Back from Camino

If you quickly browsed the photos below and thought none has anything to do with the Camino de Santiago: no pilgrims walking with shells hanging from the backpacks or yellow arrows painted in old trees and crumbling houses, you right! But fear not, there’s a story behind it.

In the week spent walking the Portuguese Way to Compostela my camino started before sunrise, at the exact the moment I jumped of my bunk (I often slept on the top one) at the pilgrim shelter, and ended when I took off my boots and stored them shoe rack, only to put them back on the following day. When I went for a well deserved shower it marked the end of the most important part of that day, despite still being a few hours away from going to bed. It was the boots that put me in pilgrim mode, when I was out of that mode it was time to slow down, see things on a different pace, enjoy the pretty small city of that day, do a short walk on its streets to loosen the muscles and have a well deserved ice cold beer! Closing the day with a drink, hot or very cold, it’s something I do in most trips, and myself, João and Ana arrived with plenty of time for all that.

Now that I returned home and start to go through all the photos, the ones that first caught my attention weren’t those taken with the boots on my feet, but the ones taken close to that end of day beer. Maybe because those are much more casual and candid, like most street photography, and there’s no intention of documenting the surroundings, unlike rest of the day when I was walking. The rest of the camino shots have stronger underlying narrative, that requires longer to assimilate, so, out of pure laziness, I’ll start with these that you can call a Side B of the Camino.