The Way of Saint James or Camino de Santiago de Compostela may be traced on foot from several directions. The more popular routes are the Camino Frances and the Camino Portuguese. Camino bloggers argue which one was better than the other. Our choice of Camino Portuguese was clearly based on our physical abilities. We also read that it was the more historical trail, the path which the followers of Saint James brought back his relics to Santiago. Local lore says that a pilgrim saw the light of a star on Santiago, thus adding the adjective, “compostela” to mean a field of star, hence Santiago de Compostela. By design, our Camino had 24 stops. The actual trek was 21 days on the trail. The extra stops were days that added a day to a stop where we needed to return after the reaching the designated stop, and return by taxi transfer because there was no suitable lodging. That actually worked well and we were able to visit interesting historical and cultural areas of the town, and do some laundry. Otherwise as might be construed from the map, the walk was relentless. The trail required us to employ several modes of walking: saunter, trudge, and slog.

The majority of our trails gave us a view of the Atlantic ocean on our left. Visually, it made for a pleasant walk and the ocean breeze cooled the otherwise hot late August weather during the first thee weeks on the trail.

Some trails were really rough and demanded caution while walking lest we lose our footing. Also, as we gained more miles and got more tired, our backpack seemed to get heavier. Fighting gusty winds on the half-a-mile Eiffel bridge’s narrow catwalk required some effort to avoid slipping onto oncoming traffic.

Thankfully, the mountain trails were few and far in between towns. They look daunting at a distance but we walked along the rim so it didn’t not seem too steep. We later saw maps that told a different story. From Esposende, for instance, the mountain leveled off at the Eiffel bridge seen in the earlier photo. All the way to Caminha, the border town of Portugal where you cross to Spain over Rio Minha, it was a slow climb to Santiago.

[Coming soon: Town-by-town accounts]