On Tuesday,  May 8th at approximately 1 pm in the afternoon Dominique Leblanc and myself strolled past the final ring of modern city streets surrounding Santiago and entered the ancient heart of the old city, following the scallop shells embedded in the cobblestones leading to the cathedral.  After 799 KMs  over 32 days of walking and one rest day (25 KMs/day = 15.2 miles) my Camino was finished!

We followed the final angled entry path for the  Camino Frances (official name of Camino route from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago)  into Praza Obradoiro,  hugged each other and raised our fists in triumph and then quietly contemplated the magnificent Cathedral of Santiago, standing before us.

As you can see,  portions of the Western Ediface were undergoing restoration,  but the central section was unobstructed and the massive statue of St. James, the Patron Saint of Spain,  holding his staff and adorned in his cape and scallop shell hat,  gazed down silently upon us.    For me personally, it was a moment of profound release and tranquility knowing I had just walked across the breadth of Northern Spain and the burdens I carried with me, both physically and mentally literally lessened with each passing day.

Within moments of our arrival,  Praza Obradoiro  started filling with dozens of pilgrim friends we had met over the past month and posing for commemoration photos with different groups of friends became the order of the afternoon.   That’s me and Dominique in the above photo with Perla from Italy,  two Korean friends and a random photo crasher from  Brazil whom I never formally met!

Above photo:  L – R:  Dominique,   Carlos from  North Carolina, myself and Jack Calzio,  a retired submariner from Marseille and one of the fastest walkers on the Camino!

Above,  Ann Elise from Florida and my first Camino friend,  Gareth Roach from Dublin.    After meeting Gareth on April 5th,  I lost track of him for 10 days and assumed I would never see him again.    However romance has a way of slowing a pilgrim down and I caught up to this cute couple in Granon and we stayed in close communication sharing many of the same hostel locations for the balance of the journey.

We celebrated well into the evening as I kept running into Camino friends all over the streets of Santiago, swapping contact information as we laughed and reminisced  about memorable sections of the Camino we shared together.   I met these two chatty Canadian sisters Robyn Niessen (left) and Debra Turner (right) on my second night of the Camino at Refugio  Orrison.  We walked in close synch for the first week and then they fell behind me as I stretched my walking distances on the Meseta.  Well every pilgrim has their own plan for dealing with the vast emptiness of the Meseta, and for Robyn and Debra,  that plan included shipping their backpacks and renting bikes and sure enough they blew past me outside of Castrojerez, doubling their daily distances on bikes.

One last photo from a memorable evening.  I am not sure of the total headcount around this table,  sometime past midnight near the Praza Quintana,  but I do know that I walked with all these people at some point over the previous month and got to know each of them personally.  I could tell you stories about each of them, but for the sake brevity I will just give you one.   The Colombian guy to my left was named Juan Sandoval, whom I met in Leon.  After our night on the town sampling Tapas,  Juan stayed out a little too late,  missed his cutoff and was locked out of his hostel.  I barely knew the guy but he was a fellow pilgrim in dire straits so offered him up my yoga mat spread across the  hardwood, creaky floor of my hotel room.  At 6:20 am I kicked him awake and he was gone in a flash, back to his hostel to collect his gear and hit the trail for Mazarife. Needless to say were great friends for the rest of the journey and shared many laughs about his brutal night of sleep on my wooden floor!

I think you can declare your Camino officially completed after you have attended the Pilgrim mass in the Cathedral and witnessed the spectacle of the swinging Botafumeiro   (Silver Incense burner) which occurs after communion.

The historical purpose of the Botafumeiro was to mask the stench of hundreds of dirty and sweaty pilgrims who reached the Cathedral each day during the Middle Ages when bathing was a luxury.   The stench of unwashed pilgrims is no longer an issue,  but the ritual remains intact and the 12 noon mass was packed with pilgrims and tourists who squeezed in closer to the transcept to witness the spectacle.

In the photo above you can see the insense smoke rising from the burner and rope tenders in position to hoist the burner rapidly in the air to accelerate its downward swings.  Within about 30 Seconds the Botafumeiro was swinging in majestic 180 degree arcs from ceiling to ceiling across the transcept while a nun on the alter sang eloquently in Latin.  On the downward arc, as the burner gathered speed sparks and flames bloomed in the burner and the sweet, acrid smell of incense filled the entire airspace of one of the largest Cathedrals in Europe.   A fitting, mystical culmination I think to an ancient pilgrim route that slowly grabs a hold of you and pulls you across Spain with gathering determination.

I said goodbye to many friends on Thursday and Friday, and the toughest goodbye of them all was to Dominique Leblanc,  with whom I walked more miles together than with any other during my month in Spain.   His personal story of walking the Camino as payback for surviving a double lung transplant inspired me.  His breathing was frequently shallow and raspy, his hands always shook, but his determination never wavered and his pace perfectly matched mine.  We shared many laughs together and he loved mimicking my colloquial American phrases like “boom” as we reached a milestone and celebrated with a fistbump.   He was a great friend and I will miss him, but fortunately as a retired Air France employee he has great travel perks and hopefully I can get him out to Seattle in the near future so we can walk another 25 KMs through rain, wind and snow!

Well that’s a wrap my friends on my journey on foot across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostella.   From the point I exited my bus in  St. Jean on April 5th,  until I boarded a train to Sevilla on May 12th I never once rode upon or inside a wheeled vehicle.  Every inch of the journey was on foot as humans travelled a thousand years ago.    If you are looking for an experience of profound, simplistic travel which will challenge you physically, mentally and spiritually and afford you the opportunity to make dozens off new friends from around the planet,  then maybe you too are ready for the call of the Camino?

Next stop Sevilla!