Santiago is a city of a couple hundred thousand people and within a few kilometers of its Cathedral center this morning, we encountered gallantly mounted horsemen trotting towards us on the Via de la Plata. The southern Pilgrim approach into the city is quiet, but also, once inside the urban zone, not well way marked. Once AJ and I got up into the tourist neighborhood, we actually had trouble finding the Cathedral. The crowds with their tourist agendas—shopping, dining, gawking--don’t trend in any particular direction. And not being local, people struggle to give clear directions.
Among Pilgrims there is a certain chic. Your Pilgrim scallop shell, hung round your neck or lashed to your backpack, is de rigueur. Single trekking poles, never mind the unbalanced mechanics, are cool. A bit harder to understand are long—six foot long—wooden walking sticks. Even more inexplicable? On your arrival at the Cathedral neighboring “Oficina de Peregrinos” where you turn in your Pilgrim Credential for the inspection that gains you your very own “Compostela” pilgrim certificate, you discard your wooden walking stick in the growing pile in the office vestibule. One imagines that they have a bonfire of these at Pilgrim season’s end.
Give me a few days to absorb the significance of our arrival. But bear in mind that this becomes my third Pilgrim certificate joining one earned on bicycle from Barcelona in the mid 1990s and another on foot on the Camino Francès in 2007. But arrived we are. Santiago!
