Final Dispatch from the Camino
We entered Santiago de Compostela at 2:11 p.m. On foot. We’d been hiking since sunup. Our pace was slow. Our clothes, threadbare. I was muttering the 23rd Psalm—a kind of private meditation on the trail.
Pilgrimage
Dispatches Del Camino (#32)
Some of the most powerful lessons we pilgrims have learned on this proverbial Chisholm Trail have not been about life, or the nature of the universe. Our lessons have been in relation to each other.
Dispatches Del Camino (#29)
I am standing at a bus stop in the unrelenting rain. Although to call this a “bus stop” is being generous. It’s just a highway guardrail. I am alone on this empty highway, waiting to catch a ride out of O Cebreiro.
Dispatches Del Camino (#28)
Somewhere in the distant mountains, my wife is hiking the Camino. I should be with her, but I am here with shin-splinted legs and swollen calves.
Dispatches Del Camino (#27)
My taxi arrived at Ponferrada after a long, twisty, pleasant ride through the mountains. And by “pleasant” I mean that only one of three taxi passengers actually vomited. I paid our driver, then found a nearby bush where I could double over.
Dispatches Del Camino (#26)
My wife and I parted in the lobby of the albergue. She was crying. It was a little-girl cry. The kind of crying you do when you don’t care who is watching you. She has never been self-conscious about her own emotions. Thank God nobody ever told this beautiful woman that it’s not dignified to cry in public.
Dispatches Del Camino (#25)
My eyes first caught the sight of a rosary, lying on my nightstand. The rosary was given to me by a nun, a few villages back. The rosary bears a hieroglyphic-like symbol on it. I have no idea what this symbol means.
Dispatches Del Camino (# 24)
We limped into Rabanal Del Camino on three legs. I was holding Jamie for support as we ascended the inclined street into an isolated Spanish village with a population of 60 residents.
Dispatches Del Camino (#23)
Dear God, thank you for letting me happen upon this small church, so I might rest my anguished feet. This little church, alongside the Camino, somewhere in the far flung regions of rural Spain. A place where I can kneel and pray in solitude.
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.
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 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 (#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 (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.