Camino de Santiago

The Portuguese Way is the name of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage routes starting in Portugal. It begins at Porto or Lisbon. From Porto, along the Douro River, pilgrims travel north crossing the five main rivers—the Ave, Cávado, Neiva, Lima and Minho—before entering Spain and passing through Pontevedra on the way to Santiago de Compostela.

The Portuguese way is the second most popular route after the French Way and the Portuguese coastal way is the seventh most popular route in Galicia. The Portuguese way is 227 km long starting in Porto or 610 km long starting in Lisbon. The way from Porto was historically used by the local populations and by those who arrived in the local ports.

In the contemporary period, most pilgrims are foreigners, and of the total number reaching Galicia, only 4.27% were Portuguese. Roughly 30,000 pilgrims per year walk this path. It is growing in popularity, and 81,000 walked the Portuguese way in 2018.

Seven or eight years after, I'm walking the "Camino de Santiago" again. This time I chose the Portuguese Coast one.

This is the oldest pilgrimage route in Europe and passes through several villages. Nowadays, around 300.000 pilgrims do the Caminos de Santiago routes, not only for religious reasons, but for several reasons.

The route I made has 270 km, from Porto (north of Portugal) to Santiago de Compostela (Spain), divided in 13 stages. I started in Marinhas (Esposende), so my goal was walking 210km in 8 days.

We started with full of energy on the first 2 days. Singing, laughing a lot, enjoying our time together. On the 3rd day the difficulties started. We already had more than 50km walking and the pain and injuries started to reach us. Half of the team quit because of injuries and me and a friend continued. It was the most difficult time of the path, because we needed to separate each other in a moment that everyone was in some physical pain. It's always difficult to let it go, right?

But the things I enjoy more when I'm pain are the most simple ones: eating a good meal, a warm shower, so it's good to come back to our roots and enjoy the most simple and essencial things we have in our lives.

In the Camino we live one day at the time and we keep checking our body and mind, to make sure we are ok to proceed.

On the 5th day I was already feeling that my body wanted to walk every morning. He started to got used to and we started to count down the number of the days to arrive to Santiago de Compostela. That's when I started to believe that I would arrive to the end of the journey.

It's unbelievable the solidarity of the people on the streets and between the pilgrims. It's amazing how showing our vulnerability can bring so much light on human relationships!

This is the magic that happens when we go out of our comfort zone :)

I am more and more convinced that human beings naturally like to help and care. When that doesn't happen something is out of natural alignment.

Arriving to Santiago de Compostela had a mix of feelings. In one hand a sense of accomplishment with a feeling of tiredness and some sadness.

Several people were clapping hands on pilgrimgs arrivals, laughing. There was a lot of feelings to hold.

While I waited two hours and a half for the Compostela certificate, I realized that the only "certificate" that serves us in life is really the learning process we do along the Way. And this is the size of what we are willing to give to the Path, being 20km, 200km or 2000km.

We don't measure our learnings through the things we can do at all! It has a lot more to do with how we do it than what we do... Only when we realize this will we realize that what we gained was not 200km walking on our shoes, but what we have learned from this experience.

After this 8 days experience I came to Portugal thinking how the whole Path and the difficulties that come to us are really similar to those in our life.

There are people who carry enormous burdens, others not so much. It seems that for some people it is very easy to achieve certain things. Others have to work so hard to get there, and yet it's not enough to get there. We think that life is unfair, because we don't start with the same starting points, with the same conditions.

True, but a large part of the weight we carry in our "backpack" is what we choose to carry, even if unconsciously. If I am a person with a lot of fears and worried about the future, I will tend to carry a lot in my backpack, because I think I might need it. If I'm more relaxed and more detached, I go with a lot less stuff. If I think I'm not good enough and I won't make it, I'll carry extra weight.

All this weight I carry will inevitably influence my Path.

This is what makes us unique and this learning can never be stolen from us, copied, or achieved by the same miles of the Path.

Each Path is unique 🌸

I'm very grateful to all my muscles and organs for this amazing experience! And recommend it to all of you that would like to have some time to reconnect and visit some of the beautiful landscapes we have in Portugal!

Wish you a happy life!

Raquel