Dispatches Del Camino (#22)
Leòn Cathedral is among the greatest of human works in Gothic style. The church features one of the world’s largest collections of medieval stained glass windows.
Sean Dietrich
Dispatches Del Camino (#21)
In today’s dispatch, Sean answers reader questions about his trek across Spain.
Dispatches Del Camino (#20)
It was our first day off. We had been walking the Camino for three weeks, upwards of 18 miles per day, until our feet bear a striking resemblance to USDA-approved ground ch
Dispatches Del Camino (#19)
He was a blind man, walking the highway toward El Burgo Ranero. If he wasn’t totally blind, the sunglasses meant he was low vision. Cars shot past him as he trudged along, seemingly unaware of the vehicles.
Dispatches Del Camino De Santiago (18)
When you’re out here on the Camino de Santiago, God knows, you’re tired of walking. Tired of moving your feet. You’re not tired physically. Your body feels okay, mostly, except for the fact that everything—even the gray matter of your brain—feels like it has been drop kicked by a 19-year-old NFL draftee.
Dispatches del Camino de Santiago (#17)
A bar, somewhere in rural Spain. A rooster is crowing near the open door. Distant goats are bleating. Spanish farmers gather to chew the morning fat.
Dispatches From the Camino (#16)
We are walking the Camino de Santiago when the power goes out in Spain. At first, we do not know the power is out, of course. The only thing we notice is that our phones have quit working.
Dispatches Del Camino (#15)
Every day is the same. You wake up; you walk. Eat, sleep, walk. Repeat. Also, you look for cheesecake. You are always looking for cheesecake. You’ve learned that Spain has the best cheesecake in the known solar system.
Dispatches Del Camino (#14)
It was a little church. Off the main path. And you don’t see many “little” churches on the Camino. Most churches here are Gothic monuments. Stone gargantuans, with bells, towering medieval doors, and golden altars. This wasn’t one of those.
Dispatches Del Camino (#13)
We arrive in the city of Burgos after a 14-mile walk. Although it feels like 14 million miles. Today is hot. We are sunburned, thirsty, and our skin is covered in a fine layer of crystalized salt from evaporated sweat.
Dispatches Del Camino (#12)
You do three things on the Camino each day. You walk. You talk. You stop to pee.
Dispatches Del Camino (#11)
We all stand outside the small market in Villamayor. There are about twenty-five, maybe thirty of us hapless, fatigued pilgrims. Sweaty and covered in grit. All wearing the same clothes we were wearing two weeks ago.
Dispatches Del Camino De Santiago (#10)
Grañón is a small village dating back to 885. The stone streets are empty this afternoon. Siesta is underway, the Spanish world has shut down to observe their daily food coma. There are seemingly no rooms in all of Spain tonight. There are 40 percent more pilgrims walking the Camino, we are told, than there …
Dispatches Del Camino (#9)
Six of us have fallen in together, walking side by side for the last several miles of the Camino de Santiago. We are all strangers. All pilgrims. From different nations. There is dust on our backpacks, mud on our boots, and we all smell like something a diuretic horse produced.
Dispatches Del Camino (#8)
We are walking through Navarrete on Easter Monday the moment Pope Francis dies. The bells of the massive church are ringing, non-stop. Locals are in a kind of reverential shock.
Dispatches Del Camino (7)
The woman at the hostel utters four magic words. “Si, we have beds.” This is amazing. There have been no beds in Spain for Holy Week. It’s almost Easter Sunday and we have been beggars, compelled to walk the Camino de Santiago with our hats in hand, and our hands out, looking for beds.
Dispatches Del Camino (#6)
I am sitting in a Spanish bar in the dusty pueblo of Villa de Larraga. This is evidently a locals bar. And I am definitely not a local. I believe I am the only Inglés speaker in this village tonight.
Dispatches Del Camino (#5)
The stone doorway arch above us features carvings of angels and demons which date back to Roman times. Eight angels surround Christ, who is looking straight at me as though He is saying, “‘No room’ at the inn?—Now where have I heard THAT before?”
Dispatches From El Camino (#4)
The 83-year-old woman has been opening her home to pilgrims since before I was born. Currently, she is bustling around her house, gathering fresh towels and soaps for us. We are standing in her doorway, drenched, cold, and looking about as content as wet Himalayan cats.
Dispatches from El Camino, (#3)
We leave our inn at daybreak. Our innkeeper is awake and already at the front door, wearing a robe, waiting to say goodbye to us. Like a mom seeing her kids off to school. She gives us a heartfelt and emotional goodbye in French, with double kisses and everything.