The Last Miles

According to the plan we left a quick 9 km stage for the last day, and excepted a beautiful not too tired entry to Santiago. Planned some sightseeing for the afternoon and a fresh start to Finisterra on the next morning. It wasn’t the plan’s fault that it became the longest 9 km of our life…

In a nice canteen (where I bought the shell with the yellow arrow) we ate an empanada (pie) and got some free tapas made of eggs. Unfortunately one of the two was blown (I suspect the egg). Monika got fever and was sick by the evening, I spent the half night with cramps in the loo I could go to sleep with a pill against fever only. Next morning it was Carolina’s turn in the toilet, only Nathan was more or less OK. The irony in the whole thing is that we took a 4 bed room with a toilet for saving some money… Well it was peak time in the bathroom!

 
We laugh yet

The planned early morning start was of course out of question, and we could walk slowly only, and often had to rest. We arrived in Santiago around 1 PM, checked in the first suitable hostel we found in the town and had a short rest. Well the rest went so well, we practically fainted and slept 3 hours. The last 3 km to the Cathedral was still very hard even without the bags, but the delight even bigger! We made it! 35 days, 870 km walking, enormous effort, but we made it!

  
The End

In the following days we looked around in the city, admired the Cathedral, hugged the statue of St. James, checked his urn, and participated on the pilgrim’s mass where at the end the biggest censer was swung. Here it is:

We met Pierre again, it is how the story became full: he was the very first pilgrim we met, and it was so good to meet him and say goodbye! Unfortunately neither strength nor time we left to continue the trip until Finisterra. We sad goodbye to Carolina and Nathan with whom we spend the last 5 days together in good and bad and headed to North, to La Coruña. Based on the lefleats Coruña looked very promising which pays back genorously the one day we could spare for it. It was spectacular indeed.

The pilgrims hopefully bring luck and fill out a lottery ticket for an old lady in a bus stop

When in La Coruna we walked along the rocky coast to the Roman lighthouse we realized that this is our Finisterra, our end of the world, even if it is on the North not the West. We can go home now.