Photographs and Actual Itinerary

Link to Camino Portuguese photographs

Leave home on June 18th

Day 1/June 19th: Arrive in Porto, Portugal

Day 2/June 20th: Walk around Porto, get acclimated.

Day 3/June 21st: Metro to Maia, to Vilarinho: 15.9 km (10 miles)

Day 4/June 22nd: Vilarinho to Sao Pedro de Rates: 11.4 km (7 miles)

Day 5/ June 23rd: Sao Pedro de Rates to Pedra Furada: 7 km (4.3 miles)

Day 6/June 24th:Pedra Furada to Barcelos: 8.9 km (5.6 miles)

Day 7/June 25th: Day off in Barcelos: Reading, Reflection, and Writing

Day 8/June 26th: Barcelos to Tamel: 10 km (6 miles)

Day 9/June 27th: Tamel to Casa da Fernanda: 10 km (6 miles)

Day 10/June 28th: Casa da Fernanda to Ponte de Lima: 12 km (8 miles)

Day 11/June 29th: Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes 18.7 km (11.6 miles)

Day 12/June 30th: Rubiaes to Valenca 16.3 km (10 miles)

Day 13/July 1: Valenca to Tui: 3 km (1 mile)

Day 14/July 2: Tui to Porrinho: 15 km (9 miles)

Day 15/July 3: Porrihno to Redondela: 15 km (9 miles)

Day 16/July 4: Redondela to Arcade: 7.5 km (5 miles)

Day 17/ July 5: Arcade to Pontevedra: 11 km (6.8 miles)

Day 18/July 6: Pontevedra to San Amauro (Barro): 11 km (6.8 miles)

Day 19/July 7: Barro to Caldas de Reis: 12..1 km (7.5 miles)

Day 20/July 8: Day off in Caldas de Reis: Reading, Reflection, and Writing

Day 21/July 9: Caldas de Reis to Padron: 20.4 km (12.6 miles)

Day 22/July 10: Padron to Areal 9.1 km (5.6 miles)

Day 23/ July 11: Areal to Parada de Francos: 3 km (1 mile)

Day 24/July 12: Parada de Francos to Santiago 12.1 km (7.9 miles)

Day 25/July 13: Santiago!

Day 26/ July 14: Fly to Madrid

Total Walking Goal: (approx) 223 km (138 miles)

Santiago!

Well, yesterday we walked on our own two (four!) feet into Santiago, right up to the Cathedral.  For my mother, who is 81 (and thouroughly sick of saying or hearing her age stated) this was an amazing accomplishment!  She walked nearly the entire way, and yesterday was a special accomplishment, as she walked 12km, with major climbs and descents, in 8 hours, with only two breaks in the day!  When we started, she took many, many stops along the way.  Her strength has grown with each day of walking; alternating between pushing herself to the limit and resting and gathering strength for the coming days.  As she said, arrival to Santiago is both happy and sad.  We are happy and relieved; it´s almost unbelievable that we have actually arrived to our goal.  We are also sad that our adventure for which we have looked forward to and planned and worked for, for so long, is now at an end.  We have learned so much over the days of walking, meeting other pilgrims on the road, reading, talking, and reflecting.  An amazing experience.  I plan to continue writing this blog for awhile when I get home and to post pictures from our walk, our final and updated itinerary, thoughts on teaching, and so on.  So stay tuned.  As for now, I will go and wander around Santiago!

Day ?-Caldas de Reis (July 8)

Today is an interesting day.  Mom has a cold and is very tired after a few days of walking, so our plan was that I would walk ahead, she would take a taxi, and meet me at our next stop.  I got up, got organized, we made our plans, and I left.  Got outside to pouring rain, so I put on my poncho, and kept walking.  After a couple of blocks I thought, "why am I doing this?  We don´t have to be in Santiago for several more days, my Mom is under the weather, it´s pouring rain, I´m tired."  So I turned around, walked back to the hotel, Mom let me back in, and we promptly went back to sleep for a few more hours!  It felt so wonderful to sleep!  Then we got up, made our leisurely way out for coffee and breakfast at noon.  This town is really beautiful.  It has these huge palm trees in the center of town, and within a few blocks it has everything we need: a place to stay, cafès, internet place, grocery store, farmacìa....it´s great for the traveller!  

I´m learning more and more about really being present in the moment and making decisions that are right in the moment, not based on some sort of preconceived plan or agenda placed upon the day.  It´s difficult, but then again, so easy.  

This is a challenge in teaching students as well.  I make my plans for the class period, taking my students into account, along with the curriculum, the standards, and so on.  But often, when I arrive in class, things have changed.  Perhaps the students are tired and need a different sort of activity, perhaps they are wound up and need to be quiet.  Or, in the course of the lesson, a student asks a particular question or makes an insightful comment that steers the lesson in a different direction than I originally planned.  When I first started teaching, I would spend a moment with the question, then get back to my agenda.  With practice and experience both in teaching and in life, I am realizing the importance of truly being present in the moment, with the people.  It´s vital to listen carefully, to be sensitive to the moment, and to allow for a new decision or a new path to appear that was not planned initially.  In this way, everyone, student and teacher alike, participates in the moment which gains a depth and significance that could never be planned or anticipated.  It´s beautiful.

Walt Whitman

"I tramp a perpetual journey.  
My signs are a rainproof coat, 
good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods.  
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, 
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, 
I lead no man to the dinner table, library, exchange, 
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll, 
My left hand hooking  you around the waist, 
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. 

Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you, 
You must travel it for yourself.  

It is not far, it is within reach, 
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know, 
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.  

Shoulder your duds, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth, 
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go. 
If you tire give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip, 
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me, 
For after we start we never lie by again."  

-Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

A note about the internet

Access to a computer with internet is few and far between. I guess albuergues these days expect you to be a pilgrim with an i-phone or i-pad!  Wi-fi everywhere, but no computers. I will write blog posts whenever I have access to the internet, but if you don´t see one for a few days, it´s because I have no access to a computer.

Camino Lesson

One of the most wonderful things about this trip is the way in which not only our needs, but our wants are fulfilled as if by magic, or providence, if you will.  There have been so many people that have helped us along our way, when we needed help. 

One time, my mom (and two friends from Ireland) took a taxi ahead to a point where they were then going to walk to the albuergue and wait for the rest of us that were walking the whole way.  I arrived and finally realized that the group had walked past the albuergue and walked up ahead.  We were all in a tizzy, trying to figure out how to find them, how to help them, how to get them back to the albuergue as soon as possible.  The three women hadn´t realized that they had gone beyond, they had just been following the yellow arrows that show pilgrims the way to Santiago.  Soon after they realized that they had walked several kilometres past  their stopping point, they looked around and soon came a car with two people in it, loaded down with furniture.  The people told them to wait a few minutes and drove off.  They soon returned, having unloaded all of the furniture, loading up three pilgrims into their car instead.  We were anxiously waiting at the bottom of quite a steep hill up to the albuergue for them.  They arrived and the driver turned up the steep drive.  We were sure she could never get the car up the steep cobblestone driveway.  But she was determined to deliver her pilgrims, one of whom was 81 years old, up to the very door of the albuergue.  She backed the car and gunned it, zooom! Up the hill they went.  They refused any money for their service. My mother likes to call them, 'her angels', and they really were. 

We have had many experiences like this.  Another day, after walking for several hours, some fellow pilgrims asked us if we had left a phone behind at the albuergue.  Unfortunately, I had.  These phones are very important to us, as some days, while I walk, my mother goes ahead by taxi to rest, and this is the only way to communicate with each other.  Our safety net.  However, I was not about to walk back several kilometers to get it.  We stopped for coffee, and not really knowing what I needed, I asked the lady at the bar to help me. With many gestures, I soon made myself understood.  There happened (!) to be a bombeiro (fireman) and his son in the bar, who offered to drive me back to the albuergue so I could retrieve my phone, then back again to the cafe so that my mom and I could resume our walk!  It was a little disheartening how quickly we were there and back again in a car, a distance that took us hours to walk, but it was so wonderful to be helped so quickly in our time of need.  He also refused any money from me for the ride. 

Even the little things that come are so wonderful.  One morning we woke up, and started to eat our breakfast from groceries I had bought the day before.  Mom said,'Oh, now I just need a cup of coffee, and it would be perfect!'  Not a minute later, a French couple came out with steaming hot water and offered my mother a cappucino! 

There are many more stories like these from our journey, but I would like to think that these stories are not unique to the Camino, but are just a snapshot of the life we all live.  In our day to day lives we worry so much about making sure that all of our needs are met, we often don´t get the privilege of having our daily needs met by God, the universe, or our fellow human beings.  Or when our needs or desires are met, we often attribute it to our own hard work or foresight, and miss the magic of the moment.

A note about our itinerary

I realize that many of you have been following our itinerary, but it completely changes, day by day.  We are actually in Pontevedra on the day the itinerary states, but, how we got here has been radically different than anticipated!  Our plan changes each day due to weather, energy levels, the difficulty of the route, etc....  When we have completed our trip, I will post an itinerary of our actual journey!  Until then, we do still hope\plan to be in Santiago on July 12th, 2011.