We made it to Santiago de Compostela! Woohoo!!
Birte, Kaitlin, Greg, and I walked the entire last day to Santiago today as a group, meeting over 100 pilgrims on the way, who had merged onto the Camino de Santiago from various trails. We weren’t in any particular hurry, stopping twice for coffee and pastry, once just in time before the rain came down.
The Camino for the last 30 kilometers is brilliant, mostly following wide forest paths, with the aroma of eucalyptus hanging over us like a veil. So lovely.
We weren’t accustomed to seeing so many pilgrims. And although the trails were generally quite wide to accommodate them, things became congested as we came to the narrow sidewalks of Santiago.
I was excited as we neared the famous cathedral of St James, mostly because I knew my friends were going to see it for the first time. When we arrived, we spent some time in the courtyard taking photos and chatting with other pilgrims. We collected our compostelas (pilgrims’ certificates for completing more than 100 kilometers of the Camino), checked into our albergue, and wandered around town, visiting the information centre, the cathedral, and indulging in the best that the Santiago bakeries and pubs had to offer.
Our Lithuanian friend, Vytas, who had been injured and fell behind by a couple of days, made a heroic effort to catch up by walking a 50-kilometer day followed by a 40+ day. When we met him, he was with Priska, an Indonesian woman we had met a couple of weeks ago. She was suffering pain from bed bug bites and struggled to sit properly.
We all attended mass at the cathedral at 7:30pm and were able to witness the priests swinging the famous botafumeiro (a large thurible) over the crowd, with its burning incense permeating the air. In medieval times, the botafumeiro was intended to revitalize tired pilgrims and disguise their odor.
There was a lot of joy in the air around the cathedral. Limping pilgrims with compostelas were smiling, tourists were chatting and laughing, people were snapping photographs, and children skipped across the courtyard. The city seemed as light and happy as I felt myself.
