Blog a Day May: Day Two : Camino Dreaming

Putting things out there can bring wonderful things.

Case in point: My 41^st birthday.

I was sitting at a table with a group of friends and I’d been talking about going to Spain. “I want to go to Spain. I want to wander the ancient streets, visit the old cathedrals, eat tapas and butcher a foreign language.” One of those friends gave me a Lonely Planet Guide to Spain. We were eating Spanish food.

Four months later, I won two tickets to anywhere in the world. In the October of the following year I was traipsing around a soggy Madrid, awestruck with déjà vu in Toledo, taking in the marvels of the Alhambra and the Alcazar, butchering the language in a way that only I can do.

Loved every minute of it.

I love the country, it's heart and soul, it's stark beauty, it's charm, it's harshness, it's history, it's people.

The travel bug is biting again. There are some loose plans to go to Japan later in the year with Blarney – I’ll be saving, it’s a place I’ve always wanted to see. Reindert is also saying that a trip back to the East Coast of the US would be a nice thing. Indeed it would. I’d love to go back there and spend a bit more time around the south. I want to go back the the Alcazar and Alhambra and wonder around beauty of these palaces. I want to stop at the cafes where you get a three course meal with a glass of rough red for ten Euros for lunch. I want to wander among ancient cathedrals where people have prayed for centuries.

And I want to walk the Camino.

The Camino Santiago de Compostella  - also known as the way of Saint James. A walk across the top of Spain where you walk along the path that Saint James took a couple of millennium ago. 

It's a well walked path from the foothills of the Pyrenees to the coast to the town of Santiago de Compostella near the Portugal border on the coast. The full walk takes you around 40 days.

Along the way you will make friends, like minded friends. You visit places you will never see again as you walk the forty days towards your destination. You sling a scallop shell around your neck to show others that you're walking the path. You don't need to be a christian. You just need to have faith -faith that you can walk 20 kilometres a day for forty odd days over sometimes rough terrain.

Sounds like a pretty good thing to me - something worthwhile to look forward to. Something I can see myself doing.

My friend Alice was over for dinner tonight. She wants to walk the Camino too.

I wonder how quickly I can manifest this? Something to work on.

(For those a bit curious, this is what I want to put myself through. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_St._James - sounds a bit less torturous than Kokoda with older buildings and more public toilets.)