AJ and I were up early this morning setting out for the Santiago bus station. Heading up its front steps, we were approached by a young Brazilian woman speaking fluent English. “Did we want to go to Cape Finnesterre?” she asked. With our Pilgrim garb and backpacks, she had sized us up well. A bus for Finnesterre did leave within the hour and our ambition was to be on it. She had a van parked nearby and, avoiding intermediate stops, and, for the same fare, she could deliver us to Finnesterre in an hour and a half, half the time the bus schedules for the trip. We accepted even as commencing rain dampened our trip prospects and rendered her search for more passengers fruitless. Our Brazilian was friendly, as good as her word, and delivered us to the Faro lighthouse at Finnesterre in just over an hour. This was unlicensed, no tax, for cash, black market economics. We found our overnight lodgings in Santiago, or they found us, in exactly the same way—a woman walks up to us on the street and inquires if we are in search of rooms. As in Santiago, the big Pilgrim town, here at Finnesterre our luck held. The rain diminished and stopped just as we reached the coast.
If one walks from Santiago to Finnesterre, as I did in 2007, the tradition is to burn your walking boots there. Small fire rings for boot pyres are scattered in the stony landscape around the Faro. There is enough hiker clothing strung up and flapping in the Atlantic wind to remind one of Buddhist prayer flags.
At the lighthouse, we met Bernardo, a young Italian Pilgrim, and his four month old puppy dog “Romero”. At some nameless Camino village, Bernardo had adopted this just then born pup, lest he be killed as the runt of his litter. Caring for this creature doubled the length of Bernardo’s Camino as he adjusted to doors closed to pets and the physical limitations of infant animals. Not looking back, he says, “My life is changed.”
