Camino Update: Part I

Cam and I have been official Camino pilgrims for over two weeks now. I had been planning to update this blog more often but I obviously didn’t. And as it often is, the more I put it off the less I wanted to write the update. The longer I waited the more there was to update and the less certain I was about what to write since there is so much I could say.

But endlessly procrastinating doesn’t seem like the wise choice so I am just going to start posting brief updates, some information will be chronological and some won’t but I will have at least begun.

We began our journey from Saint Jean Pied de Port Friday, June 23rd. The first day is know to be the hardest of the French way; it’s about a 26k walk over one of the Pyrenees mountains with a 1100 meter ascent and 500 meter descent down to Roncesvalles. This first day was far more intense than I thought it would be! Luckily, we had beautiful weather (the preceding days there had been rainstorms in the mountains). We were blessed with a cool dry sunny day. But as I said, it was a tough day! We (I) had to take frequent stops and I was one of the slowest pilgrims. My slowness greatly amused a very nice older woman from Korea named Rosa because she ‘had never met someone who walks slower than she does’. Luckily, the difficulty of the trek over the mountain was rewarded with beautiful views and we had an amazing sense of accomplishment when we finally made it to the monestary albergue for the night.

Amusingly, as we came near to the monastery and could see it through the trees I ended up picking up my pace and led the way ahead of the group of other pilgrims we we’re walking with at the end of the journey.

The next day we walked to Zubiri. Although there was less change in elevation on this second day it was still intense! Cam has said that he thinks it was harder than the first because we were more tired than the day before and the sun and heat were more intense. Additionally, at this point we were sunburned from our day in the mountains - something we hadn’t noticed until after we had finished the walk the first day. Poor Cam’s ears were so burnt they were swollen!

Photos from the first day

I won’t give a day by day breakdown of our pilgrimage at this point, but overall this pilgrimage has definitely been an experience of learning to adapt to unexpected circumstances and really relying on the grace of God.

Currently, we are a few towns past Burgos. We are walking a lot slower than expected. Primary because I have hurt my ankle and we had to take a few days off to rest my foot. We are walking again but my ankle is still hurt so we are moving very slowly and not going as many kilometers each day as we expected. Any prayers you offer for us (and especially for my poor foot) would be greatly appreciated!