve until 8 p.m. We had pizza tonight and it was fine. I grabbed ice cream on the way back to the hotel. It's almost lights out time again, with 15 more miles to tomorrow and much more of it uphill.