Lee and I got up early again, around 5:30 in the morning, and were looking to creep away from the casa rural in the still dark. The front door was locked, from within, and it took us awhile to figure out how to get it open with our room key.  I was worried that we would be stuck there until 7:00, losing valuable time on this, my last day of walking to Santiago.

I was obsessively consulting my weather app, beginning from the night before.  There was a good chance of rain on this my last day on the Camino. I had broken out my rain pants and stuffed a rain jacket in my backpack.  I had brought both on all my trips to Spain.  This would be the first day I would use them.

It was a 20-minute drive back to Santa Irene and we made it just as dawn came up.  I saw a single pilgrim, a woman, heading down the trail.  She was enough to point me the way. I was determined to get into Santiago at a decent hour, although not necessarily by noon when one of the Pilgrim Masses is scheduled.  The adjustment of our itinerary would give us two nights in Santiago, more time to take care of all the things we wanted to do there.

My new arrival date, today July 25, coincidentally was the feast of St. James.  I hadn’t planned it that way and, while later it would lead to certain complications, I was pleased about it.

Although it was only 7:00 a.m., when Lee dropped me off, I suggested she drive right to the hotel in Santiago.  That also turned out to be good advice, as neither of us quite understood how the feast day would make the old city there a madhouse, with the crowds it would generate.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t had breakfast.  I found a good café associated with an alburgue after only a few km of walking.   Some coffee and buns were enough to get me going.

This was not a day to adopt a leisurely pace, to enable quiet reflection, perhaps aided by inspirational tapes playing in my ear.  Much of the trail was pleasantly flat and under canopies of trees, and could easily serve to support such goals.  This was walking with a purpose, to get to Santiago, and hopefully before the rains came.  I was a man on a mission.

I was making good time, and for awhile, I thought I would escape the rain.  I had completed nearly half of the 24 km I needed to cover without so much as a drop.  I even texted Lee to alert her to my progress and, at one point, claimed victory in the rain battle.  Just after that, as if on cue, it came, a morning mist which transitioned to a misty rain.  I took a cue from others and, under an overpass, put on my rain jacket.  I had already covered my backpack when I started off in the morning.

Even on the last day, the Camino was true to form…going up…

…and going down.

I knew that the trail on this last day takes you by the airport.  Still, I was surprised and alarmed when I first heard airplanes taking off or landing.  It took me a few minutes to understand what that loud and strange noise was.

Throughout the day, I and others were careful to get our two stamps, to meet the requirement for the compostela.  I got one at a church in San Paio, but were happy to get a few others at cafes.  In the middle of one of the woodland trails, some local had a table set up to provide stamps, for a small donation.  Not for any charity, mind you.  He seemed to have started a thriving business.   No shame, I gave him a euro and got his stamp.  I think we were all paranoid about having done all this walking and then being prevented from getting a Compostela because of some technical violation of the stamp requirement.

Red Bull Tent

I haven’t much liked the walk from Sarria, and today’s walk didn’t do anything to change that perception.  While I confess that some of the woodland trails were pleasant to walk, I had still not adjusted to the crowds.   On this day, I saw for the first time, gift and souvenir shops. At one point, I passed a promotion for the Red Bull energy drink!  It was the Camino at its commercial best.  I declined their offer of a free can.

There were ambulances along the way, something I had never seen before.  Not responding to any particular emergency, just being available.  I suppose that, in addition to those walking from Sarria, others associated with bus tour groups walk for this one day.  Novice walkers are the ones most vulnerable to injury.  I chalked it up to readiness on the part of the authorities.

I finally got to the city of San Lazaro which adjoins Santiago.  After going through it, I saw a sign on a roundabout indicated that we were entering Santiago.  Aside from an exclamation by a young Asian woman walking nearby, there was no fanfare.  I had always envisioned entering the old city of Santiago directly, perhaps over some medieval bridge.  Here I was simply entering the outer limits of the busy, small city.  Like others, I tried to take a picture of that sign but the rain, which was still coming down, had made my IPhone ineffective to touch.

Still, I thought I had finally arrived.  It couldn’t be more than a few blocks into town before we got to the old city and the Cathedral.  Little did I know that it would be another 45 minutes of walking.

When I finally got to the old city, I called Lee.  I thought I was in the front of the Cathedral, where she said that she was.  There were large crowds but not big enough that we couldn’t readily find each other.  But neither of us, walking around and talking could identify the same landmarks.  I suspected that I might be at the side or back of the Cathedral, and decided to follow a street around the structure.  I didn’t know it at the time but that path would have taken me directly to the large square and right to where Lee was standing.  However, a security policeman stopped me (and others) for reasons he gave in Spanish and which I didn’t understand.  I began to doubt that I was at the Cathedral at all, and using Google maps proceeded on to another street that led to another large church,  Surely, I thought, this was the Cathedral.  A security guard let me know that it wasn’t, it the Church of San Francisco.

A young American pilgrim stopped and asked me directions to the Pilgrim Office.  I couldn’t help here but she let me know that the first church I stopped at was the Cathedral.  It’s just that they were limiting the number of people from coming into the large Plaza in front of it.   It was, after all, the feast of St. James!

I then remembered that our hotel was on the Plaza, so I pulled out my reservation paper, went to another check point, and showed it to the policeman with my passport.  Mercifully, he let me through.  I found Lee easily.   We took some pictures there and then went into the hotel where I shed for the last time my (wet) pilgrim clothes.  It took three years and three trips to Spain, but I had finally arrived at the tomb of St. James!

Starting in St. Jean Pied de Port in August, 2017.

Arriving in Santiago de Compostela, July 25, 2019…