What do you say about a 25-day dream of a lifetime finally realized? How do you sum up the final walk of our Camino de Santiago? Impossible to do!
It is enough to say that we did it, and while we had planned to wait until Tuesday to go to the Cathedral and the Pilgrim Office, after resting up a bit yesterday, we did walk down that direction and found the lines weren't really too bad. After a fairly short wait, we each took our turn going in, showing our pilgrim passports and when we came out, we were the proud bearers of our Compostelas!
We totalled it up and found that over the last three weeks, we had walked 224 kilometers, or just over 140 miles. Part of it we did while wearing our backpacks, some in the heat of the day, and some in a pouring rain. Along the way we had met some wonderful people and discovered a fellowship of travelling sufferers with whom we would always be kin! We had walked the last 110 kilometers from Sarria, which qualified us to receive the coveted Compostela. Imagine our surprise when we looked at it and discovered that the entire document was all, even our names, in Latin, just as it has been for nearly a thousand years!
Our pilgrim credentials had been folded and refolded, stamped and dated and both the front and nearly all of the back side were nearly full. The young American volunteer working behind the counter took all my information, had me sign the register attesting that we were walking for religious purposes, and I seriously thought I would break down and cry when he said, "I will now stamp your final sello!"
He lifted the stamp, applied it to my document and dated it 07 Xull 2014. It read "Oficina del Peregrina S.A.M.I. Cathedral, Santiago." It was over! The quest had ended! Our pilgrim passports now looked like this:
We were bone tired, had no energy left and on top of that both of us were suffering with various maladies of one kind or another, but we were still so happy!
What an eventul day it had been! We had made it all the way to O Pedrouzo the night before and when we looked at the map and realized we were only 11 miles away, we decided to go for it. The last day isn't one of the prettiest, as you hike in to town, have to skirt the airport and then face miles of urban agglomeration and traffic.
But we were up and at 'em early and on the road by 7 a.m. That would be the equivalent of 5 a.m. our time as everything seems to happen two hours later here. There wasn't even a coffee shop open for breakfast, so we started on out of town hoping it wouldn't be far before we could have breakfast.
We had barely left town when we heard footsteps, and who should it be but my friend Collum from Ireland! His long legs were moving along at a good pace, but he slowed down and walked with us a bit and we enjoyed catching up on his travels. But shortly he said it was time to move on, as he wanted to make the Pilgrim Mass in the Cathedral by 12 noon. We knew we couldn't make that, so we bade him farewell and Godspeed and he was off.
It was shortly before 8 a.m. and we were hoping we would soon find a coffee shop. Sure enough, we walked in to the little town of Amenal where the first coffee shop open was doing a bustling business. We happened to mark our arrival time pretty accurately, because there was a large-screen TV turned on at the end of the room and most folks were watching it. There was an on-screen countdown clicking down the minutes until 8 a.m., at which time they would release the bulls in Pamplona! We were awestruck! Only about three weeks earlier we had been in Pamplona, had talked with a taxi driver who had run with the bulls and knew that someday his sons would run too. And it was about to begin!
At precisely 8 a.m., with the streets lined with people, a gentleman lit the fuse on a rocket, launching it skyward and pulling the release on the double gates that would free what looked like close to a dozen ferocious bulls onto the streets of this town that were literally jam packed with runners in red and white, and every balcony and observation post full. What a sight to see!
Soon we were off again, and we knew we had a couple of steep climbs ahead of us, one going towards the Santiago airport, the other as you approach the edge of town with its 380 meter peak of Monte Gozo, where you would get your first view of Santiago.
We paralleled the airport a while, then finally rounded the eastern end of it, with its landing lights and navigation equipment. An old buddy of mine was waiting there for me to take his picture!
Trudging on past the airport, we came upon an unusual couple having a conversation in English, the second language for both of them. One was a young German girl, the other an older Hispanic man.
When we asked the gentleman where he was from, he said "Guatemala". We said, "You are kidding, we were in Guatemala last year!"
It is a small world, and it was about to get smaller!
"What part of Guatemala were you in," he asked us. "Chimaltenanga," we replied.
"You are kidding me! I was the mayor of Chimaltenanga!" he told us. It had been quite some time ago, and he had been the youngest mayor ever elected to that city. He had even written a book about his experiences!
We told him where we had stayed, what kind of work we did, and he seemed impressed. He asked me what I do, and it has just always been easier for me to tell people, "I teach the Bible" rather than try to explain to them what a minister of education is!
"I have read the Bible through eight times," he told me, "and I always have trouble. There are so many inconsistencies that I find."
I asked him to name one, knowing what a challenge that could be. It was simpler than I thought, but still required some explanation. The story of Adam and Eve, of Cain killing Able and then Cain leaving home and finding a wife. If Adam and Eve were the first two human beings, and they had three boys, where did Cain get a wife?
How would you answer that? We talked a while and I told him I had my email address on a card and we pulled out two to hand them, both with the website gotquestions.org prominently displayed. The young lady glanced at her card and then threw it on the ground, but he kept his.
We parted company after a while and continued walking, making it to Villamaior, which we had estimated to be the halfway point, and then a bit further along we came to the television tower at 390 meters, our highest point for the day.
We stopped at a little campground, and I was amused to see that the tents were placed out on the grass with quite a few chickens pecking all around them. I imagined that you didn't go barefoot in the campsite!
We stopped for quite a long rest and met an American family from Washington state that we had seen earlier, and visited a bit.
I was beginning to move very slowly, and my left hip was bothering me quite a bit. We took frequent rest stops, and I was hoping we would soon be there, but I remembered how the last couple of miles were always the worst!
As we finally came to the place where we could see Monte Gozo, the hill overlooking Santiago, I told Sharon, "There would have to be a whole lot of Gozo for me to want to walk up that hill just to get a glimpse of this town!
We did come to Monte Gozo, and there was a little makeshift coffee shop set up by the chapel there, and a man turning coins into jewelry with a coping saw. We took a peek in the little chapel and it was very quaint:
Finally, after we had rested long enough, I had to walk up to the top of Monte Gozo. You know me and getting the picture made! Here was the monument that sits high atop lofty Monte Gozo:
And while you couldn't see the cathedral from up there owing to some trees that had sprung up, you did get a glimpse of the fabled city. I wondered what the pilgrims who made the journey 900 years ago thought when they first saw this view, and I was somewhat awestruck that people like me had been taking in this view for nearly ten centuries!
I had decided that this was just as far as I could walk, my leg wouldn't let me go one step further. I asked the young lady at the coffee shop if she would call me a cab, and she pointed to a phone number posted on the wall. My phone doesn't work here, I said. She said something I didn't catch, and then tried to make the call. No answer, she said. I envisioned a nice plaque to my memory erected right here at this spot, like the one to Guillermo Watt we had seen earlier.
But Sharon suggested we rest for a while, so I stretched out on a stone wall and tried to take a nap. When was the last time you tried that? But after resting a bit, we decided to limp on in to town. Here we go, down a row, as I had said so many times we were both sick of hearing it!
We walked and walked and walked some more. At least twice I tried to hail a passing cab, but they never slowed down. Finally, as we had crossed the main highway and made it into Santiago, I met the man I had been wanting to meet! There was a little restaurant with several cars parked around it, and one of them a rather large van with a taxi sign stuck to the top. There was no driver in sight, and Sharon observed he was probably inside having lunch, as it was about 2:30.
We stood there for a few moments trying to decide what to do, when a man emerged from the restaurant. He looked at us, we looked at him, and I asked, "Is this your taxi?" The nicest words I had heard all day were when he replied, "¡Si, señor!"
We engaged his services and he drove us to our hotel, the Santiago Nest Style just about six blocks from the cathedral. We. Were surprised at how far it was, and I know I could not made it on foot the whole way. But the Camino had seen to it that we walk into town under our own steam! Someone has observed, "The Camino doesn't always give you what you want, but it gives you what you need."
Our hotel was in a nice part of town, with shops and restaurants and lots of bakeries! Here was our view up Rua do Doutor Teixera:
And just look at some of these!
Ramon cookies! They have Ramon cookies here! If you haven't seen the movie, you won't get the reference!
Due to an error on my part in booking our hotel, we found that we were booked all the way through Thursday night and it was a reservation that could not be changed. One of the pilgrims we visited with observed that sometimes the Camino uses our mistakes for our own good, and I don't think we could have headed back to Lisbon any sooner! We need these four days to rest and recover!
As we headed over towards the cathedral, a tall American with a big smile greeted us. "You made it, congratulations!" he said. We greeted him in return, and as we walked away I asked Sharon if she remembered where we had met him. "No idea," she said.
We stood there looking at the cathedral for a few moments, when someone else spoke to us. We looked and it was the young Belgian girl with whom we had visited over breakfast two days earlier!
I had often wondered how so many Europeans found time and resources to make the pilgrimage, and she explained it. I think probably most Americans are unaware that our European counterparts are given an entire month off in the summer--June, July or August--and in addition, they are given an extra month of salary to help pay for vacation expenses. That is in addition to other holiday days off and vacation time. Try to negotiate THAT package at your next job!
But in Belgium, she explained, you are given 12 months that you can take off over the life of your career, and the young lady told us she had taken three to make this trip. Your employer holds your job for you, although you don't get paid. However, the Belgian government does pay your 500 euros a month, or about $700, to help you with expenses.
We were as delighted to see our young friend as if we had known each other for a long time, even though we had never even exchanged names. She told us she had gotten in the day before and already had her Compostela. She showed us the Pilgrim Office just around the corner and suggested we peek inside to see how long the line was.
She told us she was supposed to meet a friend here in the plaza, and they were to meet at either 6 or 8 p.m. As there was no sign of her friend, she would check back in two hours. It is amazing the friendships and acquaintances you make along the way.
So we went on and got in line, filling in a few dates that needed to be written in our pilgrim passport. We received our Compostelas with no problems.
We were about worn out, and quite frankly a little tired of the pilgrim menus to which we had become so intimately acquainted. We picked a more familiar place to eat our dinner, and we were quite delighted that they were so happy to see us, they made us the King and Queen of the place!
We are going to rest up here until Friday morning, and we have already purchased our train tickets back to Portugal. We will head back down that way, spend some time with friends, and then fly back home on July 18.
We are still processing what the trip means to us, and I'm sure we will have further thoughts about the Way. Someone suggested on Facebook that we turn around and walk back so we can continue to post pictures. Sorry, that is not happening! But as I observed, I do have about 2,000 photos on memory cards that I took with my camera. Most of the ones you've seen here were taken with my iPhone. How many of the 2,000 do you want to see?
Sharon just went down to the ladies' shop next door to buy some new clothes--try wearing the same three sets in a row for nearly a month!
Right now, all I want to do after getting up from my last nap is grab a bite to eat or shower and then take another nap.
We've noticed that we are no longer pilgrims, and that is a little sad. When we went down for breakfast this morning, Sharon greeted the whole room, as we have done for more than three weeks, with a cheery "¡Buenos dias!" There was little or no reaction, as the only people in the place were tourists, not pilgrims. The Fellowship of the Camino had been disbanded!
But as we headed back out on to the street for an errand, you could still spot a few of them. They wear backpacks and hats, carry walking sticks with clam sheels and gourds attached, and many of them walk with a limp. But when you greet them, they always respond:
"Buen camino!"
What an awesome accomplishment! Memories for a lifetime! I have enjoyed "walking" with you along the Way. Lee
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lee!
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