More reflections on our Camino…
Marsha says she will miss the mountains. I concur. They were a challenge, yes, but after the first day, we knew we could handle any mountain God placed before us! We found physical strength we never knew we had!
We will miss the beautiful churches! Even in simple, quiet, poor pueblos, we found magnificent churches!
We will miss the animals!
We came face to face with sheep, cows,
horses, geese, storks, goats, burros,
chickens, pigs, and countless “Camino cats.”
Mary will especially miss the weather! Never did we think we’d have cool weather! HOT on the Meseta, of course, but not to the extreme that they usually have. Thanks to prayers from everyone, no doubt.
We concur that we will miss feeling part of this unique and “quirky” community. The word “pilgrim” now means something very different to me.
I will miss the quiet. Pure silence except for the sound of my feet and poles. (Yes, I had some marching songs)
At home we have our lives with set routines. We set those aside for awhile and very much developed another routine, even though our surroundings changed every day. We can “do Camino” quite efficiently, I can say.
We were able to prepare ourselves for the walk in 45 minutes every morning. Alarm sounded and we were on the move. Never did we hit the snooze button.
We did not miss television, because frankly neither Marsha nor I watch much at home. Strangely enough, the only television we watched involved synchronized swimming world competitions. It must be big here because it was on in several bars and restaurants!
I enjoyed an hour-long Spanish lesson every day with Mary! Her Spanish was already excellent!
True, we were away from our families, but not a day went by when we didn’t communicate by text or sometimes call or video chat. When we got in and settled, I will admit that I first went to my phone to make those connections. I was so thankful for all the technology we had in place and was so happy to hear from everyone. My blog is how I have journaled this experience and I was so thankful that we had put all the phone plans together (thank you, Bill) and that Wifi was always available to us (although a little spotty at times).
True, we had to find our lodging, which was always a bit of a task. I have to admit, we ended up staying in pensiones or hostels more than the albergues because we found it hard to get good sleep in the dormitory bunk rooms. This added to our expenses.
We never had to clean up! We carried everything we had, and we had so little. Our only real work was doing our laundry! Speaking of laundry…
It was somewhat freeing to only have these two outfits to wear, although I am anxious to return to skirts and dresses.
True, we didn’t have to cook! Ever! EVER!!! (I get the prize for food photography.) We ate a lot of ham and cheese sandwiches, and a lot of “flan,” (traditional caramel custard)
snacked plenty, ate good and bad “pilgrim meals,” very excellent Spanish specialities,
ate foods that were exotic and new to us…
(octopus and peppers)
– and were served very kindly and generously wherever we went.
And we are so very aware that none of this would have been possible without the encouragement of our biggest cheerleaders, our husbands, Bill and Bruce.
Never again will we have such an experience as this! Unless we “Camino” again…