But we sallied forth anyway

In Matosinhos (Porto) and the 1 euro store next door.

His show was playing at the coffee bar we went to after being thrown out of the private home we tried first.

Where we are staying. Lovely place. Here is the view out the balcony door

We had our laundry done. The young man was so cheerful and efficient.

We can't say enough how nice and friendly everyone we encounter is. This includes other pilgrims and especially the Portuguese people. The desk clerks and shop people are all helpful and friendly. The bar owners are happy to have you sit around as long as you want using their WiFi and are always ready with directions or advice.

Wynette has been trying out her Portuguese and doing pretty well for a beginner. She asks how to say things and people are happy to correct her pronunciation and tell her the Portuguese word for things.

Walking the Camino involves a lot of thinking about things. And the thinking often goes back to why you are walking and one way to approach that is to consider what is a "pilgrim".

Let's start with a "typical" pilgrim. Most pilgrims walk about 15 miles (25 km) a day. There are many Camino guides in many languages and they all divide the Camino into "stages". In pretty much all the books, stages are 12 to 22 miles, averages around 15 miles. So that is what most pilgrims walk each day. It also seems to be a good distance for a normally healthy person to walk. Brierley talks about three speeds, low, medium, high as 3, 4 or 5 km per hour. So you are walking from 5 to 8 hours a day. You typically start early 6-8 am and everyone takes breaks so you arrive from 1 pm to 5 pm.

A typical pilgrim carries all their own stuff in their pack so are carrying 15-25 pounds in their pack. They stay in albergues, communicate dorms with 4 to 30 beds in a room. Albergues cost from 5-15 euros a night and a pilgrim's "menu" costs 7-10 euros so you can go pretty cheaply.

Those are the externalities of being a pilgrim and they shape the internalities, if that is a word, my spell checker doesn't think so.

My feeling from watching pilgrims and reading dozens of books by pilgrims is that the social aspect is the main thing pilgrims want to get out of their Camino. Since everyone is on the same walk and going the same way at the about the same speed, you form lots of trail friendships. You see the same people over and over again and that is very satisfying. There is always lots to talk about because you are all walking the same trail and staying in the same placed and eating at the same places. You talk about these things and things that happen on the trail and where you are from. Interestingly, there is little talk about jobs or what people do. Everything is focused on the Camino.

Of course, many pilgrims have religious purposes also. We have only met a few so we don't know much about this but it is a significant number of people.

Many people walk the Camino after a loss of some sort. A loved one dies, a divorce, a cancer diagnosis. It gives them a way to process the grief.

Another group goes for "spiritual" purposes. We might say "philosophical" purposes. You think about your life and your goals and what you should be doing and how you should be relating to people. It is pretty much impossible to do a Camino without thinking about these things and that is one of the great things about it.

The Camino has the usual aspects of travel. Your main concerns are where you will eat, where you will sleep and what you will see each day. It is 'time out of time". You do not think much about what is going on back home, you just concentrate on the trip.

The Camino is an extreme version of this. You pretty much always stay in the albergue that is there when you are done walking. What you do all day is walk, and at the end of the walk you do your laundry and talk to the other pilgrims. Often there is only one or a few places to eat and you just get the pilgrim's menu. Or you get a group together and make a communal meal in the albergue kitchen. So there is little to think about in finding places to sleep and eat.

Pilgrims do very little sightseeing as such. The Camino goes through nice areas but not typically by major tourist attractions, that is not the point of the Camino, but you still see lots of things. You see the daily life of the people. You walk by their houses and gardens. You see then going about their daily life.

While walking you have these wonderful yellow arrows, beloved by all pilgrims. You don't really need a map or guidebook, you just follow the arrows. It is mindless in a good way in that your mind is free to think about other things.

So the Camino reduces travel to its essence, a time for contemplation and to think about your place in the world. This is the wonderful thing about the Camino.

We are typical pilgrims in some ways and not others. Because of foot issues it is pretty much impossible for us to walk 15 miles a day. On our first Camino we averaged 11 miles a day and went 15 miles in several days, but the cost was high and Wynette ended up with a stress fracture. We have decided that 7-9 miles a day is just right for us, about half speed. We can do this comfortably.

One result is that we do not have the same social interactions as a typical pilgrim. We see people for a day or two and then never again because they are miles beyond us. Luckily we tend towards introversion and, while we enjoy social interaction, too much can be tiring. The amount we get going about 8 miles a day seems right for us.

There is also a big difference between going as a couple and going as an individual. There are lots of pilgrims who walk alone, I would guess at least 50% and that is counting couple as two people. Couples don't tend to interact as much as individuals.

So we have found a Camino style that is good for us. There is a common expression that all pilgrims give at least lip service to: "Everyone walks their own Camino". Still, people are often surprised at how short our daily walks are and it catches them off guard. The first "Camino question" asked when you meet someone is "Where are you from?" Next is "Where did you start?" For the Portuguese Camino that is Lisbon for a few but overwhelmingly it is Porto. The third is "Where did you start today?" When we answer some place that is only 6-7 miles away everyone seems surprised and is sure they misheard. Then they realize we only went that far and they switch to "everyone walks their own Camino" mode and are quick to make it clear they don't disapprove at all. Maybe we are a little sensitive about it.

But it works for us and, as I am sure you have heard, "everyone walks their own Camino", or before the singular "they" became okay "everyone walks his or her own Camino" or before that "everyone walks his own Camino".

One more aspect of this is who is a "true pilgrim". Everyone according to "everyone walks their own Camino" but there are tour groups that come in in buses and walk 3-5 miles and then are deposited at their hotel where their luggage is waiting and they do this for 8-10 days. I think I can safely say that almost all typical pilgrims would look down on these people and feel they were not "true pilgrims". There are several services that will carry your bags between places so you only need to carry a day pack. Many people do not consider them "true pilgrims" either but it allows a much wider range of people to walk the Camino. This form of walking is the norm on the extensive walking trails in England and no one gives it a second thought. For ourselves we like to carry our stuff and part of the fun of planning is to get our the spreadsheet and scale and cut down the weight to the bare minimum.

And then there are the walkers of the "Way-slow Way", Charlie and Wynette, who feel they are true pilgrims.

Most travel writing centers on getting an authentic local experience. You want to go to places that are "unspoiled". You want to live like the locals, albeit with maybe a little more luxury. You want to understand the place. You don't travel to see other travelers. The fewer of them the better. You don't come back from Peru and tell about the great people you met there from Denver.

Still, when you are traveling it is fun to run into people you know and it is fun to see someone you saw previously on the trip.

We have talked to a lot of pilgrims and read 20-30 books written by people about their Camino experiences. (You can read all you want if you sign up for Kindle Unlimited for a month because there are hundreds of self-published Camino books available there.)

The primary topic of these books is the people they met on the Camino, the other pilgrims. The principal Camino travel experience seems to be interacting with other travelers. Certainly people sometimes talk about the local people they meet, but not a lot. Sometimes they talk about the things they see, but not a lot. In truth there is not much to see on the Camino other than pretty scenery and charming villages, and, well, lots of beautiful old churches. People do talk about the walking but much less than you would think. In book after book it is about the people they meet and little else.

Pilgrims particularly enjoy having a group of people that they see day after day in the albergue. Or people they see for a few days, lose track of, and then meet up with again down the line.

This is a major difference between typical travel and walking the Camino.

One way to think about this is to think of the Camino itself as a virtual country. It is a country to itself, existing in the actual country of Spain (and Portugal and France to a lesser degree). The pilgrims are the "locals" in this country. So interacting with pilgrims is really interacting with the locals. And discussing the walk, places you stay, blisters, etc. with other pilgrims is learning about the local culture of the "country" you are in.

Wynette and I did a lot of "traditional" traveling when we were still working. We would go on three-week trips and stay in places 2-3 days. In 2013 we started going on walking vacations, that is, the Camino and now we are on our third. We are much less interested in typical travel where you go from city to city seeing sites. Last year we went to Seville for five weeks and stayed in an apartment. We enjoyed that and plan to do it again, somewhere else.

Actually the Camino is a little like that. True, you are moving on to a new place every day, but in another sense you are staying in one place, the Camino place. It is a lot the same day to day and you learn more about it as the days go by, just as you learn more about a city when you stay in it for several weeks.

Unfortunately you see a lot of this in Portugal and Spain, the economic crisis stopped a lot of construction and it has never been restarted. Probably too late now.

Anyone who grew up in California knows and loves the smell of Eucalyptus trees in the evening. They have planted a lot of Eucalyptus in Galicia, usually mixed with pine. Some get quite large.

From Frixe to Mucia. We have asked several times about the pronunciation of Muxia. One problem is that the Galician and Spanish pronunciations are different. Some version of moo-she-a (Galician) or moo-he-a (Spanish) with an stress on either the first or second syllable.

Muxia was our goal and we finally made it. 28 walking days, 3 rest days, average of 8.1 miles a day.

Lots of thoughts now that we are done. Finishing makes you think a lot about the trip. We'll post on them in the next few days.

Thankfully the Camino turned at this fork.