In September I fulfilled a 7 year dream – hiking El Camino Santiago de Compostela. Ever since watching the film “The Way”, I’ve wanted to hike this.
There are many pilgrimage routes to Santiago in Northern Spain– the most popular being The Frances or French route. But I read on many blogs that that route was becoming so popular that it could get crowded at times.
I live in Miami and am surrounded by too many people already and didn’t want crowds on my vacation.
So we decided to take a much less popular route called La Via de la Plata or Silver route. What a great decision! Some days we never encountered another hiker or “Pilgrim” on the trail. And most of the time we were walking in the countryside or the farm country of Galicia.
We averaged 12 miles a day for 6 days totaling about 70 miles.
If you complete at least the last 100km of the trail, the official Pilgrim office in Santiago will issue you a personalized certificate of completion. So we each got that at the end of the trip.
Some days were grueling, hot, lots of hills …. And then the blisters started 🙂
But overall it was an amazing experience. And the Gallegos (the people from Galicia, Spain) were extremely helpful and friendly.
I highly recommend visiting this part of the world.
