My Camino Journey Was One of the Toughest Challenges of My Life

Taking that first step each day was the hardest

Step by step. About 450 thousand times over 15 days.

Every muscle in my body ached. I had wounds, blisters on my feet, larger than I’ve ever had before, a twisted knee, and my trapezoid muscles (that muscle between the neck and shoulder) were hard as a rock and screaming in pain. It felt like a knife stabbing me every time I moved with my backpack on.

But I kept moving. I had to.

Of course, I could call it quits at any time. I could hail a taxi, take a bus or even a train. But I am very determined. Okay, I’m stubborn. When I start something, I don’t give up until it’s done, no matter how much it hurts. That message from my dad somehow got through.

The Camino de Santiago is not for wimps. No matter which route you take. Each one has its own challenges and it’s not supposed to be easy. It began as a religious pilgrimage although today that’s not the reason many people take on the challenge. Still, it’s not supposed to be a penance either. You are not suffering for your sins but you are testing what you are made of, physically and mentally.

My friend and I encountered a large percentage of pilgrims who were using a luggage taxi service. A vehicle would pick up their bags each morning from their last accommodation and deliver them to the next pre-booked hotel or private albergue (the hostels set up along the route for the pilgrims). You can’t pre-book a public albergue (run by municipalities) so if that’s the way you plan to make the journey, you can’t use the transportation service.

We decided we wanted to carry ours on our backs. Wanted may be stretching the truth, but we felt compelled to do that. And believe me, every ounce, every gram I packed into that bag was magnified with each step. Now I don’t feel so neurotic for weighing everything on my kitchen scale before leaving Canada to make sure everything I packed was required.

Just because we decided to carry our backpacks and not take a taxi the last few kilometers to each accommodation doesn’t mean that my Camino was better than someone else's. Everyone’s Camino is different. The reasons for doing it are different and the methods to achieve it are seldom the same. Even with a small daypack on your back, the challenge is still tough. Walking hundreds of kilometers over a short span of time is not easy, no matter how you cut it.

Others believe that only true peregrinos (pilgrims) are the ones who don’t book ahead and will only stay in public albergues, like the original pilgrims. We stayed in private rooms in a couple of private albergues as well as hotels, guest houses, and short-term rentals (AirBnB). And I don’t believe I had it any easier.

The best part about the Camino is the people I met along The Way. We were all on the same mission, for different reasons, but we were all in it together. It helped to be able to commiserate with others about the aches and pains and the challenges.

There was one young woman I met in Spain. She had a slight limp and we would pass each other as one of us was sitting down on a rock to rest. I asked her if she had blisters because I knew what that was like.

She told me, “No I was recently diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease.”

A.L.S. is the most common form of the illness. She said she had always wanted to walk the Camino and decided it was now or never. I had to choke back my tears (and am doing the same now as I write about her.) Whenever I felt like I couldn’t go on, I would remember her strength and determination and it pushed me forward. I wish I could tell her that now.

I met people from around the world. Sometimes it would be a brief Bom Caminha (Portuguese greeting) or Buen Camino (used in Spain) as we struggled past each other. Others I spent more time getting to know. What I found was kindness, generosity of spirit, and comradery.

We ran into a group of women from Canada during a nearly impossible climb up a mountain trail outside of Mougas, Spain. We were all struggling but when we realized our common denominator — we were all peregrinos from Canada — we developed an instant bond. When I mentioned a friend who lives in the same city as them, they asked her name and immediately knew who she was. That made our bond grow even stronger. What a small world we live in.

Despite these connections though, it’s doubtful if our paths would have ever crossed if each of us hadn’t made the decision to take up the challenge.

Age makes no difference. I would say a majority of the people I met along The Way were middle-aged and even seniors. But I enjoyed the bonds I made with people decades younger, and decades older than me.

I was also surprised to discover how many pilgrims I met who were on their second, third, or fourth Camino. One man in his eighties from South Africa, who I met in a shelter during a driving rainstorm, was on his sixth Camino.

There was a young man we met as we were walking into Viana do Castelo, Portugal, only he was coming the other way. He told us he had started walking from his home in Lithuania, through Poland, Germany, France, and Spain to Santiago de Compostela and was now continuing his journey along the Portuguese Coastal route to end up in Porto, the city we started from. It was absolutely amazing what he had already accomplished.

The Camino Provides

Just when we thought we were completely lost, someone would come along and point us in the right direction. One guy was driving into a parking lot as we were looking in every direction for the way to go, and he showed us. When faced with drop-dead exhaustion we would find a bench, a rock or a wall to sit on. When we were down to our last drop of water, we would find a place to fill up or buy a bottle of water.

As hard as it is, you do hit your stride. Walking can be monotonous but that means you can get inside or even outside your own head. It clears your mind to see solutions to problems you may have struggled with in the past.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The Portuguese Coastal route is supposed to be 280 kilometers from Porto to Santiago. Each day I would record my Fitbit mileage as soon as we stopped at our accommodation. When we reached the end we had walked a total of 333.5 kilometers, which works out to more than fifty kilometers of detours and wrong turns.

There were nights that I couldn’t sleep because everything hurt. As exhausted as I was I couldn’t find a position comfortable enough to let my body relax. Some days I would wake up and the very first thought to enter my mind was about the walk that was awaiting me.

But I would get up, pack up my things, and throw on that 20-pound backpack, adjusting my straps to ease the strain on my back, my legs, and my hips. And I would start walking.

It was my choice to keep going. But it wasn’t going to be easy.

Thank you for reading. I will be writing a lot more here about my journey along the Camino de Santiago. The highlights and the lowlights. Stay tuned.