One month ago, we began this journey in St. Jean Pied de Port.  31 days, 433 miles, and countless friendships later, we are in Portomarin.

The day broke foggy again, but beautiful.  You could feel the excitement of the many new Peregrinos who were joining the Camino at the latest point possible to still be an “official” Peregrino.

As veterans, it fell on us to provide the official “look” and “swagger” of road proven Peregrinos. And hey, we know how to follow the Camino, right?

About a mile into the walk, we crossed a railroad track that I figure will make a good picture. Here it is:

After I snapped the photo, Diane went off to the right because there was a place she could sit to adjust her shoes. I hurried to join her. We continued up that dirt path until it joined a major road, which we followed for another quarter mile before really wondering , “where are the trail signs”, and “where are all the Peregrinos? “. We turned around to retrace our steps and found several neophyte Peregrinos following us!  Oops! Bill alerted the group that this didn’t look right, and after 1/2 mile backtrack (right back to the railroad tracks), he found the left turn IMMEDIATELY following the picture, above.  We had missed it and led several newbie Peregrinos astray. Oh well. They had to learn the hard way that,  “everyone must walk their own Camino”. In other words, don’t trust that guy ahead who seems to know what he’s doing!

Aside from adding another mile to an already 15 mile walk, things went very well. We met several of our old Peregrino friends, like:

Axel: The kind, meticulous planning German from Berlin,

Belgian guy: we’ve seen him for 250 miles, talked to him scores of times and still don’t know his name.

Matje: Great guy from Serbia who once chased us down for a kilometer because he thought we dropped a 10€ note. He was right, we did, but his honesty and kindness won us as friends for a long, long time.  He is also an avid cycling fan (and racer), so we’ve had much professional cycling conversations!

Don and his New Orleans family. Great people.

Don and Marlis, whom we hadn’t seen since our very first day of the Camino.

Galan, who is doing the Camino on crutches.

And literally scores of others. It was truly a hike of conversations, from beginning to end!

Oh, and did I mention this guy who greeted us as we arrived at Portomarin?

Just another day on the Camino. Now for chores …