My adventures walking the Camino de Santiago and why I continue to walk it again and again…

You may be asking yourself, why did I decide to keep walking to Santiago de Compostela over and over again, despite the challenge?

Yes, walking the Camino de Santiago is incredibly difficult!

The answer why I keep doing these walks all comes down to the people I meet and the experiences I have along the way, as well as the peace of mind that my biggest concern about tomorrow is solely related to how far I will walk.

At the time of writing this, I have walked the Camino Frances, Camino Portuguese, and Camino Finisterre/Muxia. I hope to additionally walk another route (or 2) at some point in the future.

Straight from my journal:

Why I walked my first Camino… Learning to Trust Myself with Hard Things.

I walked my first Camino (Camino Frances and Finisterre) because I wanted to trust myself to accomplish something hard.

In the previous summer, I completed an internship where I could have pushed myself a bit harder than I did and I wanted to see if I could do the hard thing. I did this Camino with my university and there were times when my classmates would take a bus or taxi to the next stop but it was important for me to walk every step of this Camino because I wanted to say, with integrity, that I walked the entire Camino.

For more on this walk please refer to my Camino Frances and my Camino Finisterre posts.

Why I walked my second Camino… Learning to Listen to Others and MYSELF.

I walked my second Camino (Camino Frances and Finisterre) because I wanted to listen. I wanted to work on my active listening skills with others but the more I walked, the more I realized I needed to listen to myself.

On this Camino, I was pushing myself physically harder than I ever had before and I needed to know when to stop and ship my bag. I also did get the opportunity to listen to others and their stories.

Because I was aiming to listen on this Camino, I was very reluctant to walk by myself for a while, as I wanted to learn from others. However, my friend Luca called me out on this and told me that maybe my reluctance to walk alone may be a reason to do just that. So, I walked with myself some days, talked with myself, and checked in to how I was doing a bit more than I had before.

For more on this walk please refer to my Camino Frances and my Camino Finisterre posts.

Why I walked my third Camino… Seeking, Trusting and Listening to God’s Plan, and His People.

I walked my third Camino (Camino Portuguese and Finisterre/Muxia) because I wanted to listen to God’s plan and his people. I had just finished my masters dissertation and had no idea what was next for me in life and I wanted to put myself in a state of uncertainty where I would have to be uncomfortable with the unknown.

I researched minimally and let God take the reigns and I realized that every time something did not go as plan, it went better than expected.

Something I found out was that when life doesn’t go to plan, it still goes to plan. Maybe not how we had expected or hoped, but sometimes better.

For example, my friend Melanie and I arrived in a town without a reservation and the albergue we had hoped to stay at was full. We ended up staying at an albergue where we met Tato and Manuel, who we walked with until Santiago. While it is a small example of something going wrong, it shows that things work out.

For more on this walk please refer to my Camino Portuguese post.

Bad days, Camino families and my favorite moments on the Camino de Santiago:

The best moments on my Camino de Santiago walks were with my Camino family when I or someone else needed one another and the family was there for each other.

I had a rough day and Luca (he may kill me for publicizing this), as a true Italian, ate his first and last pineapple pizza, to cheer me up a bit. When two of our other friends were having a bad day, Luca would set a timer for every 18 minutes and dance embarrassingly to a song of our choice. Or when we helped each other face fears.

In addition to this, Kelly, wrote me uplifting letters when I was having a bad day. I still have those letters and I think that is one of the reasons we are pen pals now.

And sometimes when people are having bad days, you just need to sit with them in silence and let them feel that emotion.

Tiny perfect moments on the Camino de Santiago:

There are also my favorite Camino de Santiago moments that I look out for, tiny perfect things, I like to call them. Just moments where I look around and I am so grateful for the moment and existence.

Moments in the fields of sunflowers, sitting at a meal with a group of amazing people, admiring the beautiful scenery around me, the noise of just footsteps in the gravel and no one in sight.

Moments of strength where I am so proud of myself for how far I have walked or what hill I have powered through.

Moments of weakness where life just really sucks and I cry because I am not good at goodbyes when they come sooner than I want.

Moments of gratitude for everything I have accomplished and moments of love for the people I meet.

And group hugs of course.

Digging deep… Serious life questions and the best conversations I wrote about in my journal:

I have had lots of practice in asking these deep questions so I am comfortable asking them.

This is also from my own personal experience. Others may not have these kinds of conversations, but I love them.

• What our perfect life will look like 10 years from now, realistic and unrealistic.
• What a hot take is that you have shared with no one. What one thing in life you want to do before you die is.
• The reason for walking.
• Deepest fears.
• How to have a healthy relationship.
• Where home is.
• Do the relationships you have with your family, play out in other parts of your life?
• Do the ends justify the means?
• When we may settle down.
• And so many more conversations!

And so…

The Camino is not a guaranteed life-changing experience.

I met one person who mentioned at the end of his Camino that it was not as life-changing as he expected it to be. And in reality, it is just a long walk.

Like everything in life, it is what you put into it.

The conversations you have with individuals could be surface level or they could push into deeper traumas that allow for realizations of growth.

The days you walk could be mentally and physically taxing or you could prioritize a peaceful and slow journey.

You don’t keep in contact with everyone, but along the way, there are those who are kind and are willing to keep up a long-distance friendship.

The Camino families you make along the way:

Every Camino, I have my own little family. On top of this, everyone is also on their own way, so the Camino family grows and shrinks constantly.

I always have fun trying to ask people the right questions that get them to share a part of their life that they may not tell everyone about.

One thing to note is that not everyone will tell you the real reason they are walking the Camino. It could be deeper than, “I like walking”.

It could be that their partner left them. It could be that they were going through a life crisis in their job. It could be they wanted to prove something to themselves. The stories I have heard of why people walk are extremely personal and that is something I will not share with the world, as they are not my stories.

There is a page I was sent that says “We will be known for our opinions but remembered for our love”. I love this because it reminds me that we are remembered for the way we made others feel and to always treat people with kindness because everyone has a story.

My favorite memories on the Camino:

My first Camino, on the way to Puenta la Reina, Sophia, Taylor and I were pulled into a community center with the promise of food and drink. We were offered sandwiches and wine and there were about 50 pilgrims just chatting and getting to know each other. Then we were directed to stand in a circle and we sang ultreia. Ultreia means onward and upward. We didn’t know the song at the time but we enjoyed the community and the experience.

Burgos is one of my favorite cities on any Camino. The first time going, Sophia and I stayed in a hotel and pampered ourselves. The second time, we had a big hang-out with everyone we had met thus far. It was bittersweet of course because it was our last night altogether, but as the sun went down, I focused more on the moment rather than the future goodbye.

My 3 Camino de Santiago Experiences…

Camino #1:

I walked this Camino with my university. Most of the students going were studying Human Resources, just like me. We were a group of initially 12 students, but one had to go home because of knee issues (she had had them for years prior and the strain made it worse).

I made sure to spend at least one day of walking with a member of the group so I could learn about each of their lives. We mostly walked with people of the same pace so I spent a lot of time with Taylor and Sophia. While I do not actively keep up with them, I have seen Sophia a few times when I was in town.

Also, we had a big Friendsgiving with everyone the following fall and caught up. The main person I keep in touch with is Kelly, whom I am pen pals with and we catch up whenever I am in town. I also try to keep up with Renata but she ended up moving back to Bolivia so not the easiest to meet up with. Three girls in the group, Jessica, Marinda and Dani, all are still fairly close and I have seen them go on trips together.

Other than that group, I made a few friends outside of that school group. My first day on the trail I met Petra. I keep in touch with Petra on whatsapp every now and then. We parted ways after the first day, but randomly bumped into one another later on along the way.

Two Irish students, Fion and Zuri, I message now and then, and Zuri I ended up meeting up with when she was living in Granada and I was visiting. Most of the others I met along the way, I mainly just watch their lives from afar on social media.

For more on this walk please refer to my Camino Frances and my Camino Finisterre posts.

Camino #2:

I started this Camino by myself and ended it with my long-term friend Caroline, who joined me in Ponferrada (200km until Santiago). I had run into a few people here and there but it was not until Puente la Reina (Day 4) that we started to connect as a group. When we got to Burgos, we had a table of 16 pilgrims. Some I was closer with than others and after Burgos, our group shrunk significantly.

In Ponferrada, Caroline joined me and we walked to Villafranca de Bierzo with that Camino family and then we parted. That group, at that point, included Matteo, Julian, Marco, Michele, Mina, Irene, Jonah, and Luca. Michele ended up walking with Caroline and I until Santiago de Compostela, while the rest of the group I met up with for one night in Finisterre right before everyone went home.

We began meeting a few others, Emilio and Alessandra, with whom we also ended our time with in Santiago. From all of these lovely people, I had the opportunity to visit Alessandra, Luca, and Fausto (a friend who left the Camino in Burgos), in a town outside of Florence, Italy. They all happened to live close to one another and still keep in touch. I also spent a week in Bari, Italy visiting Michele.

Now and then I will message a few others from this Camino to keep in touch but often I stay updated on Instagram.

For more on this walk please refer to my Camino Frances and my Camino Finisterre posts.

Camino #3:

I again started this Camino alone, but it did not feel that way for long. The first night I met two women in their 50’s who had been friends since they were children and were walking the Camino together.

On my second day, I met Melanie, a girl who I walked with every day for hours on end. When we started walking inland, we split away from our little group including Myriiam and Lydia. Upon arriving in Spain together, we expanded our group again and met Tato and Manuel who then introduced us to a few others, including Vanessa, Bianca, and Thomas. We all ended up in Santiago together.

Melanie and I continued onto Finisterre and Muxia, meeting a few pilgrims along the way, Rebecca and Lucas. I still keep up with Tato and Melanie and we are hoping to make plans next year to visit one another.

For more on this walk please refer to my Camino Portuguese post.

So however you end up on the Camino, let it be your own journey. Open yourself up to whatever happens and lastly, Buen Camino!

For more information and logistics on my individual camino walks, please see my detailed posts highlighting each Camino…