Giovanna Dell’orto
Finds a global community making the pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago.
About three hours into the day’s hike, having just cleared the highest mountain point of the Camino de Santiago, I looked down into the valleys pockmarked with yellow and purple spring blossoms, and froze.
Surely that faraway black office tower, seemingly no bigger than the trail stones making my scarred feet scream, could not be where I was planning to arrive that same night. Guidebook check: It was.
Dejected, I struggled downhill into the next hamlet, El Acebo. I was barely past the first of its slateroofed stone houses when my name – ‘‘Giovanna!’’ – rang out in the lilting Rio de Janeiro accent of a fellow pilgrim.
And that was my Camino experience: thirty-one days of physical endurance through aweinspiring landscapes, of contemplation punctuated by deep connections. It was a combination that reset my Type-a internal clock so that stopping to pick a poppy or a bunch of grapes, or to compare blisters with hikers from Seoul or Hawaii or Naples, became not only permissible but also imperative.
The ‘‘Camino Frances’’, or French Way, is an 800-kilometre medieval pilgrimage route that crosses Spain from the Pyrenees at the French border to the purported burial site of the Apostle James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Of several historical routes to Santiago, this is the most popular. It’s no wilderness hike: The longest stretch without crossing a village is 17 kilometres through farmland. How much solitude you get depends on when and where you start.
In 2015, 172,243 people walked or rode bikes or horses along the Camino Frances, says the Pilgrims’ Office in Santiago. More than 67,000 started in Sarria, about four days from Santiago, the end of the trail. The busiest months are May to September, with more than 20,000 pilgrims each, dropping to