Camino as World Building

2014-10-07 11.05.19

Charlie. The thing we loved about walking the Camino was that it was like being in a little world. You start out, say at Roncesvalles, as we did on our first Camino and you have 790 km to Santiago (see the photo in the blog of our first trip). 790 km is so far it seems a long way off and it is hard to think about getting there.

You walk 20 km, find a place to stay, do some laundry, write in your journal or blog, look around the town, have dinner and go to bed. You wake up the next day and you have 770 km to Santiago and it seems just as remote. So you do the same things again and the next morning you have 750 km to go. As this goes on you realize you are in the little world, a socially constructed reality. You do the same things every day and it seems like it will go on forever. The towns change but are more the same than different each day. Your only job in this world to do the things I mentioned plus have adventures, notice things and talk to people. It is a delightful world to inhabit.

The great thing about the Camino is that the world is already constructed for you. Most of the towns you pass through continue to exist mainly to serve pilgrims. There are thousands of other pilgrims sharing the world with you. When you talk to people on the Camino you have the standard questions: What country are you from? Where did you start? Where did you start today? Where will you spend the night? How are your feet doing? And the implicit question: what interesting Camino experiences have you had? What you do back home comes much later, if at all.

The reason we went on a second Camino was to go back into that world and continue exploring it. We didn’t want to recreate the experiences we had, we wanted to recreate the world we were in and have new experiences in that world. The first time in the world we did not explore it as much as we wanted. There were new experiences to be had.

We often thought about experiences from our first Camino, not to try to recreate the experiences but for the joy of reminiscing. We turn a corner and remember that last time on this stretch we met a couple from Alberta and that the man was legally blind and they tried to buy bread off a bread delivery truck. This time on another stretch we meet a couple from Australia.

It was very satisfying to walk the Camino again: to think about our past experiences, to do things we had wanted to do, to plan a bit better than last time.

Bus to Santiago

There are five or six buses a day from Finisterre to Santiago (and as many the other direction). We expected the bus to take the autopista (freeway) but it was a local all the way. Instead of going straight to Santiago it followed the jagged Costa da Morte. There is a town at every inlet with a beach, usually every 5-10 miles. The bus serves the locals who need to go along the coast and to get to Santiago. People could just flag down the bus. The trip took three hours (an hour longer than advertised) but the scenery was interesting the whole way. You see the coast and lots of interesting little towns along the coast.

Waiting for the bus:
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Pilgrims boarding the bus before us:
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Our bus driver had a great face:
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Snapshot from the bus window:
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Finishing Up

2014-10-27 13.39.28

After you have made it to the end of the earth what is left? Getting to Finisterre was a goal. We had planned to go on to Muxia (another two days) and then see some other places for the last week. But foot problems, while not preventing going on, made it sound less fun. We talked about various tourist places to go, mostly along the north coast of Spain but that would involve switching to “tourist mode” from “walking mode” and we weren’t in the right state to make that switch. Also some minor issues came up at home.

So the upshot is that we decided to come home 10 days early, a 46 day trip instead of a 56 day trip. We switched our plane reservations and took the bus to Santiago, the train to Madrid and the plane to Albuquerque. We have been home a week and are just getting over jet lag.

Overall we were very happy with the trip and are already planning our next walking vacation.