The Slacker Pilgrim Guide to the Camino de Santiago

By Sunshine Jen

Half travel tips and half travel memoir, The Slacker Pilgrim Guide to the Camino de Santiago is a humorous book about the famous pilgrim trail across the north of Spain. In April and May 2012, Sunshine Jen walked 550 miles on the Camino Frances to Santiago de Compostela then onto Finnisterre on the coast. She went looking for answers, but she came back with more questions and no blisters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunshine Jen
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301342198

Sunshine Jen

Sunshine Jen has blogged about culture, travel, and her real and fictional lives in Los Angeles on www.happyrobot.com since 2004. The Slacker Pilgrim Guide to the Camino de Santiago is her first ebook. In 2013, she published her second ebook, a book of short stories called Beautiful Collisions.

Book preview

The Slacker Pilgrim Guide to the Camino de Santiago

By: Sunshine Jen

Copyright 2012 Sunshine Jen

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Before You Go

While You’re There

After You Come Back

My Camino Journal

Introduction

The Camino to Santiago de Compostela has been walked by religious and spiritual pilgrims for a thousand years. There are many different caminos throughout Spain and Europe, but they all go to the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.

In April and May 2012, I walked the most popular Camino, the Camino Frances across the north of Spain from St. Jean Pied de port in France to Santiago then onto Fisterra on the coast. The walk was 550 miles and took me 37 days.

Before I went on the Camino, I had a lot of specific questions. What would it be like? What would the terrain be like? How much would I need to carry? Where can I buy toothpaste? Is the wine any good?

As I was walking the Camino, I started jotting down lists, then notes, then prose. Even though I had read a lot of memoirs in preparation for the walk, there were a lot of things I wished I had known ahead of time. I wish I had a guide book written by someone who made mistakes but also had a bit of fun.

Duh Jen, you could write the helpful but slightly irreverent guide. A voice in my head said.

And so I did. Here it is.

Like in life, everyone’s journey on the Camino is different. I don’t claim to have all the answers. Some things that happen on the Camino stay on the Camino. Still, if you’ve already walked your Camino or if you’re about to walk your Camino, I hope this guide will amuse you and maybe answer a few questions.

I decided to divide this guide into three sections of travel tips: before you go, while you’re there, and after you come back. Then, I conclude with bits from my journal to give you an idea of day-to-day life on the Camino.

When I started writing the guide, I was walking, so my thinking was fragmented and even a bit fantastical. However, thinking about short and silly things to write down kept my mind off the rain, my big toe nail falling off, and the strangeness of the whole enterprise.

Finally, to answer my own questions:

What will it be like? It was both the hardest and easiest thing I had ever done.

What will the terrain be like? It’s not super rugged. It ranges from paved road to dirt road to rocky road to muddy road to dirt path to rocky path. You walk up and down mountains, but the mountain paths tend to be switchbacks. You will walk over 700 kms or 500 miles, but you’re not doing that all in one day.

How much do I need to carry? As little as possible. I’m happy to pass on a few tips I learned through trial and error.

Where can I buy toothpaste? Everywhere. You are in Spain. There are shops.

Is the wine any good? Yes, would the trail have lasted a thousand years if it wasn’t?

The Section Where I Attempt To Give Historical Context

The story of the Camino and Santiago de Compostela begins in the first century BC. Yep, it’s an old road, and my prose will not do it justice. I’m just warning you now. I lack gravitas.

St. James (aka St. James the Greater because there were two Jameses) along with his brother, St. John the Apostle (not John the Baptist, different guy) were two of Jesus’s twelve apostles. St. James was said to have a bit of a temper, and he and his brother were nicknamed the Sons of Thunder. I learned about the temper part online and not from Catholic school. We weren’t allowed to have tempers in Catholic School.

St. James (aka Sant Iago) is also the patron saint of Spain. His feast day is the 25th of July. When his feast day falls on a Sunday, it’s his jubilee year. The last jubilee year was 2010. The next jubilee years are 2021, 2027, and 2032.

St. James was executed by Herod in 44 AD. Then, his body was taken by angels in a rudderless boat to Spain where it was entombed in the future site of the city, Santiago de Compostela.

There are other theories about how his remains got to Spain. The fallen away Catholic school girl in me likes the angel story.

Fast forward eight hundred years.

In the 9th century, a hermit named Pelayo discovered the remains after seeing some lights in the sky which guided him to the tomb. He told Theodemar of Iria who built a church there. That church was destroyed in the 10th century.

However, pilgrims from all over Europe started to walk to Santiago de Compostela. If they completed the journey, they were pardoned for their sins. The present Cathedral in Santiago was started in 1075 and built on the same plan as Saint Sernin in Toulouse, France. The Cathedral was consecrated in 1128.

Santiago de Compostela is an interesting city to visit because its reason for existence is a completely religious one. It’s not on a river. It’s not the easiest place to get to. Sure, now it has an airport, but in the old days, if you wanted to get to Santiago, you took the road like everyone else.

As I was walking the Camino to Santiago, I realized that I was walking on the trail that millions had walked before me for over a thousand years. This idea came in handy when I came to a crossroads. I usually took the way that looked more beaten down. Of course, I did get lost too, but that’s the fun of it.

My Camino Story

My Camino Story started in Ireland in October 2011. I was on holiday with my brother, and one evening, we met my old friend, D, for dinner. D and I have known each other for years and got on well, but he lived in Ireland, and I lived in Los Angeles, so we didn’t see much of each other.

Over dinner, D talked about long walks he had done in France. He then talked about the Camino in Spain. You walked on a thousand year old trail from town to town to town for five hundred miles. You could stay in hostels or hotels. You didn’t have to camp out unless you wanted to. It was my kind of walking.

After I got back to Los Angeles, the idea of the Camino kept rolling around in my head. I googled and read about folks who had done it.

I was 40 years old and living not a bad life in LA, but I wanted something more. I was single and had no kids. I loved to walk and often went on ten mile day hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains in Malibu. Financially, I could do it. Why the heck not?

I got in touch with D and told him I wanted to do the Camino. I asked him if he wanted to come along. He was up for it too. I bought a plane ticket and started to plan.

As I was planning the Camino, I realized I had to make big changes in my life in order to do it. What did I really want to do with my next forty years on earth? I figured a long walk in Spain might help me figure out some things.

A few months after I decided to go, I saw a film called The Way starring Martin Sheen. Even though the walk was compressed into ninety minutes, it looked like a beautiful thing to do.

In the beginning of April, 2012, I flew to Dublin, met D, then we flew to Bordeaux where we caught the train to St. Jean Pied de port. On Good Friday, we walked out of St. Jean and spent the next three weeks walking in winter conditions. There were high winds, rain, hail, snow, mud. It was not a relaxing walking holiday. I was thinking more about mud than life choices.

After walking more than halfway to Santiago de Compostela, we got off the Camino in Leon and took a train to Valencia in the South of Spain. We spent a few nights in Valencia, then toured the Costa Blanca, and ended up in Alicante where we caught a plane back to Ireland.

I stayed with D in Ireland for a few weeks as I enjoyed the Irish rain. Meanwhile, conditions on the Camino improved. One night, as I rewatched The Way with D and another friend who was thinking of walking the Camino, I realized that I wanted to go back to finish what I began. I had all the gear. I was still in good shape. I was still in Europe, so airfare was cheap. Why the heck not?

D could not come with me. He had to work, but he did say the most romantic thing any man has ever said to me. He told me to go.

At the end of May, I caught a flight back to Madrid and took the train to Leon. The next day, I restarted the Camino by myself. I arrived in Santiago on June 5th and finished my Camino in Finnisterre on June 8th.

I walked a total of 800 kilometers or 550 miles in all conditions. I met nice people from all over the world. I ate great food and lived out of a backpack. I laughed and cried and got drunk. I walked more than I ever had walked before and felt good about that.

Did I figure out my life? Well, no.

But that’s okay.

The Story of Slacker Pilgrim and Racing Pilgrim

This is a story I made up on the Camino.

Once upon time, way back in Medieval Times before there were flush toilets, there were two pilgrims on the road to Santiago. Their names were Slacker Pilgrim and Racing Pilgrim.

Every morning on the road to Santiago, Racing Pilgrim was up before the cock crowed and out the door before the sun came up. Racing Pilgrim started walking in the dark with his/her staff tap-tap-tapping the road. Racing Pilgrim walked fast because he/she couldn’t wait to get there.

In contrast, Slacker Pilgrim took his/her time getting up in the morning, then had breakfast, then had another breakfast a little ways down the road. However, every evening, Slacker Pilgrim stayed in the same accommodations that housed Racing Pilgrim.

Even though they did not walk together, the two shared long conversations in the evening. They became like siblings. They shared food. They bandaged each other’s blisters.

They arrived in Santiago on the same day and stood before the cathedral and embraced each other. God up in heaven was so moved by the love between Slacker Pilgrim and Racing Pilgrim that he declared that every pilgrim must carry both Slacker Pilgrim and Racing Pilgrim in him or her.

That is why sometimes on the Camino I was a slacker pilgrim and sometimes I was a racing pilgrim. I would rather be a slacker pilgrim. The food is much better when you stop to taste it.

Before You Go

Intro

In my other writing life, I write plays. I have two fine arts degrees in dramatic writing, so I tend to write plays that are challenging to produce or hard to sell to an audience. I don’t sweat that because through the years, I have worked with a lot of great actors.

Great actors are not just award winners or super famous. Great actors show me new things about a character I have written. Great actors are highly intelligent but can also change their performance on a single direction or note.

Most importantly, great actors are prepared. They’ve read the script. They’ve thought about the character. They show up at rehearsal with ideas. Because they are prepared, they have confidence about their role and can improvise.

I was actorlike in my preparation for the Camino. I read a lot of memoirs. I came up with a training plan. I got clothes that were comfortable. I thought about what items I would bring. I laid everything on the dining room table and questioned if I needed every single item.