El Camino de Santiago

Holy cow we have already been on the Camino de Santiago for five days!  Good wifi has been pretty sparse but we are finally able to share some of our progress!

We flew out of Denver direct to London over nine hours.  Gina can handle planes like a pro but I hate them.  I'm not scared of flying or anything, I'm just too big to be crammed into a tin can for so long.  So we made it into London the next morning with probably no more than 30 minutes of sleep overall for myself and had to navigate the train station to find our way to the hotel we had booked.  After a night of slightly better sleep in what was not much better than a 40 square foot box we found the bus station.  What a culture shock!  We were surrounded by people speaking French, Spanish, German, Afrikaans, and more.  A few days of travel surrounded by people you are unable to communicate with can make you feel surprisingly lonely.  After a 9 or so hour bus ride through the English Channel tunnel to Paris we finally made it to the bus stop.  This place was sketchy as hell!  It was 8 p.m. and the place was a crowded bus depot with no attendants for directions, no vendors, and really no waiting area other than in a semi-outdoor, graffiti-covered, smoke-filled corridor and we had to wait there for three hours.  Finally we were on the overnight bus to Biarritz, France where I hardly slept.  We arrived in Biarritz around 10 a.m. and we were dropped off at a random bus stop somewhere in town.  Not a bus station, airport or anything but a parking lot.  We needed to find a way to get to Bayonne which is about 30 minutes away by bus, but there wasn't a city bus in sight.  So we hoofed it to the local airport where in the bits of broken French I know, found our way to the bus we needed.  We finally found our way to the last leg of our travels when we arrived at the train station in Bayonne only to find that our train had been cancelled due to the labor strikes happening in France at the moment.  However, we were lucky.  Because this is the train to St. Jean Pied de Port and traffic on the Camino de Santiago is starting to ramp up, there were many people there in the same situation we were.  Because of this the attendants at the station had a couple of buses pick us up last minute to take us to our destination.  Finally we were almost there!

Taken from:  https://santiagoways.com/en/camino-de-santiago-routes/camino-frances/

So for a bit of background.  The Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) is a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.  Yearly, hundreds of thousands of people of various backgrounds walk the Camino de Santiago either on their own or in organized groups.  The most popular route is the Camino Francés (this is the route we are taking) which stretches 780 km (nearly 500 miles) from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port near Biarritz in France to Santiago.  Those that walk the Camino are called pilgrims or peregrinos.

We met our first fellow pilgrim on the bus to St. Jean Pied de Port.  Greg, a carpenter from Plymouth, England was taking some time off from work to walk part of the Camino with plans of finishing the rest later.  In St. Jean Pied de Port there is an entire street dedicated to the Camino and it's pilgrims that is filled with albergues (hostels only meant for pilgrims), shops, and the first stop for everyone, the Pilgrim Office where you receive your official Camino Passport to be stamped along the way.  We had dinner with Greg, got two beds in an albergue, and rested for the beginning o
f a long walk.

The first day of the Camino is most commonly described as the worst day only because of the Pyrenees mountains.  It was no different for us.  While the area is indescribably beautiful the journey up into the mountains was grueling.  What takes most pilgrims around 6 hours took us nearly 11.  11 hours of epic views, picturesque villages, and sore bodies.   When we arrived over the Pyrenees, we were greeted in Roncesvalles with three albergues that were completely full.  Well over 200 beds that didn't have our name on them at 8 p.m. when we could barely take another step.

We had to take a taxi to the next town to find out their albergues were full as well.  We went three towns away to Espinal before we found a place to sleep.  We shared the taxi with three women from Brazil (whose names were beyond my skill to pronounce) that invited us to dinner at one of the two restaurants in town where we toasted glasses of wine, had a hot meal, and wonderful conversation while we tried to bridge the gap between our languages (we primarily spoke English because my Portuguese is non-existent, but we did a bit in Spanish).

We shared a taxi back to Roncesvalles with 'the Brazillians' so as not to skip any part of the Camino.  This is also where the iconic sign "Santiago de Compostela 790" is located and we couldn't miss that.  We hiked our way back to Espinal and stayed at another albergue where we had dinner at the other restaurant in town.  Day 2 was so much easier than the trek through the Pyrenees.

From Espinal we made our way further west to Zubiri, where we met Brian from Washington (originally Lexington, NE), and Brett & Sarah from Canada whom we shared beers and dinner with later that night.
From Espinal, we said our goodbyes and started heading further west before we stopped short of Pamplona in the small village of Zabaldika where we found the only albergue in town.  The Albergue Perroquial is connected to the Iglesia de San Esteban and run by volunteers.

Brett, Sarah, Gina, Dan, and Brian

From there we made our way to Pamplona!  Many of you may know this city for it's festival, Sanfermines, which takes place July 6-14 and is most famous for the running of the bulls!  I don't think I'm brave (or crazy) enough to come back for that.

Rain is expected for the next few days, so that should make for an interesting post next time.  If you subscribe to receive updates from this blog, please note that you'll get an email to verify your subscription.  Without verifying you will not get the updates automatically.  Please leave any comments and questions.  It might take a few days, but we'll definitely get back to you!  If you'd like to see more photos from the trip follow #dejongworldtour on Instagram and Facebook.

Until next time,
Buen Camino!