The Drive to Finish

The first few days on the Camino were difficult to say the least, however, as the numbers on the road markers got smaller and smaller.... I could feel Santiago calling me closer and closer. After countless miles with a 40 lb pack(not to mention the many mountains in the way) I was spurred on by the shear desire to complete the Journey my friends and I had started four days earlier. Its not that I wasn't tired. Trust me, we were all tired. Despite our exhaustion and a few minor injuries, we made fantastic time that last day. We were driven to complete our journey. Motivation like that is something that I have struggled with my whole life. After the Camino I feel like I can accomplish anything I set my mind to. I just hope that you who are reading this will find new motivation in your life and the endurance required to complete your own Camino. -Andrew

The Camino: Day 2

So the next day, Sunday, we slept in until ten in the morning which felt amazing! Before going of this trip I thought we would be waking up at seven every morning to get a head start on walking. Since there were not very many pilgrims on the trail in March, we got to sleep late almost every morning. :) we got our things together and went to take a look around Portomarin. The first thing we tried to find was a bakery but the closest we got was a grocery store. There we got baguettes, cheese, chocolate and nuts to eat along the trail. Most places were closed today since it was Sunday, making it hard to find a place for breakfast. Thankfully our alburgue did serve breakfast that morning and we had tostadas and butter and jelly and ham and cheese with cafe con leche. While we were out in the town we saw one of the buildings with the numbered bricks. There are four buildings in this city that had been moved brick by brick to the current location after the old town site had been flooded by the dammed up Miño River in the 1960s. While walking around in town that morning, fifteen euros seemed to have just flown out of my pocket. I did not spend them or anything, they were just gone! This was the day that I learned the hard way to keep your money in a sealed pocket. We started walking around one in the afternoon and after we had walked around eight kilometers we stopped in the very small town of Gonzar and refilled our water bottles and ate some of the snacks we had brought along. The apples in spain are absolutely delicious by the way :) It was around four thirty by then and we saw three other pilgrims that stopped at Gonzar to go to sleep for the night already. They had been walking since the early morning and some had come all the way from Sarria to Gonzar since the morning! I still had not developed any blisters thank goodness but Daddy's and Andrew's were getting worse :( We continued along the trail and we ended up walking in the dark for two hours today. It was very difficult to keep going. I did everything I could to push on and keep my mind on the walking, I counted steps between each half kilometer (670), I counted how many bottles of coke on the wall it took to go half a click (40-50), and I started chasing my head lamp and trying to step on the light just to keep my tired body moving forward in the darkness. We finally arrived at the next town, Palas de Rei, around 10:00 pm. The private alburgue we had hoped to stay in was closed so we had to stay at the public one with a huge group of other pilgrims. The showers had no curtains but at least they had hot water. I got over my shyness quickly and took a wonderful warm shower and got to know some Spanish girls about my age. We were in bed around eleven trying to sleep in a stuffy room full of snoring pilgrims.mwe knew we need to get some sleep because the public alburgues don't let you stay past eight in the morning. We would be up at seven. We did get some sleep despite the snoring and were ready to walk the next day. Santiago or bust!

Blisters!

I had blisters the first day and by day three my blisters had blisters. There were six on one foot and four on the other. Yes, you can walk with blisters. Andrew and I both walked dozens of miles with them. Robert from Denmark gave us a blister lesson I will share here.

If your blister is flat, do nothing. When it is humped up, pop it with a sterilized needle or pin. If it peels off, cover the area with a bandaid. Apply iodine to the largest blisters to kill bacteria and help dry out the blisters. After that, take ibuprofen and keep going. Or you could quit, but that wasn't an option for me.

Blisters happen when moist feet have enough friction to delaminate the skin. For that reason, some people slather Vaseline petroleum jelly on their feet. Others swear by covering any hot spots with duct tape. Still others use multiple pairs of socks to try and avoid blisters. There are even new socks called 1000 mile fusion socks that are guaranteed not to give you blisters. Try different approaches until you find what works for you. Good luck and happy walking!

-Jerry

Update

All photos will be posted along with edited videos of the trip.
hope to get all of it done this weekend.\

 -andrew

The Camino: Day 1

Man, am I exhausted! I am still struggling to get off of Spain time. Saturday, March 10, around 2:30 pm we started our camino. This was the latest start of the whole week. It was very warm today with temperatures around 75 degrees. Andrew and Daddy were in shorts and tshirts and I was in lightweight pants and a longsleeve shirt... Lol I get cold easily :) there was not a cloud in the sky despite the warning for rain. Today I spent a lot of time adjusting and readjusting my pack. It still did not feel like it was a part of me although by the end of this trip I would grow so accustomed to the extra weight and the straps on my shoulders that whenever I took off my backpack and tried to walk it felt like I was flying. The trail took turns between sticking close to a road and veering off into the forest somewhere. I had no issue if I ever had to use the restroom. I had feared that I would have trouble finding a private place along the walk to relieve myself because I had no idea how woodsy the trail was and how frequently it encounters civilization. There were cafes and bars and alburgues every five kilometers it seemed. Even if I did need to go into the forest there were not many other pilgrims on the trail at this time of year so I did have to worry about a stranger walking by at a bad time. We stopped at a small tavern around five-ish and refilled our water bottles and daddy changed his socks. I was the only one who wore two pairs of socks. Andrew and Daddy both only wore one pair of socks today and their boots were much newer than mine. I'll show you a picture of the total damage done to my poor daddy's feet later.. We walked for a total of around six or seven hours today to get from Sarria to Portomarin and we were exhausted! And so sore! The sun set at eight when we were still an hour away from Portomarin. Over the course of the trip I came to dread walking in the dark. It feels so lonely and depressing to me for some reason when you're in so much pain at the end of the day and you know you still have so far to go in the dark. There was a lovely set of stairs we had to conquer at the entrance to town and thank goodness there was an alburgue not twenty feet past the top of the stairs. We stayed at the alburgue Mirador and we we the only pilgrims there. This was far from the stories we had heard of having to beat others to the alburgues to get a bed. After taking off our boots and dropping or bags, we had supper at nine something (right on time for a Spanish supper) and relaxed in the bar above our dormitory hall and watched a soccer game before going back down stairs to get ready for bed. I also had some of the best homemade cheesecake in the whole world at this place :)I was so glad I had brought my invisible shoes with me! It felt great to let my feet breathe after being cooped up in boots all day. Daddy and Andrew brought five-fingers. They were less fun with blisters :/ My first experience with alburgue showering was very brief. I walked into the ladies room and looked at the shower.. One button.. And it was blue.. I pressed the button and, sure enough, ice cold water came shooting out. I took a deep breath. I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, I was just really hoping it would be later. I gather all my pilgrims courage and took a very short, VERY cold shower and washed the underwear that I had worn this day in the cold sink. I had to wash at least my underwear every night because I only brought two pair. I dressed for bed in the clothes I planned to wear the next day. I told Daddy and Andrew about my chilling experience and they went to inspect their showers. They e in there not five minutes and they came back with smiles on their faces. "Our showers are warm." Apparently you had to hold the button down and the water would get warmer... Take note of this.. This alburgue did provide blankets for us but we still used our sleeping bags to be safe. I also used my liner at first but ended up waking up hot in the middle of the night. This was a private alburgue by the way. Public alburgues usually do not have a restaurant on the second floor and they also do not give you blankets most likely. I recommend staying in private alburgues. It's worth the extra three to five euros. We slept soundly and awoke the next morning ready for more walking, minus the blisters and soreness of course. :) To be continued...

Before the Beginning

Now that I finally have found some wifi that works and the time to do this, here's how our first day went With our backpacks packed and double checked, Andrew and I got a ride to the airport in Jackson. I was carrying a huge purse for our electronics and other forms of entertainment and my 20-something pound backpack. We ran into some friends in the airport who were going to Mexico and another who was going to Virginia on the same plane we would be on. The plane to Houston was TINY. Andrew could barely stand up in it. They asked for volunteers with flexible schedules to change their flight for weight issues which didn't help my nerves. They had to put a tag on my backpack and store it under the plane because there was not enough room for it in the overhead storage. The ride was short and sweet and I tried not to think about just how in the world we were staying in the air. The next flight from Houston to London was the typical long coach class flight story: we were all the way in the back of the plane sitting right beside a woman with a baby. The baby was super cute and the mother was very nice but the baby still cried all night long. When we later met up with daddy and told him about it he told me it was karma. Apparently I had been a bad plane baby in my day. The final flight from London to Lisbon had its troubles too. We had been given a paper saying that we needed to pick up our ticket to Lisbon at the TAP Lisbon desk in Heathrow. When we got there and asked about the ticket they couldn't find us in the system. There had been a problem checking us in at one of our previous flights because United had changed their system. We got everything worked out and they printed our tickets but by that time instead of have around two or three hours to blow at Heathrow, we had about twenty minutes to get to our flight. We booked all our flights using Expedia by the way.. It made me wish we had spent the extra fifty bucks on Delta lol Nevertheless, we did arrive safe and sound in Lisbon, Portugal. Navigating this airport was a bit of a challenge. I don't know that I've been in a situation where I knew absolutely none of the local language before coming to Portugal. We called and met up with daddy at the Hertz rental car place and we all got into our cute little Renault hatchback with 75 horsepower. :) fun/scary to drive up the frequent steep hills. We drove for around four or five hours and stopped in Porto for supper. We got a bit lost in the city trying to find somewhere to eat but we eventually found a nice mall and had pizza hut for supper. This was an unusually formal pizza hut with delicious dessert and menus in our language which was helpful. I felt completely helpless in this country as far as language was concerned. We picked up a few things at the supermarket that was in the mall before we drove for another few hours into Santiago. By this time it was around one or two in the morning and Santiago was still awake. There were people filling the bars around town and streets lined with cars. Now we had the challenge of finding Hotel Altair. Santiago was a much bigger city than we imagined. We finally did spot the hotel and manage to park somewhere and get checked in. Our room was very compact and the hotel had very kindly brought an extra bed into the room instead of charging us for a four person room. The bathroom had lotion and shampoo and a hair dryer included.. Such luxuries I would come to appreciate more and more during the course of this camino. We slept very well that night and were treated to a nice breakfast in the morning. I had violet petal jelly on a toasted croissant. It was the sweetest jelly I think I've ever had. We left Hotel Altair and drove to the airport in Santiago where we were hoping to get a bus out to Lugo, the closest stop to our starting point of Sarria. But the bus decided to hide from us and leave fifteen minutes early.. So we took a taxi instead all the way to Sarria! It was a beautiful drive and a long one. I thought about the distance as I realized that we would be walking all the way back to Santiago. The taxi driver dropped us off at an alburgue in Sarria. It was Saturday afternoon, the first day of our camino. We got stamps from the alburgue as well as the cafe where we got bocadillos (giant sub sandwiches) for lunch and we were on our way! Santiago Bound! Buen Camino! To be continued...

Finished!

We finally made it to Santiago yesterday. The Cathedral of St. James is more beautiful than any picture could possibly display. I'm posting right now from our Hotel in Finisterrae at the western most point in all of Europe.

Finisterrae is a Latin word meaning end of the earth.

We are heading off to Tomar in Portugal after doing a little sight seeing. We will be going into greater detail about the camino and all of its marvels when we have time to catch our breath.