Saturday, April 4, 2015

The first time...

...I heard about the Camino de Santiago Compostela was over a
decade ago through a book called The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho. I was fresh out of university and quite fanciful...well a tiny bit anyway. But reading the book, I actually thought I was reading about a fictional place set up for a fictional journey. Thank God the Internet was starting to make itself felt by then. But it was still a vague idea at that time. An actual pilgrimage like the one described in the book seemed like an impossible trip for me.

Through the decade and a half since then, I've all but forgotten about the story. However, constant reminders would come up here and there, of other people's accounts of walking the Camino on their own personal journey of discovery. And then I'd get excited and think what if...

The book that planted the seed
And now, that 'what if' is finally taking shape. We're still quite a ways a away from getting there, but it feels like we are being guided and led towards this journey. What we initially put in the back burner as a trip for 2016 or even later has been pushed forward and it's actually happening this year.

As I write this post, I'm actually re-reading the book that planted the seed in my mind and pairing it with a Camino app guide so I can track the character's progress through the book. Granted, sections of it are still too incredible for me to fathom, but for the most part, it's becoming more clear to me. I'm already seeing myself taking the same journey, facing similar challenges, for my own version of the 'sword.'

-- cleo

Friday, April 3, 2015

It started a while back

My sister Cleo  and I decided that we'll walk the Camino a while back. Until the last part of February this year it was all talk. And then slowly the decision started coming to life. This blog is a way for us to share our very special journey, collect information from those who've done this before or have insights about this kind of trip and to ask support & prayers. It begins with our planning and prep (ongoing -Aug 24) and will build up with a week in Paris. Climax will be the 1-month, 800-km walk from a place called Saint- Jean- Pied-de- Port somewhere at the border of the French Pyrenees, all the way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The denouement will be a week exploring in either Barcelona or Portugal, and it ends when we return home to Manila. The trip is pegged for August 24 to October 9, 2015. Brimming with excitement!

And so we start...

anj