10 Surprising Aspects of the Camino de Santiago
I was not prepared for these.
I knew walking the Camino for a month was bound to be a growing experience. But there are some things I wasn’t prepared for, despite my thorough research and preparations. Check out the below list and let me know what you’d add!
1. Siesta is very real.
Want to get dinner, a snack, visit a pharmacy, buy some groceries, or do pretty much anything between the hours of 4 and 7 pm in Spain?
Good luck, my friend. Bars are the one thing I found that were open during siesta, and you’ll often see people enjoying libations and perhaps small pintxos (they’re typically not called tapas in the regions the Camino walks through) in the sunshine for a few hours.
I learned to ask at my hostel-restaurante what time they reopened for dinner, which usually ranged from 6:30–8:30 p.m. And that leads to my second point:
2. You’ll walk through and spend the night in one-road towns regularly.
I didn’t realize exactly how small some of the villages are on the Camino until I stopped at one for the first time. You’re lucky if these villages have a grocery store, a pharmacy, or an ATM. I typically stopped walking by two each afternoon, and this meant at times I ate lunch, dinner, and breakfast at the same restaurant, which was usually in the same building as the hostel or hotel.
There was one night I thought I was going to be eating vending machine food after I walked the few streets in the town and didn’t find anywhere that was open, a side effect of walking in the early season and the consequences of the pandemic on the businesses on the Camino.
3. Smoking & vaping are commonplace.
Coming from the US, I expected to see more people smoking than I do here, as it’s still part of the culture in Europe. However, I didn’t expect to see this on the Camino — perhaps this was my incorrect assumption of those who walk being health-minded. Typically, but not always, non-Americans were those I saw smoking or vaping throughout the day. A person might conquer a large hill only to have a celebratory cigarette at the top. I met a man from South Korea who couldn’t believe how cheap cigarettes are in Spain, so perhaps that perpetuates the culture of it.
4. People walk with their dogs.
There was a couple from the US that had quit their jobs and were traveling for a year, which included the Camino. Imagine my surprise when I saw a doodle-mix, complete with booties, accompanying them. Over the course of my Camino, I saw about five dogs who were walking, which is five more than I had expected. There are plenty of local pups in the villages, both stray and owned, but it was a surprise to see some four-legged friends making the 500-mile trek!
5. And their kids.
I met a father-daughter duo from Quebec. He was a professor who had taken sabbatical for the semester, and she was an eleven-year old who’d been pulled out of school for the trip (the dad assured me she was a good student, which I didn’t doubt). She was carrying her (quite large) pack, and they were going at a slower pace over the course of the Camino than others, but I was very impressed. I imagine this is a formative bonding experience that any parent or child wouldn’t forget, and something I’d love to do when I have kids someday.
6. The bread section at grocery stores is huge.
Because they make bread fresh every day, most people buy a new loaf each morning. I lost track of the number of people I saw with their baguette wrapped in newspaper. A loaf is less than a euro, and it tastes incredible, unlike what you’d get at an American grocery store.
7. The Camino isn’t all beautiful.
There are some sections that you want to move past as quickly as possible, like those that alongside the thruway, by patches of graffiti on cement tunnels, or on outskirts of larger towns, where it’s one housing development after the next. Sure, there are plenty of photo-worthy parts, but people don’t often highlight the undesirable sections where you put your head down until you’re back to vineyards and farms.
8. If you want medicine, like Tylenol, you can’t buy it at a grocery store.
You’ll need to go to a pharmacy for the medicine you’d typically find on the shelves of a supermarket in the states. The pharmacies are small and ubiquitous, easy to find in any larger town. Look for the green or red plus sign sticking out above the shop. It’s easy to consult with a pharmacist to get what you need — google translate will help if you aren’t a Spanish expert, as simple things like Ibuprofen go by different names in Spanish. At one point, I tried to buy Pepto Bismol, which isn’t available in Spain, so through a painful conversation of explaining what I needed to the pharmacist, I walked away with anti-nausea and anti-diarrhea medicine.
9. The starter salads always come with tuna fish.
The menu del dia, menu of the day, is popular in Spain — for a fixed price, you get a three-course meal and wine or water. These are wonderful, especially for a hungry pilgrim. As someone who eats mostly plant-based, I typically ordered the salad as my appetizer. This salad was the same everywhere I went: lettuced, tomato, tuna, egg, onion, sometimes artichokes, and sometimes carrot. I have no idea why tuna is such a popular salad topping (if you know, please enlighten me!).
10. People will be confused if you choose not to drink.
I decided to take a break from alcohol on the Camino, mostly because it affects my sleep, and high-quality sleep was crucial for long days of walking. When enjoying dinners with others, I got funny looks each time I declined their offers of wine. These looks were followed by questions about why I wasn’t drinking. Again, my dinners were mostly shared with non-Americans, which might explain this phenomenon.
Are any of these surprising to you? What would you add to the list?
