10 Ways El Camino de Santiago Changed Me

One of my favorite photos from the trip, taken in a rush and without even glancing at the screen to avoid interrupting quintessentially-Camino-deep conversation with a stranger at 7am.

I don’t know about you, but this pandemic has made me look at my bucket list with a brand new type of longing. The next item up on mine before the world came crashing down: the Trans-Mongolian Railway—aka over six thousand miles inside a train with other people for days on end. Probably not something that’s going to happen any time soon.

But crossing Western Europe on an ancient, month-long pilgrimage which already survived (re: contributed to) multiple pandemics throughout history? Maybe this is something you’ve had in the back of your mind for a while now. Maybe you've seen The Way, or read any number of Camino memoirs, or can’t afford the $4000-8000 budget recommendation for the PCT. Maybe the idea of anything antithetical to sitting at home stagnant and atrophic sounds like a dream.

Whatever your reason for flirting with this month-long hiking trip—complete with meeting people from all over the world, exploring the jaw-dropping backdrops of Les Pyrénées and Northern Spain, and putting your physical and emotional breaking points to the test—you’ve probably gathered a handful of expectations while researching. I had so many while planning this trip in 2017, most of which were smashed within the first week.

Here are 10 lessons I came away with when it was all over and I struggled to make my way back into the Real World:

Watching the occasional car speed by while I slowly made my way along a straight line disappearing into the horizon often felt like a metaphor I couldn’t quite pin down.

1. TRUST THE MIRACLE THAT COMES OUT OF BOREDOM.

Those long, agonizing days on the Spanish Plains will likely push you to your breaking point faster than the more physically-demanding ones. For ten days in the middle of the Camino Francés, the Meseta offers little more than the same flat, brown view, which is—oddly enough—the perfect landscape for breakthroughs. I had to fight constantly against the impulse to grab my headphones and drone out the merciless afternoon sun and maddening monochrome, but on the days I kept them in my backpack and surrendered to the moment—to the sound of my feet rhythmically crunching the earth and my slow, heavy breathing—the miracles finally came. I’d find myself in impassioned imaginary discussions, recording journal entries on my phone and making discoveries I’d been searching for all along. I’d find my face wet from crying without realizing it was happening. I’d find myself rage-walking while singing at the top of my lungs and letting out all the demons I carried with me halfway across the world.

Of course, El Camino de Santiago is far from making the list of longest thru-hikes, so 4-6 weeks may seem like a short amount of time in which to expect a full-blown transformation. But by refusing to distract myself and allowing myself the gift of presence for those long, lonely hours, I laid the groundwork for transformation in the aftermath.

Now, if you’re anything like me, right now you’re looking for concrete evidence that a trip like this will alter you for the better. In short, how exactly did I change? The answer is simple: I became infinitely better at being present; at sitting with anxiety, boredom, discomfort of any kind, and getting out of the way so it can run its course and something more productive or poetic can come in its wake.

Looking back, this is one of those “first day of the rest of my life” photos, but at the time it was just, “Ooh! The moon!”

2. IT REALLY, REALLY SUCKS NOT BEING MULTILINGUAL.

Everyone always told me that learning a language in school was for my own good, but I never took it seriously. Maybe it’s because I internalized the idea that English is the global language and therefore it’s not a necessity, but I wish I’d heeded the advice while I was still in school because I lost out on making so many connections with fascinating people due to the language barrier. Not to say there weren’t plenty of English-speakers worth forging connections with, but I saw how incredible it was for people who spoke multiple languages to engage in cultural exchange with almost everyone around them. Of course, growing up in Europe makes it much easier to access to quality language-learning opportunities, but as soon as I came back from the Camino I suddenly had a brand new passion for expanding my means of communication.

How did I change? Before the Camino, I spoke one language only, and remembered a handful of phrases from high school Spanish classes. Two years later, I speak two new languages at an intermediate level, and have had hours upon hours of deep conversation in one, and am getting better by the day at understanding rap in the other. RAP. I would call that a marked improvement.

My favorite kind of morning.

3. YOU TAKE YOURSELF WHEREVER YOU GO.

Maybe this one goes without saying, but I fell into the trap of believing Everything Will Be Different Now. I believed I’d have the freedom to reinvent myself while I made lifelong connections with other “pilgrims”. I’d prove my independence and oneness with nature and the global community. I’d be the best version of myself because goddammit I was on a spiritual journey and intention is enough. Let me give you a breakdown of what it actually looked like:

On the very first day, on the perfectly quiet, out-of-this-world gorgeous morning with clouds below the mountaintops and fog along the first steps of the path, I got stuck walking with someone who talked a mile a minute about sports and life back in the US because I’m a people-pleaser who doesn’t know how to say, “Hey, it’s really great getting to know you, but I would like to walk by myself right now. Let’s reconnect later!” without feeling paralyzing guilt.

My other favorite kind of morning.

Then, after a year and a half of avoiding romance and intimacy altogether because the thought of breaking another person’s heart nearly put me at suicide risk, I met someone a couple of weeks into my trip and immediately got an STI. From kissing. From kissing someone for the first time in eighteen months. If that’s not hauling my paranoia of karmic inability to trust my own judgment across the Atlantic Ocean, I don’t know what is.

Due to the above, I spent the next three weeks with a massive orange cold sore protruding from my face. It was so bad that most people had to avoid eye contact with me. In combination with my newfound social anxiety over no longer having Pretty Privilege™, this left me feeling utterly isolated and wracked with self-consciousness until the tail end of this once-in-a-lifetime journey.

No wait this is my favorite kind of morning.

All of my shortcomings in relationships followed me, too. I reverted right back to my comfort zone of melodrama, ambivalence, and resentment. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SOLO PILGRIMAGE. I’M SUPPOSED TO BE INDEPENDENT AND SILENTLY PENSIVE AT ALL TIMES. WHAT A TERRIBLE THING THAT I’VE FOUND SOMEONE I CONSTANTLY LAUGH WITH AND HAVE A DEEP ROMANTIC AFFECTION FOR. It took one afternoon coffee break with a fellow pilgrim (who also happened to be an episcopal priest) to see how absurdly I’d skewed my concept of growth. She gently reminded me that spirituality is found just as often in connection with others as it is in ourselves. But I took that fear with me to Spain, too.

How did I change? Well, I was forced to confront my own bullshit, for one. All these beliefs I had about myself being a different person in a different environment no longer held up. So the clarity I gained gave me a very clear set of choices: experience the discomfort of change, or continue experiencing the discomfort of not changing. Might as well explore the uncharted territory.

Note the gnome homes.

4. WE ARE (PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, AND EMOTIONALLY) CAPABLE OF A LOT MORE THAN WE THINK.

On the morning of Day 4, I knew something was wrong. I’d fallen asleep in a weird position after three 30-35 km days on mountainous terrain, and my legs were sore beyond belief. Shortly after I started walking that morning, I could tell one of my knees was seriously injured. I was crushed. How could I let this happen so soon? I still had over 800 km before I make it to the coast. Would I have to quit? Wait it out in Pamplona while the rest of the Camino Family I’d already found trudged along without me?

Thankfully I was overwhelmed by kindness from other pilgrims, who lent me walking poles, bombarded me with medicine from their respective countries, and offered to carry some of my load. I walked slowly and in constant physical agony for a full week, until one morning I woke up and felt good as new.

Had I not swallowed my pride and asked for help, I wouldn’t have made it through the week. I remember calling my grandmother and crying over how stupid I felt for not taking better care of myself that first day, and my disappointment of no longer having time to make it to Finisterre (the original end point before the trail was co-opted by the Catholic Church) before my flight home. I remember the initial humiliation of having much older strangers carry my belongings and give me their walking poles. I remember a particularly difficult day, sharply inhaling with each step and fighting back tears as I concentrated on making it through the morning, when a man skipped by singing, and then stopped in his tracks to yell at me to smile (society takes itself on the Camino, too!).

All of this to say: I didn’t give up. I let go of my expectations and let the journey tell me what it was going to look like. In the end, I learned how to listen to my body, focus less on the destination than on the walk itself, and see my willingness to accept help from others as a strength. And I bought a later flight home.

How did I change? My confidence grew 100-fold. Period.

Even the first morning beyond Santiago de Compostela toward Finisterre you get the path all to yourself again.

5. THE INTERNET RUMORS ARE TRUE: IT IS TOTALLY POSSIBLE TO GET BY ON JUST $1000.

I didn’t end up sticking to that budget for two reasons:

1) I decided to spend two extra weeks backpacking around Spain and France afterward. You know. For Love™.

2) My phone broke the night before I was supposed to start the pilgrimage (Fried by a cheap converter. Thanks Amazon.), so I rushed to an Apple Store in Paris only to discover that non-citizens can’t do payment plans, so I bit the bullet and paid $1000 up-front for one of the latest iPhones (Portrait Mode was brand new at the time. I’m still rolling my eyes at myself.), and called my bank in a panic to see if they would increase my credit limit so I could still travel with the reassurance that I wouldn’t be screwed in case of a more expensive “emergency”.

So, okay, my budget was more like $2500. But only $1000 of that was spent on the Camino itself.

How? My #1 way of cutting costs was by cooking in the albergues. It’s so common to see pilgrims cooking together at the end of a long day, so you won’t feel too excluded from the nightly 10€ Pilgrim’s Menu (those get real old, real fast anyway). (See this page for other money-saving travel tips.)

How did I change? I learned to find more value in the less glamorous. The people I sat next to on nights when I ordered the Pilgrim’s Menu were wonderful, and the people I met in the hostel kitchens were also wonderful. The bonus of cooking, though, was a form of cultural exchange impossible to experience in a Spanish restaurant in Spain. There were impromptu potlucks, poetry readings, and Disney sing-a-longs (in our respective languages, of course). People who were chefs back home would whip up delicious communal meals with the random ingredients we’d all been lugging around that day.

And, maybe above all of that, I learned to appreciate the type of person who—like me—couldn’t afford to splurge every night, because they were either a) on a budget because they were traveling all over the world and this was just one piece of an even larger epic saga, or b) not the type of person who can just pick up their lives and vacation in Spain for a month, but somehow managed to make their way here regardless.

And in the years of nearly-nonstop travel since, I’ve had far more memorable experiences in the run-down villages, the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, the cheap hostels, and the long bus rides than I’ve had on any of the occasions where I’ve splurged.

By the time I reached this sign just a few hours outside Santiago de Compostela, I thought I’d return home empty-handed. It would take me several months to realize I’d gotten everything I came for.

6. THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PACKING LIGHTLY AND PACKING LIGHTLY.

Despite the TONS of research I’d done prior to my trip about packing appropriately for the Camino, I learned—about two hours into Day 1—that I had grossly overpacked. And at the end of the day, along with almost everyone else who arrived at the medieval monastery-turned-albergue in Roncesvalles, I fervently unpacked my bag and tossed nearly HALF of its contents onto the Free Stuff Table, which was already piled with discarded “necessities”.

Here’s what I left behind:

Money belt from Paris (I was being dramatic anyway)

Blow-up travel pillow (completely unnecessary)

Bulky wallet (I put my cards in a zip-lock bag. Also sounds dramatic but absolutely worth it.)

Canvas tote from Paris (to “blend in” while leaving my backpack locked up in the hostel. Between my hiking boots and the fact that I thought a Le Petit Prince bag from Amazon wouldn’t scream tourist, well…the joke was on me as soon as I saw the same tote at every vendor in Montmartre.)

Book light (it didn’t take much to fall asleep most nights)

Bulky universal charging cube (I got one for Europe with my impulsive new phone purchase)

Burst into tears upon reading this scribble, to give you an idea of how many grains of salt to take with this entire blog post.

How did I change? I can now take a single 36-liter backpack on a five-month trip without a second thought. Very few things in my life have felt more freeing than that.

7. THE CAMINO ATTRACTS A CERTAIN KIND OF PERSON…AND NOT THE KIND YOU MIGHT EXPECT.

Before I started my Super Spiritual Life-Changing Pilgrimage™, I expected all the other pilgrims to have my same outlook on the Camino, and to be seeking a similar type of answer from the journey: serenity, forgiveness, inspiration, closure…something along those lines. And while the majority of pilgrims were searching for something, a ton of them were there for a reason that hadn’t really crossed my mind: fun.

Only a fraction of the pilgrims I met were actually religious, with a large number of pilgrims choosing to do the Camino for purely recreational reasons. Outdoorsy types, athletes biking the entire way, even a couple of gap year students “just doing it for shits.” That’s not to say there weren’t a ton of people like me, taking the endeavor seriously and setting out specific intentions for emotional healing and growth blah blah blah, but the sacredness I assumed would permeate every interaction was rarely there. Instead, we were just people, often seriously, well, troubled people, looking for answers or an escape. A while many of us were seeking spiritual growth, the reason we were there was because we didn’t have it yet. At least not in the way we wanted.

Therefore, like in many other niche communities, we were no exception to the conflicts and drama of an everyday-dysfunctional society. Rampant sexism, xenophobia, alcohol abuse, budding romances left and right (I could hardly turn a corner without walking in on people making out)—all the things you’d find in, say, rehab. Or high school. Or any other closed system of people desperately trying to work out an unknown part of their lives. All heightened by the time warp that comes with walking along the countryside with the same people for seven hours a day, every day.

How did I change? I was, to put it bluntly, humbled. And I now have a better working knowledge of appropriate questions to ask a stranger.

Although I was raised Catholic, I was not expecting to sob hysterically at the beauty of the Burgos Cathedral. Yet here we are.

8. RESEARCH IS OF BOTH UTMOST IMPORTANCE AND LITTLE USE.

For several months before I left for my trip, I spent hours nearly every day researching proper equipment, budgeting tips, personal accounts, Camino history, bed bug advice, and Spanish culture. While most of my prepping did prove itself invaluable at certain times, there were many, many other instances where I simply could not have prepared myself any better than I did, and ended up totally blindsided and lost (sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally).

Here are just a few of the things I didn’t see coming:

My one-month-old phone frying to death from a (5-star reviewed on Amazon) universal charger the night before my early-morning train ride from Paris to St. Jean Pied-de-Port—which I’d booked months in advance for 54€—causing me to miss my train in order to get a replacement phone before heading into the mountains, and buying a same-day ticket which set me back nearly $150. 

Journaling on my new, cheap, third phone of the trip, outside a museum in Madrid after the Camino was all over. Note the giant scar on my lip.

Getting bed bugs my very first night on the Camino, even though I spent countless hours researching how to avoid them before I left the US, because my new train ticket got me to my auberge too late at night to check the bed without waking up everyone else in my room.

Getting extremely lost on an alternate path up the mountain while wild dogs barked in the distance. I thought I could use my Camino app to cut across to the regular route, not realizing the map didn’t show the terrain I’d have to cross, and it ended up being a straight vertical slope down the mountain through thorny dry brush and across winding mountain roads where cars couldn’t see me before speeding through. Word to the wise: don’t always trust technology. Or use an app with better ratings.

If only it were this tangible.

My fairly-severe knee injury which significantly slowed my pace for a full week due to my lack of pre-Camino practice scaling down mountains with thirty extra pounds on my back. Getting food poisoning from tuna in a Spanish tortilla. A separate instance of urgently needing to see a doctor after walking only 11km that day. (Re: my face being eaten alive by Baby’s First Cold Sore)

And, finally, deciding after so many setbacks that I still definitely wanted to do the final 100km past Santiago de Compostela to the original ending point of Finisterre (before the Catholic Church came in and “repurposed” the pagan sun-worship pilgrimage to attract tourism), and spent another few hundred bucks on a train ticket to Madrid, a flight to Brussels, a train to Paris, and a flight back to the States.

How did I change? I learned how to roll with it. Mainly because life offers no other choice.

View from the coastal town of Muxía, a less-common end point for El Camino de Santiago, but well worth the trip. I took a bus from Finisterre and—as I hadn’t been inside a moving vehicle in a month and a half—got wildly carsick.

9. DEEP, MEANINGFUL, QUICKLY-FORGED FRIENDSHIPS COME AND GO JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE.

Ah, those early morning and late afternoon conversations with total strangers. A few days, even a week or two of spending the better part of each walk with new friends, staying in the same albergue each night and leaving before dawn together the next morning; sharing meals, laughter, tears, deeply personal questions and awe over the Spanish landscape together...only for them to soldier on while you take a rest day in one of the beautiful cities along the way, and you never see each other again.

A few repetitions of this pattern go by and you quickly learn to cherish the moments with each other, make the most of the cultural exchange, and accept that each person who touches your life is on their own journey, sometimes enhanced by—but always regardless of—your presence.

How did I change? I got better at saying goodbye. And considering all three of my Reasons for Walking El Camino de Santiago had to do with loss, I held that lesson particularly close.

I found tons of these shell sculptures hanging from trees in an olive grove along the path, next to a free snack table filled with fresh fruit, bread and drinks for pilgrims. But was this Portrait Mode photo worth $1,000?

10. I LEARNED THAT NONE OF THESE DISCOVERIES, HOWEVER JARRING OR SIGNIFICANT, HAD ANY LASTING IMPACT ON THEIR OWN.

When I listen to all my journal recordings from this trip, I remember the feeling of being bombarded with insight after insight. The Camino was an emotional rollercoaster which lent itself so well to self-discovery, and in the moment of these lightbulbs going off I’m always so tempted to give them more power than they actually have. Especially in a culture like ours (speaking to fellow Americans), there is so much pressure for quick-fixes and deep internal shifts that feel like sprints rather than marathons. For free-spirited world travelers, too, there’s a socially-acceptable pull toward simple solutions: ayahuasca, silent meditation retreats, walking El Camino de Santiago—the impulse for fast, tangible change is deeply embedded within the nomad culture and narrative. Of course we want these things and see evidence for it in the immediate aftermath.

The harsh, late morning sun of Day 1, after hours of hiking up from the valley. Like all the 1500-piece puzzles I completed in quarantine, esteem-building accomplishments are just the beginning of the road.

I cannot say this firmly enough: the change wears off if you do nothing with it. True, lasting growth is rarely—if ever—a sprint (nor a marathon, really, because that implies an arrival point). I can’t tell you the number of people I met on the Camino who went right back to their old dysfunctional habits after this allegedly “life-changing” endeavor, myself included. You must make something out of the lightbulbs or they will fade with the memories. This looks different for everyone, but no matter how you decide to integrate the lessons, they will become a part of the experience you always get to keep with you if you do.

Snapped this photo amid one of my many days of “rage walking”. Glad I still had enough wherewithal to pause and take it in.

I can’t wrap something of this scope up in a pretty bow, but I can confidently say I finished the Camino a different person than I started. A person whose values I struggle to live up to on a daily basis, sure, but a person I’ve fought for and a person I’m proud of. All because I impulsively said no to a job offer and bought a ticket to France instead. Stupid? At the time I thought so. But probably the most liberating decision I’ve ever made.