On caminos in Spain, they have concrete kilometer posts and people often leave stones on them. Sometimes people bring stones from home or pick them up along the trail. Each stone has a meaning to the person leaving it. Often they write something on the stone. This seems to be a Camino Portuguese variant of this. This is the only one we’ve seen so far.
Similar on the Japanese Kumano Kodo but not quite as hefty. It’s not a Japanese or Buddhist or Shinto thing. A local woman said it was just what “foreigners” did. Same thing there?
Hmm, interesting. You are right in that I don’t think it is a Spanish thing. It seems to me that the Camino is kind of a country in itself. A long thin one where the people are from lots of places. It has its own culture and one aspect is the leaving of stones. You find the stones along all the caminos. In our first Camino we brought stones from home and left them at the Cruz de Faro which has a big mound of them. Now we are more Camino tourists and are more interested in Spanish (or Portuguese) things.