It’s exciting to think that we just covered another 17km today and are left with just 17km to Santiago. Today we saw more farms than usual. Actually, we smelled more than saw. So much so that I can now tell the kind of farm from the smell.
The albergue we’re staying in is up in the mountain with no restaurants or grocery stores nearby, so we had to carry food from the nearest town, Ponte Ulla. When we got to the albergue around 5pm, there were only two other people. But by 7pm, the dorm was full and there was a sense of quiet excitement as everyone realized what tomorrow meant – the end of their journey on El Camino. Some people have been walking for months. The lady from Ireland next to our bunk bed had been doing the Camino in stages, completing one etape one year and coming back another year to do the next etape. It took her altogether five years, which coincided with the completion of her doctorate. A man, Victor, on the other hand, was a Camino expert, having done all the different Camino routes. He said that all the routes are essentially the same. You have to walk a lot, he said.
Damn right, I thought. I must admit that I am getting quite bored by the walk and looking forward to finishing so that I don’t have to wake up at dawn and start walking before the sun is out anymore. I definitely think the drudgery, more than the distance or the physical challenge of walking that far, is the biggest test on El Camino because the landscape gets repetitive after a while and the terrain is mostly flat / moderately hilly, which add to the tedium. Can you keep walking day after day after day even though you are already so sick of walking?