Ever since the Las Vegas weather gods have started teasing us with some gorgeous warm and sunny days here and there I have been suffering from some serious spring fever. Its really tough to keep myself planted in my office chair indoors when I'm planning for my classes. My eyes and my mind keep wandering out the window and making a very convincing case for my body to follow out onto a blanket in the soft grass in the company of the fresh air and golden sun. I've been carrying a fuzzy pink blanket in my trunk just for such opportunities.
To take full advantage of the nicer weather, I spent this lovely sunny Saturday morning hiking out at Red Rock Canyon with Paul and our friend Tim. I haven't really been hiking too much since the Camino last summer so I am a little out of practice, but we did a pretty easy although somewhat steep hike to ease ourselves back into it. Paul took the doors off of his Jeep this morning and was very excited to monster truck over the bumpy trails to get to our starting point.
After we finished up hiking, we headed back to town to grab some lunch. Our lunch conversation turned to the indisputable fact that everything tastes better after a full day of exertion. I remember thinking during nearly every meal on the Camino, save for the curious (read: disgusting) veggie meatloaf in Logroño, "This is the best _________ I've ever eaten!" This is the best beef (ternera -mmm!) and oily french fries I've ever eaten. This is the best squashed-up-from-being-in-my-backpack-for-2-days banana or plum I have ever eaten! This is the best salad with tuna and oil I have ever eaten! This is the best roasted galic soup I have ever eaten. I love most Spanish food to begin with, but it all seemed take on a unnaturally delicious taste after working up an appetite. Even Coca-Cola, which I almost never never touch at home, was incredibly delicious.
All this talk and a recent post by Joe at Italyville where he shares a list of the foods he misses most from Italy got me feeling nostalgic for my favorite sabrositos Spanish treats. So here's my little contribution to the list of foods missed from abroad.
Menú del dia or Menú de Peregrinos After 12 - 15 miles on the road each day, we were exhaused and absolutely ravenous. The menú de peregrinos was just what the doctor ordered, a 3 course meal served at a restaurant or bar, complete with copious amounts of pan and your choice of vino or agua. Most provided a choice of starters (usually salad, soup or pasta), main course (beef, chicken or fish) and dessert and were definitely worth the price.
Zazamoros Little pieces of raspberry and blackberry flavored sugary heaven. You can get these here in the US, but somehow they are just not the same. I first discovered these at the candy/record store down the street from my apartment when I lived in San Sebastián and of course I sought them out again this summer.
A Napolitana with Cola Cao or Café con leche - Ah, the breakfast of champions. A flaky chocolately croissant paired with the Spanish answer to hot chocolate or coffee with steamed milk. Not the healthiest, but this isn't the top healthiest foods in Spain, its just my favorites.
Nestle Maxibon Fittingly last since it is the dessert, the mother of all helado, the Maxibon. Most of the Spanish bars that I passed by carried a tempting array of ice cream bars from either Nestle or Frigo, but this half ice cream bar, half ice cream sandwich, held the number one spot for me. I consumed at least one a day, a wonderful perk of burning off so many calories.
What foods do you really miss that typify the places abroad that you've lived or visited? Or if you're out on the road are you missing some strange things from home?
Before Paul and I left on our trip to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago this summer our friends and family were intrigued. After all this was not your typical vacation.
“You’re going to walk how many miles? For fun? Why?” they asked.
The trip we were undertaking involved walking nearly all day for five and a half weeks under the hot Spanish sun, braving bugs and blisters and waking up at 6am and sleeping in creaky old bunk beds with a room full of snorers. We had to carry everything we needed on in our backpacks. This might sound like a nightmare for some, but from the first time my friend Matt told me about the Camino I felt a magnet-like pull to take this journey. Besides the fact that I really wanted to visit Spain again, I was seduced by the idea of taking on something that was difficult and outside of my comfort zone. I liked that it was something Paul and I could do together and wondered how it would shape our characters and bring us closer together. There was a big allure to having hours at a time to think while walking through parts of the country that not many people ever get to see and by the prospect of meeting new friends from all over the world.
I have always been of the opinion that the trips worthy of spending those hard-earned vacation days on are those that have the potential to change you in some way. For some that means quitting your job to vagabond around the globe for a year, building an orphanage in Kenya, bringing books to children in Cambodia, following the path of your ancestors in Norway
or hiking an ancient pilgrimage across Spain. For others, place can be secondary to the people involved on the trip. Some find themselves transformed after undertaking even a small activity that pushes them outside of their comfort zone.
While some of us would be perfectly content selling everything we own and zigzagging across the globe, I think it’s important to note that the search for change and growth can manifest itself in totally different trips for different people. Transformational travel can also come from spending 24/7 with your husband or parents or best girlfriends, meeting someone from another culture for the first time or discovering how much different other parts of the world are, yet how much they’re the same.
If I think back to the most memorable trips I have taken, the moments that really stand out are not those spent sitting by the pool or taking an afternoon nap (although these activities might represent a huge paradigm shift for people who are on 24 hours a day and rush to answer their crackberry at 2 am). I think about the things that have expanded me as a person. Things like the meals I shared with new friends from all different countries on the Camino, taking that first step backwards to rappel down a waterfall in Costa Rica, learning to navigate the streets of Washington, D.C. all by myself, walking 31 kilometers in one day with a killer foot injury, learning to ski after being completely terrified with the encouragement of Paul and my brother and sister-in-law, drinking new wine straight from the barrel before it was released to the public, growing closer to Paul after understanding more about myself, or trying octopus cooked in its own ink after mistakenly ordering chipirones instead of champinones.
Want your next trip to be a transformation vacation? Here are some tips.
Think back… to your favorite travel moments. Ask yourself what made them special. What do they have in common? Did you try something new? Face a fear? Get to know the person or people you were with in on a different level? Get totally lost in a new culture? Live out a dream? Think about the ways you can you incorporate these types of experience into your next trip.
Challenge Yourself to Step Outside of Your Comfort Zone This can be anything from finally deciding to try out an adventure sport –bungee jumping, hang gliding, white water rafting, rappelling to visiting a place where you don’t speak the language. If you always travel solo, bring along a friend or family member. If you don’t have travel companions, so what? Take the leap anyway. Put Your Personal Limits to the Test These can be physical limits, mental limits or social limits. Hike the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu. Pick up your backpack and hike the Camino de Santiago. Climb a mountain. Bike across Europe. Stay in a tiny cabin with your whole family and toys that make noise for a week. Talk to the people around you. I like to choose trips where I can share the experience with new people. People can enrich your travel experience much more than place. If you are really brave, give Couch Surfing a try. If you are the kind of person who needs constant noise and stimulation, go someplace that challenges you to become comfortable with silence and meditation.
Play Go ahead, act like a kid. Being somewhere new can let you reconnect with that uninhibited, uncensored part of yourself. Eat 3 scoops of gelato for breakfast in Florence. If your heart screams, “I want to ride an elephant!” do it! Sometimes instant gratification can be fantastic.
Reflect Sometimes you don’t know how significantly a trip or experience has changed you until you take the time to meditate on it and write about it. Keeping a journal or a blog can commemorate your experience and be a much more meaningful reminder of your journey than a miniature statue of liberty tchotchke. If you aren’t a writer you can still keep a reflection journal in other ways. At the end of the trip make a play list of all of the music you listened to on your trip that will trigger memories. If you are an artist, keep a sketchbook. My husband is an architect so he keeps a sketchbook with him on trips and draws the layouts of the buildings we stay in or sketches the old beautiful churches. He’s built up a really special collection over the years that triggers detailed memories for him.
I am feeling a little nostalgic for Spain at the moment so I decided to look through our massive amount of photographs and find all of the random signs we encountered along the Camino this summer. Here are some signs we saw and Paul's and my guesses at what they might mean.
Squid??? Huh??
If you must hover, please don't do it over the vehicles. or Moonwalking on Cars Strictly Prohibited
Caution: Break Dancing Ahead
No big hands here!
Dancing puppets ahead
This was painted on a wall on the side of the road. It says "Love Is Not the Shit"
Leave me a comment if you've got an idea for a better caption!
Okay, I know I have disappeared from the face of the earth for a while. I started blogging about Paul's and my time on the Camino with very good intentions of keeping regular posts and pictures along the way. However, as the weeks wore on I promptly got so involved in living the Camino that getting to a computer to write about our journey and my reflections fell to the wayside.
The good news is that, while I didn't always have a computer nearby, I did spend a considerable amount of time snuggled up in my albergue bunk beds with my headlamp blazing writing about the day in my journal. So here's the plan - amidst new posts about current happenings, books I'm reading and trips I'll be taking, my goal is to go back and recount our camino story piece by piece. I'll backdate the posts to the dates in July and August when they took place so you will have to scroll down to check for new stories.
The five and a half weeks we spent trekking across Spain were some of the most exhausting, challenging and yet most exhilarating and memorable that I have ever experienced. Who knew I could walk 20 miles in one day when I was sick and could barely put pressure on one foot? Who knew I could go a month without make-up and still feel confident and beautiful? Who knew that Paul and I would find friends so similar to us living half a world away? Who knew that everything you need in the world can fit into a backpack?
It is a saying among the pilgrims that the Camino truly begins once you reach Santiago and set out on your own path from there. In my future blog entries I hope to share my experiences on the road in Spain as well as my journey forward from Santiago without the arrows and scallops to lead the way.
Well, we are about 1 week and over 100 km into our Camino. The distance sounds much more impressive in kilometers so I´ll leave it that way. We have had some ups and downs and some long hard days and some beautiful easier days out there walking and a few injuries, but all in all we are having a great time. I haven´t been keeping up with the blog much since we haven´t had much opportunity to be on the internet for long periods of time.
We´ve got more stories to post when I have a little more time online, but for now here are some pictures of the terrain we´ve been walking through and a little video postcard we made when we wandered through a field full of sheep yesterday.
I went outside to write this afternoon and with the warm sun on my face and the perfect breeze I fell asleep. I was outside the on the back lawn of our albergue after a much more moderate day of walking than yesterday. I awoke to the wonderful cacaphony of chatter from pilgrims from all over the world. Here, at any given time I can hear a combination of Spanish, English, German, Italian, French and many other languages that I cannot yet recognize. I feel like the beginning of our journey is brimming, hoping that some of these voices will soon become friends.
The municipal albergue in Puente La Reina has about 100 beds, many more than the one we were very nearly turned away from the night before. The albergues seem to have one or several rooms filled with bunk beds for us to sleep on. This comes with the added bonus of a symphony of snoring during the night. Here there is a large bathroom and a few showers and a gorgeous lawn out back with trees to shade the pilgrims gathered in various groupings on the lawn and a place to hang our hand washed clothes.
This whole hand washing the clothes thing is new to me. Now, I have washed delicates in the sink before with Woolite, hoisery and bras and such, but this is something else entirely. The albergue has this curious looking sink, with slanted ridges for scrubbing. The hospitalera (that´s what the hosts at the albergues are called) lent me a piece of this strange brown soap to wash our clothes with. I wasn´t really sure how to begin, but Paul showed me how. I rolled up my sleeves and washed our clothes Little House on the Prairie style soap, soap, soap, scrub, scrub, scrub, rinse, repeat. This is more of a workout than the walking! I was very proud of myself, but halfway expecting Ma and Pa and sister Mary to show up after they had killed and skinned the chicken for supper.
This was the first albergue where we have been able to cook so Paul and I made some pasta and some chicken. We didn´t have any oil, but saw some margarine in the fridge so we figured it was ok. When peeled back the top, there was a strange white substance at the bottom of the tub that was quite suspect. When you have walked all day and are totally famished, your standards of acceptability are dramatically altered. We used it anyway. From the kitchen while we were cooking and chatting with an English guy named Rob who writes tie in books for video games and movies, I heard someone who sounded just like one of my Korean students talking excitedly. I was really surprised to see that there were not one, but 3 Koreans in the albergue with us. We all started talking over dinner and met Che Jin, Ku and O Kwang along with Matthew from India. I talked to all of them for quite a while and Paul joined us for a while and then went to do a drawing of the church.
As soon as you summit Monte Alto Perdon (Mountain of High Forgiveness), you will fully comprehend why the catholic church pardoned many heinous crimes and various other sins in for walking the Camino. If you are like me, only reasonably fit and carrying a backpack weighing more than a small child, you will come to this understanding much, much earlier in the ascent.
The first day of the Camino began easily enough. After walking around in the Casco Antiguo in Pamplona I quickly discovered that my hiking shoes, although they felt like a warm hug standing around my house, were a disaster to walk more than 100 meters in. I know , I know I should have tested them out before I left, but the problem was solved easily enough with a Corte Ingles, Spain´s mega department store, in close proximity. I abandoned my old pair of hiking shoes on a bench in Pamplona hoping they might find a home with one of the guys who lost their shoes in the bull run. I replaced them with new Merril´s that are working out perfectly.
We left Pamplona about 2pm which is VERY late to start a day on the Camino. Most peregrinos, the Spanish word for pilgrim, don´t mess around. They are up well before the sun, clean, dressed and rummaging around their backpacks, loudly crunching their clothing and bags of sausage, cheese, and bread for the day in the dark. It was only 4 km to the first town Cizur Menor, which we completed easily. It was about 4pm when we arrived in the sleepy little town, invigorated from having talked to 2 perfectly normal pilgrims, a music teacher from Liverpool and a girl from Frace, on the way there. I was hesitant to begin the 12.8 km hike to the next town of Uterga so late, but Paul was excited about making some more progress so we decided to press on. After all, the first part had been easy. We walked through the lush green grounds of the Universidad de Navarra, mostly downhill. The weather was beautiful, cool and breezy, which was a nice change from the 116 degree weather we left behind in Vegas. No problemo, we thought. If we had only known what lay ahead of us...
We knew we were in for a little mountainous terrain, but thought we had seen the worst of it during the ascent in the first hour. If this was what the mountains were like, give me ten more mountains we laughed. We were tough. We were peregrinos, finally on our way! We were mastering the outdoors, we didn´t need any autobus to help us along the way. We didn´t need any doctors or police to help us. Silly Spiderbat, what did he know? The green landscape swirled around us. We delighted in all of the strange and beautiful wildflowers and the green countryside with wheat fields as far as we could see.
And then it began. The small hill we had taken for the great Monte Perdon was behind us and gave way to another ominous trail that rose endlessly from our feet stretching to the horizon above. This daunting scene was dressed up innocently in the vast robes of countryside. It looked like a scene from Don Quixote, complete with giant white turbines at the summit, which I preferred to think of as windmills. We started up the hill and Paul walked confidently forward, full of energy. I started in a similar manner, feeling like I was rising up to meet the challenge, but slowly and surely my back began to squeal in pain. I tried to ignore it for a while, but after about 30 minutes of the steep climb it felt like each item in my backpack, every article of clothing, my poncho, my camera, all of my battery charges, my journal and even my toothbrush were conspiring to crush and melt me under their weight as punishment for packing too much. They crushed my spine until I felt like discs would slip out avoid the pressure. I began to cry. I looked at Paul climbing ahead of me. I struggled to keep up and finally my back could take no more. Tears streamed down my face. I couldn´t do it any more. I had to rest. I had to shed the pack. I didn´t know I could carry on up the mountain.
Only one day and the Camino had already broken me. I wondered if it was like the military, if everyone who passed through had to be broken down first in order to be built back up stronger and better than before. Maybe this was meant to humble me before the long walk I was about to undertake. Paul came to my rescue. He asked what he could carry to help me lighten the load. I sobbed and shook my head not sure what to say. I leaned down to reach into my pack. Paul stopped me and took the whole pack from me and strapped it on the front of his body. This brought more tears, this time of gratitude. I couldn´t imagine how he could bear the weight of both packs, but he did. I rested for a few minutes and noted that this walk would actually be rather pleasant without the weight of the bulging backpack. When I had recovered I started to ask for my backpack back. I asked every few meters until we got to a stopping point where we sat for a moment. We shifted around and repacked until the pack was much more comfortable. The sun was burning brightly almost directly overhead. If I didn´t have my cell phone telling me it was 5pm, I would have thought it was noon.
We continued to struggle for another hour up the hill, Alto Perdon challenging us with every step. Only one pilgrim passed us the entire day. He was a Spaniard on a bike and told us to be careful, the rocks on the wasy down were very dangerous. Great. As if we needed anything worse. All the way up we heard a loud whooshing sound that sounded like a plane taking off. We we finally clawed our way up the final few steps we found out that the sound we had heard was the ¨windmill¨turbines. As we rested on top of the hill, I sort of understood the pride that Super Spider Bat had exuded. I felt faintly like Wonderwoman myself and I could detect a little bit of superpower in Paul too.
Well, we weren´t injured running with the bulls in Pamplona. This is probably due to the fact that we didn´t actually run with them. Tuesday afternoon after we arrived in Pamplona, Paul told me that after thinking about it, he didn´t think he wanted to run. Especially since this was at the beginning of the trip where we´d be walking the entire time. Any injury, even a twisted ankle could make quick work of us out there on the road. He thought there was just too much to lose if something were to happen to either of us. He was right, really. He asked me how badly I wanted to run. I thought for a moment. I was both excited and terrified at the prospect of being closed into a tiny street with a mess of people wearing white and red and a dozen angry bulls. I didn´t really want to do it by myself, but if Paul came with me...
We had already bought balcolny seats at an English language school to watch el Encierro, the name for the running of the bulls, from above Calle Estafeta for the following morning. If we watched and decided it was safe enough and we really wanted to run, we could postpone the start of our camino and come back the next morning.
At about 5 minutes to 8 in the morning, the barricaded street in front of our balcolny was slowly flooded with runners getting a head start on the bulls. People stretched and jumped around preparing themselves for the chaos that was about to take place. The air was thick with anticipation. A few minutes later a cannon sounded and the people on the street began to move, some running, the more daring jogging or walking hoping to get a little closer to the charging animals. After about 2 minutes another cannon sounded and the bulls were released. A TV behind our balcolny showed the news coverage of the Encierro so we were able to see the entire path of the bulls as they ran the gauntlet taunted by runners to what would be their final resting place. The folks in the front of the pack probably made it to the bull ring to safety without seeing a bull at all. Others in the back ran along side of the bulls, making a game of touching the bulls massive sides or holding on to their horns. People ran into each other and fell every possible way in the street. One bull decided a runner was in his way and promptly flung him against a wall with his horn. Another guy trying to climb a wall was pulled back into the street and under a bull. Bull testicles in his face, the guy clung to the beast´s legs for dear life. The bull tried to stomp him, but was eventually prodded along by the bull chasers. All of this happened in a matter of minutes.
I really didn´t understand how much I wanted to be down there running until I was not. Some of you will probably think I am crazy after the scene I just described, but I envied those people who stood there in anticipation waiting for everything to get started while I watched from the sidelines. Not so much the guy who got stomped on, but the group in the front we could see from our balcolny, the 3 women who braved it down there in a sea of men, the group of buddies from London who wore matching green shirts and took off awfully quickly when the cannon sounded, the young couple about my age who ventured to the front of the pack. They all found a way to have this experience that they will probably remember for the rest of their lives. They took a risk, but found a way to make it a smarter risk and were rewarded with a story that they will probably tell for the rest of their lives to their children and their grandchildren.
I felt a profound sadness sitting in our room that afternoon in the aftermath of San Fermin. I´m not sure it even had anything to do with the bulls exactly. I just felt I had made a choice that was at odds with the way I want to live my life. Do I really want to watch life go by safely perched on a balcolny from afar? Or do I want to take life by the horns? If I choose the latter, I may get a little bruised and beat up along the way, but at least I will then have battle scars to show off and I think be better for the wear.
Then I began thinking about the Camino and why Paul and I are here in Spain in the first place. To have an adventure, to do something that will challenge us both physically and mentally. I suppose deciding to walk 400 miles on your summer ¨vacation¨carrying an 18 lb. backpack is not exactly sitting on the sidelines.
We didn´t go back the second day to run with the bulls. We did what we set out to do, started our camino. I was really OK with that. If I´ve got something to prove to myself about taking risks to gain great rewards, it doesn't need to be on a street in Spain with wild bulls. There will be other bulls in other towns. Maybe next time someone else will be watching from the balcolny and I will be the one running by.
We´re here! After a couple of long days of traveling, we´re in Pamplona ready to start our journey. I have some other stories from the days leading up to today, but I will have to go back and post later.
We had our first encounter with a fellow pilgrim today while waiting to buy bus tickets in San Sebastian. He was a short and stocky Spaniard talking to everyone else in line in Spanish and novice English like he owned the place. While I took off to find an Internet cafe and retrieve some information about where we were headed, Paul stayed to buy the tickets and the guy struck up a conversation with him. The interaction went something like this:
Spaniard: Hey, your wife, she left! Paul: She went to the Internet cafe. Spaniard: No, no. She left her bag and she left too. Ha ha ha. Hey man, I just walked 1,000 km. I am so strong. Paul: Oh yeah? My wife and I are walking a long way too. We´re here to walk the Caminode Santiago.
Spaniard: Oh no. I just finished this Camino. You are not strong enough. And those are the shoes you are wearing?
Paul: Yes, they´re pretty comfortable.
Spaniard: Oh, no. You cannot wear those. The rocks will punch you in your feet.. You will take an autobus. Or you will die. You have to train for three months at least before you start, like me. I am so strong. See my muscles? Let me show you my feet (he proceeds to remove his shoes to show blisters and broken toes). I am so strong. I am not Superman. I am not Spiderman. I am not Batman. I am all of them put together.
Paul: (At this point Paul´s face is involuntarily contorting into a look similar to Gary Coleman´s trademark ^Whatchootalkin´ about Willis?^) Hmmm. I see. How did you do that to your toes?
SSB: (The Spaniard will henceforth be known as Spider-Super-Batman - SSB for short). Oh, well I start the trail at 10am. All of the white people start at 6am and I pass them all because I am so strong. One day on the mountain, it goes down, down, down and then up, up, up. I am walking so fast and in front of me there is this girl, She is walking so slow. I yell at her, -Ày, Ay!- but she does not know she needs to move and get out of my way and then crunch, poof! My toes run into her, I fall on a rock and crack my head. Blood, blood everywhere. But I am strong. I go on. Not you, you will die. This mountain, Alto Perdon, there are no policia, no hospital, no autobus. You cannot make it. There are so many white people on the Camino. I am the only black one (mind you, this man has olive skin, but he is no more black than Tom Cruise with a suntan.)
Paul: Black?! You are not black.
SSB: Ah, yes I am. (He pinches the skin on his arm and shakes his head as if this stupid American doesn´t have a firm grasp on the English language) Dark skin. Black.
This goes on for a while before I return. It turns out that Spider-super-batman walked the start (which he made sure Paul knew was NOT in Pamplona where we are beginning) in 21 days. After the bragfest, Paul wanted to ask about SSB´s personal and spiritual growth on the pilgrimage since humility was something he clearly discarded along the way along with his extra socks and shirts. But he thought the `better of it lest he be subjected to yet another Ì´m the King of the World´ story from black Spidey. As we toasted our homemade Kalimotxos this evening (red wine and coke, sounds gross, but is a Spanish staple and I learned to love it during my time in San Sebastiàn before), maybe we should have toasted: ¨Here´s hoping that we´re not the only 2 normal peregrinos on the road!¨
Here it is, Paul's and my last day of work before our Spanish oddessey. Up until this morning the excitement was building and my head was spinning focusing on planning. Today, however, 2 days from our pending departure, my stomach feels a little queasy. Kind of like somebody hid a blender inside of it and keeps hitting pulse every few seconds.
The semester is ending. I have to say goodbye my first class full of International students at UNLV =(. This really shouldn't make me too sad because there is a good chance that I will be teaching most of them in the Fall or sometime again in the future, but what can I say, I'm sentimental. We've become a little International community this summer.
On Monday morning we will touch down in Spain and be immersed in the unknown armed with nothing but our backpacks. There is something half thrilling. but also the equal parts scary and daunting about a trip like this. I really have no idea what it will be like to walk 15 miles a day in the hot sun and or (gasp!) rain. I don't think I have ever walked 15 miles straight in my life and now we're about to do it everyday for 5 weeks. Wow. On the other hand, there's a first time for everything, right? Part of me is just itching to dive right in and see how it goes. Worst case scenario -we decide we've had enough walking for our whole lives after a few weeks and are "stuck" in Europe for 5 1/2 weeks. We can go to Italy and take a cooking class, get some bicycles in Amsterdam and ride all over Europe, take some wine tours in all of the wine regions, anything really. Not such a bad back up plan.
**The picture above contains all of the clothing I am taking for 5 1/2 weeks! I pack more than this to go to my Mom & Jon's house for the weekend.
Well, it took 14 weeks and some help I enlisted from my new friend Paulette at Senator Ensign's office, but I FINALLY got my passport with my married name back in the mail.
Now I just have to get in shape, brush up on my Spanish and to figure out how to stuff all of my belongings for 5 1/2 weeks into a backpack weighing no more than 15 pounds. No problem!
So, exactly how many people are crazy enough to take this arduous but inspiring journey with me? Here is the breakdown from 2006. These stats are courtesy of one of my fellow Santiagobis member on Yahoo Groups (which came from El Correo Gallego via Santiago Today).
Camino Frances 82,407 Camino Portugues 6,467 Ruta del Norte 5,378 Ruta de la Plata 3,523 Ruta Primitivo 1,588 Camino Ingles 804
These are the different routes of the Camino. I'd really like to find out how these numbers on the Camino Frances spread out over the different months, summer months in particular since this is when Paul and I are considering going. The map you see to the left is of the Camino Frances Route with its various starting points. We'd start in Roncesvalle, just over the Spanish/French border and head towards Santiago.
For some its a religious pilgrimage and pennance. For some it's a spiritual journey and for others an intense test of mental as well as physical endurance or a challenge to become more tolerant of others.
As for me, I am looking forward to the challenge of trying something new; a month and a half of walking spent in quiet reflection and a chance to brush up on my Spanish and meet some interesting characters from around the world. In some way I feel like each step of the 426.26 mile path from Roncesvalles to Santiago is a step towards living a life that is something so much more than ordinary.
Besides my wonderful husband, the great loves of my life have always been traveling to new lands, reading (according to my brother I am obsessed) and writing about all of it. I’m a University ESL teacher, Spain and Spanish-o-phile (I think I just made up a word), writer and dabbler in other creative pursuits. This blog is a way for me to share the stories from my walk through the world, through the pages of my favorite books and my walk through life.
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