It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. I knew the Camino would be hard. I didn’t, however, expect to love it as much as I did. Not a single day went by that I didn’t meet a new friend. It’s amazing how quickly you can become fond of someone. If I was lucky, our plans would match up and I’d be able to walk with someone a few days in a row. Most of the time, we would only walk together a couple of hours before we said goodbye. No matter the time spent together, I usually finished each day better than I started. One friend in particular, my teammate and I met on our first day of the Camino. Somehow, we saw her every day except maybe twice. It was crazy how that happened! Her pace was much faster than mine and she was set to finish before us, so on paper, it shouldn’t have lined up that way! My only explanation is that God wanted us to keep pouring into her.
On the flip side, not a single day went by that some part of my body didn’t hurt. On the second day, we were aiming to walk only 13 miles and ended up walking 20 instead. My shin did not like this at all and decided to take it out on me for the next 14 days. This is when you discover that uphill is, in fact, much better than downhill. Luckily, that was the extent of my injuries and I never even got one blister! Praise Him!
Looking back at my time on the Camino, I hated a lot of things. Packing up every morning in the dark and leaving before the sun comes up gets old after about day 3. Walking one mile when you’re in pain is hard…walking 12 miles when you’re in pain is just plain stupid. But as soon as it was over and we had to leave Santiago, all I wanted to do was go back and keep walking. I wanted to keep meeting new people every day and look for them each day after that. I wanted to discover which people ended up in my albergue for that night and see if it was the same ones as the night before. Most of all, it made me want to come back some day and walk the entire thing. Though I had never heard of the Camino before training camp, it has proved to be a life changing experience.
I hope you enjoy seeing some of the sights from our walk. I wish I could put 100 pictures on here, but I compromised at 18. Speaking of 18…only 18 more days until I am HOOOOME! Won’t be long now, daddy 😉
