Camino Retrospective

[Richard Ferguson]

A Camino Retrospective

This is my two cents worth, intended for people planning
to do the Camino to Santiago for the first time.  I will
be talking about distance per day, planning your trip,
Castillian Spanish, and miscelaneous topics.

Background:  I walked solo 311 km, (200 miles), from Leon
to Santiago.  I am about 50 years old, with extensive
experience with mountain climbing, backpacking, and
international travel.  I speak good Spanish, of the latin-
american variety.

Distance per day

When I started reading about the camino, I was amazed to
read about people going 30 km or more per day.  Note that
32 km is 20 miles, and very few people that I know would
consider walking 20 miles in a day, let alone day after
day after day.  My experiences supported my first
impression.  I found that a comfortable pace for me was 20
to 25 km per day (12 to 15 miles).  When I went further
than 25 km in a day, I paid for it, usually the next day.

Everyone has their own natural pace.  I did talk to some
people who were able to sustain a 30 km per day pace,
usually tall and thin men.  I talked to at least one guy
who found 20 km/day to be more than he could really do.
Most people found that the 30 km/day pace to be grueling
and very hard on their body.  Unfortunately, it is easy to
get carried along by groupthink, that your friends are
going 30 km/day, so you should also.  Or you don't want to
be left behind by your new friends.

Planning your trip

I would urge people to set moderate goals for themselves,
rather than ambitious ones.  Pushing your body beyond it's
natural limits is exhausting and destructive.  I saw
several people whose feet had been destroyed to the point
that a doctor told them to stop walking.  Another guy who
liked to walk long distances per day admitted that on a
previous trip he arrived in Santiago by ambulance, after
his knee gave out.  It is just not good to push your body
beyond it's limits, especially day after day.  Adjust your
distance to fit the time available, or allow adequate time
if the distance is fixed.

I believe that 20 km/day is a pace that most people can
achieve.  The people that I spoke to who completed the
pilgrimage generally walked 20 km/day or more.

Before you plan a trip based on 30 km/day or more, take
this simple quiz:  Have you ever walked more than 30 km
(19 miles) in one day?  Have you ever done this carrying a
backpack with more than 7 kg (15 pounds)?  Have you done
this with the pair of boots that you are planning to take
on the trip?  Have you ever done this for more than three
days in a row?  If you are going with anyone else, ask
them the same questions.  Unless every person can answer
yes to every question, you are pushing your luck to plan
on 30 km or more per day.  In other words, you are
planning to fail.

There are other advantages to planning a trip with shorter
distances per day.  You can then consider taking a day off
if you need to or want to.  One of my best days on the
camino was the day that I did not walk at all, the day I
stayed put and watched the Palm Sunday processions in
Astorga.  If you have an aggressive trip plan you may miss
something worthwhile, that you will feel that you need to
keep walking, no matter what.  You won't really have the
opportunity to relax.

If your trip plan is conservative, and you finish early,
you can always walk to Finisterra, spend more days in
Santiago, do some other tourism, or go home early.  It is
good to have a backup plan in case you travel more slowly
or more quickly than you expected.

Miscelaneous comments

Asking directions:  If you think that you are off route,
ask where the camino is.  I consistently got good
directions on the camino.

Easter season has it's advantages and disadvantages.  The
biggest advantage is the opportunity to see processions
and other special events in the week before Easter.  One
disadvantage is that the hotels and hostals will be full,
especially right before Easter.  Also, there will be many
student groups on the camino during this time, filling the
refugios, although I always got a bed in a refugio when I
wanted one.

I carefully considered my options in terms of what boots
to take on the trip, and ended up taking a very heavy pair
of leather mountaineering boots.  I selected them not
because they were ideal, but because I had confidence in
them, that my feet never hurt when I wore them.  I walked
for a week before I started to get a blister, and finished
the trip with my feet in good shape, so it was a good
decision for me.  I probably had the heaviest pair of
boots on the camino, 6 pounds per pair (almost 3 kg).  I
also carried a pair of walking shoes for use in town.

Washing clothes is kind of a problem, you can wash them by
hand in the sink and then hang them out to dry, but they
will probably come out looking dirty.  I probably need to
take a lesson in hand washing clothes from the Mexican
women who are able to wash beautiful white clothes without
washing machines.  The larger cities will have laundries,
but are only open 5.5 days per week.  What they call
"Autoservicio" is not like self-service laundries in the
US.  They actually load the washer, transfer the load from
the washer to the centrifuge to the drier, and then pull
them out of the drier and put them in a cart.  The only
thing they do not do is fold them.

Everybody will have a different experience on the camino.
I noticed that many of the Americans that I met were
hungry to speak English when they found another native
English speaker.  Since I speak good Spanish, I never felt
that way, never felt alone on the camino.  Obviously,
walking the camino alone is different than doing it with
another person, or with a group.  I spent several days
mostly walking with other folks, and several days
basically walking alone, different experiences.

Note that most Spaniards do not speak English.  They may
not even speak Spanish.  In Galicia, when I asked a
question in Spanish, the answer sometimes came back in
Gallego!  I saw a study that said that Spaniards have the
lowest rate of speaking multiple languages in Europe.

Spaniards are very attached to their region of Spain.
They do not tend to move from one part of Spain to
another.  I was amazed to hear how consistently Spaniards
spoke ill of their neighbors from other parts of Spain,
that Catalans were stingy and moneygrubbing, Gallegos were
backwards, people from the south of Spain were lazy, etc.

Castillian Spanish

For those of us that learned to speak Latin American
Spanish, such as that spoken in Mexico, you will notice
many differences.  One of them is the use of the vosotros
form of the verbs, the plural of tu, which is not used in
Latin America.  The words for food are local, as you would
expect, so you will need to ask the waiter to describe the
dishes on the menu.  I have listed a few of the
interesting or different words below.

Buff! - Oh my gosh!  (This is really a sound, not a word,
but a favorite of mine).
majo - Good, agreeable, handsome (popular slang)
hola - Hi, the most common greeting
buenas dias - good morning, common creeting, sometimes
heard in PM also
Vale - Good, OK, right  (you will hear this word twenty
times a day)
Venga - Let's go, OK
Caña - a draft beer (literally a cane, like the tall
skinny glasses they serve beers in).
zumo - fruit juice
bocadillo - sandwhich
Adios - usually goodby, but sometimes a more literal "Go
with God", (A Dios),