TRAVEL MEMOIRS

Camino de Santiago Felt Like Home but My Old-Lady Blunder Got Me in Trouble

I got too comfortable and that’s not always a good thing

Debra G. Harman, MEd.
Travel Memoirs
Published in
8 min readSep 28, 2024

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Blue sky, deep blue sea with white water and waves crashing against yellow and brown rocks on shore.
Beautiful Atlantic Ocean, Portugal. Photo by Author

Home is Oregon, but here I was in Portugal at the farmer’s market.

I loved the violet, papery bouquets of garlic, but I was walking the Camino de Santiago, so of course didn’t buy any. I wished I could. The root vegetables, huge yams, fat orange carrots, and yellow onions made me homesick. What would I do though, hang garlic off my backpack? As it was, I had a scallop shell — the symbol of the Camino de Santiago — hanging from a white cord on my Osprey 40L pack.

Caminha — one of my favorite cities in Portugal — is home to one of my biggest ever travel blunders. When I arrived exhausted, I decided to rest up before continuing on. Apparently I didn’t rest enough.

Several crates of vegetables — greens on the left, carrots, yams and onions and large groups of garlic bulbs on tall dried stems.
Caminha, Portugal. This market felt like home! photo by author.

Previously, I’ve walked Camino Frances, three times. The Camino Frances, for me, began at St. Jean Pied de Port, in Southern France. It’s one of the traditional starting points for the Camino — if walkers feel ambitious and fit enough to walk over the Pyrenees Mountains! I…

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Debra G. Harman, MEd.
Travel Memoirs

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