so you think you wanna do the camino?

Maybe you don´t. Maybe this doesn´t interest you at all...if that´s the case, you can go ahead and skip this whole darn post since I´m going to talk about some of the specifics surrounding this journey.

I´m good by the way. You know, Hemingway made Pamplona his home during his ex-pat days, and if I ever want to flee the country and live abroad, I would come back to Finisterre. It´s wonderful here. Don´t want to leave tomorrow, but I need to get back to...not quite sure, but I can´t just stay here.

Anyhow.

So, let´s talk about the walk...

Certainly, this has been the most physically challenging thing I have ever done...I could´ve definitely lessened that challenge by taking a few less things on my back and not walking so many kilometers...you can kind of choose your level of intensity there.




The Camino, from St. Jean to Finisterre is generally broken up into 36 stages. And if you want to be an animal about it, you could do it in 36 days or less I suppose, but I don´t know why you would want to. The average distance per stage is probably about 22 kilometers (nearly 14 miles), but you don´t even have to go that distance if you don´t want to.




The Camino Frances, the most popular trail out of the 12 or 15 to Santiago, is extremely well set up for pilgrims and there are alburgues or hostals all over the place...it seemed at times that I wasn´t walking for more than a couple of hours when I saw an alburgue. This isn´t always true of course, but in general.

About 125,000 people will make the Camino Frances this year. It´s an extremely popular journey and is just getting more so. The upside is that there are services and shops specifically designed with the pilgrim in mind. The downside of course is that if you´re looking for a nice solitary journey, this isn´t the path to take.

I mean, you can definitely find your space to be alone...there were many days when I had the trail to myself, but you have to kind of work on pacing yourself away from the other groups, making a later start, going a little slower, what have you. It seemed to me that most people took off like rockets, sometimes before it was light outside, and were stationed at the next alburgue by noon. This was so not my way of walking, and generally by about 1:00 or 2:00, I was walking virtually alone on the trail, which I liked.




A lot of people were spooked by the idea of showing up at an alburgue and having it be full. This only happened to me once and my understanding is, that if you hang around long enough, someone will find you a spot to sleep..so it didn´t seem to be a real concern to me. Some folks though liked to get in early, claim a good spot for themselves, get to the laundry first, whatever. Bully for them.

So, the alburgues.

I think I´ve mentioned my dislike of them...but it´s not the alburgues themselves, I´m just a freak about personal space and these are not set up with that in mind at all. But, the ones I came across were clean, the people were friendly and the services were great and relatively cheap (talking laundry, phone, internet). You´ll pay anywhere from 3 to 8 euros a night for a bed, everything else is extra, including blankets sometimes...so bring your sleeping bag.

But for this price you´ll be sleeping in a room with anywhere from 4 to 40 people. Sometimes more. On bunk beds. I saw two alburgues, one in Ronscevalles (that had like 120 beds in it) and one I think in Logrono that had double bunk beds...which means if you´re walking solo you could be sleeping right next to someone you don´t know (shudder).




I found one place that only had two beds to a room, and that was awesome. Oh, and these are co-ed set ups as well, sometimes even in the bathroom and shower area. So...if you´re a freak, like me, about this kind of stuff...bring a tent or be comfortable sleeping outside. I loved being able to do this and was only denied once by the hospitalero from sleeping out on the patio. But this arrangement allowed me to sleep just fine.

I have a hard time falling asleep...don´t know why, just do. It has to be quiet and it has to be dark and if I´m in a small room with twenty people snoring and snuffling and moving around on the bunk bed above or below me, sleep will never find me. But you know, if you´re like my friends Corbs or Kathleen who could probably fall asleep in under a minute on a runway...then this wouldn´t be a problem for you at all.


I actually preferred staying in what are called Hospitals.




They were run by donation only and had a really nice community feel to them. Dinners were made an eaten together and a prayer service or some sort of gathering was held after the meal. They were typically small and run by the local church, or sometimes independantly. In fact, when I look back on all my favorite places that I stayed, they were all Hospitals.



San Bol, with the lovely Naiseh hospitalero who spoke 5 langauges and was just as warm and welcoming as could be. I stayed there two days and would´ve stayed longer, but I probably would´ve fallen madly in love with the place and with her and that just wasn´t to be my true path, so off I went. I mean she had a wish list that started with "a horse, a windmill..." and had other things such as "a pilgrim from Tanzania" and "less wind" on there. She´s from Holland..........




Then there was San Nicholas, run by Italians, who continued an ancient tradition of washing the feet of the pilgrims before dinner. This place was so sweet too, with the "Italian mother" as she called herself, feeding us...and wouldn´t stop feeding us. It was great.




Tosantos, with their 12th century altar and church devoted to the Virgin, carved into the rock on the side of the mountain. The guys who ran this place were extrordinarily sweet and one of them had a beautiful voice that he used to sing hymns and folk songs. Lovely.

And the place in Grañon, where I got to sleep on the floor of the church, staring up at a 15th century ceiling, the moonlight casting down onto the altar statuary. This also had a nice, inclusive prayer service and a terrific feeling of camradarie as people broke into songs in three or four different languages after dinner.



So...try to find the Hospitals if you can, they seemed to really work towards offering people "the spirit of the Camino," and did a nice job of it.

Anyway, enough of that, eh?

Food. Let´s talk about food.

I have had no problem with the food here at all. But I also don´t have any allergies to anything, nor am I a vegetarian or a vegan...so I can´t speak to any difficulties there other than, you could have some. Especially if you´re vegan, but even there you can always make use of the alburgue kitchens and cook your meals every night and really be just fine. Although, if you rely on soy products for your protein, veggie burgers, tofu...I never saw any of these things in any store..so, you´ll be doing the beans and legume thing for your protein.

There are little stores everywhere, and supermarkets in the bigger cities so I bought my own food a lot. Eating out every meal is expensive of course. The biggest difference I saw here was around breakfast. Sometimes in alburgues they would give you "breakfast," but the Spanish version of breakfast is white bread, toasted, with margarine and jam. But sometimes you just get these little cakey things. Protein is not on the list for breakfast food...so you´ll have to supplement. And there aren´t diners to just pop out for eggs and bacon. I did find, after awhile on the road, that some bars have food other than bocadillos (sandwiches, white bread, dry, with some sort of meat or cheese...no veggies, but usually big and cheap), and some bars serve eggs and ham. This was an awesome discovery, but you have to wait until mid-morning or noon for these platos combos.

Then at night you have the option of going out to dinner and having the "pilgrim´s menu," generally between 7-12 euros. I always enjoyed these, thought they were filling and tasty. For that price you get two plates (soup or salad or pasta, and then some sort of meat dish), dessert (yay!) and your choice of wine or water. I thought it was nuts that you could just get a bottle or a jug of wine brought to your table for that price, sometimes people would drink it all, often though, they would just have a glass and be done with it. Never had any of course, just...noticed it.

And I will confess, and it´s funny to me..that out of all the foods I really enjoy, burritos, fish tacos, sushi, mashed potatoes and spinach, hot dogs; do you know what I´m missing the most? Cheeseburgers. Of all things. It´s ridiculously American isn´t it? Actually, here in Finisterre there´s a place that makes a pretty decent rendition of one, but I will tell you that as soon as I get home, the next night, I´m going to McMennamin´s and I´m getting a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake and I will be soooo happy.

What else can we talk about? Food, sleep....

Oh, it would truly behoove you to learn a little Spanish. You don´t have to be fluent, but learning a few basic phrases, the polite expressions will go along way in easing your time here. People in Spain do not learn English as a general rule, if they speak a second language, it´s likely to be French or German, so don´t assume that people know even a little English, because it´s just not a part of the culture here. And you´ll be shopping, and ordering food and you´re gonna need stuff, so learning a few key words and verbs will be helpful. (I want, I need, I have is a good place to start) And if you have friends or family that speak it, practice it a little with them. I mean, I have relatives and friends who speak fluent Spanish, so I´m kinda kicking myself for not practicing a little before I left.

And you could get by without it, people did. You can stammer and point and make your way just fine, but really, it´s kinda fun to play with a new language and people do seem to appreciate your effort for the most part. Not always, but for the most part.




We can talk a little about physical fitness. You don´t have to be a marathon athlete to do this walk. It seemed to me that most people were my age and over. Saw lots and lots of retired folks. It makes sense though doesn´t it, who has 6 weeks to do this thing? So there were people of varied physical ability that seemed to do just fine. It would help to be a little in shape of course. This isn´t a straight path walk. There are a lot of very steep up and down days, sometimes the path is asphalt, sometimes you are walking on cobblestone or rough, rocky roads for hours. There is the weather to contend with. We didn´t have any rain save for one day...but there were days when it was very hot and we were walking in open land, no shade, for hours.




And you´re carrying all your stuff with you on your back for 5-8 hours a day. Some people who weren´t able to pack around like this used a transport service that would carry their luggage from one town to the next and they would just hike with a small daypack. It didn´t seem like this was prohibitively expensive and I saw lots of people doing it. So that´s an option too.

And you don´t have to do all 5 or 6 weeks either. A lot of people do one week a year and work it down that way. For my money, if I only had a week, I would do the last five days into Santiago, through Galicia and then on to Finisterre. These were really just primo walking days, really pretty, very sweet.



And if you want to do this, there is ample, ample literature out there. People have been writing about walking this trail since it´s inception a thousand years ago. There are tons of guide books out there as well. I used John Brierley´s Camino de Santiago, which was wonderful and small and amazingly accurate. There is also a terrific website by the Confraternity of St. James with all kinds of info. You can go to www.csj.org.uk and check them out.




You know, I loved this adventure, it was wonderful and exciting and hard and fun. The Spanish country is gorgeous and I loved seeing it this way. And I´m sitting here talking to you like I´m done, but I´m leaving tomorrow for Santiago and then I´m off again to do the Camino Portuguese for my final three weeks here. I was going to hook up with Peter and Kinga, but it seems we´re on different wavelengths so it doesn´t look like that´ll be happening. I toyed with the idea of going back to Sanilles, but I think I should stick with my original plan. The Portugese Camino is a little daunting, ´cause it isn´t as well set up...I don´t speak any Portuguese and I don´t have a map at this point.

Woo-hoo!

So, we´ll see how that goes. So let me just tell you that I don´t know when I´ll be able to contact you all again. I will when I can for sure. I leave tomorrow morning on the bus and will be in Santiago tomorrow night and that´s all I know.

But...I love you guys and will talk to you soonly.