This is Part Three in a four-part series. Part 1 | Part 2

Day 5: Rías Baixas

Tired of halfhearted breakfasts, we have scoped out a spot where we had a drink the night before, a bar named Fredyy’s, which delivers a tortilla Española before a plod out of Redondela under moody skies. We climb through its outskirts, snippets of the sea visible here and there, and at the start of a big climb are joined by Roland, a veteran Irish pilgrim shepherding 11 charges along the Camino. He sets a powerful pace up the pavement and talks of the spiritual power of the Camino while lacing in some of the joys of escorting 19-year-olds through bouts of stomach illness. Toward the top we stumble on a collection of North Americans: Ron from Phoenix, who flies a Duluth-made Cirrus plane, and his wife Marnie and a friend; a couple from Houston taking an easy pace; and Julie and Susan from the night before. The trail has grown more crowded, swelled by those who have taken the coastal version of the Camino Portugués and some who have started in Vigo.

Up on this alto we have views down the Ría, one in a series of inlets cut deep into the Galician coast. It is not quite a fjord—those require glaciers—but evocative of those jagged northern European coasts. The grey skies meet the mood, but the density of the greenery and the clusters of red-roofed homes tell us we’re in a place that is entirely its own. We pause in clearings in the eucalyptus groves to drink in the view.

We plunge down from the Alto de Lomba and into the town of Arcade, though, sadly, we are too early for its annual oyster festival, which will not start until the afternoon. German Knee Girl moves a bit better today, but we still leave her behind as we wander in search of food with Julie and Susan, and in time stumble upon a gem of a little shop with sandwiches and fresh fruit and kombucha and the biggest sello on the Camino, designed by the owner’s grandfather. We eat on a bench next to the Pontesampaio down where the Rio Verdugo meets the tip of the Ría, and here we property meet Alan and his Spaniards for a more in-depth conversation. Here on day five our Camino crew has taken shape, familiar faces now acquiring names as we leapfrog our way over the long bridge and up a second big climb of the day. This one takes us deeper into the wood, past some opportunistic entrepreneurs and then turning us loose on a long, slow descent before a road walk into Pontevedra.

At 80,000 residents, Pontevedra is the largest place we’ll visit between Porto and Santiago. That means for a large, sprawling suburban zone, and a long stretch down a bland pedestrian walk between apartment blocks. We run into Marcia and Michelle for the final time a few blocks before our hotel, as they’re turning off to do the Spiritual Variant along the coast that will bring them to Santiago a day behind us. The Hotel Madrid is a functional but nondescript tower, its back view on a bland, overgrown court between yet larger apartments.

A few blocks away, however, the old city of Pontevedra shows out, and it punches well above its weight. There is a scallop-shell chapel to pilgrims, a prominent convent, a musty old basilica with plants growing all over its façade. On the Camino we see a Spain far removed from the large restoration budgets in Barcelona and Madrid, still grand but worn down by time, the darkness and the odor adding the mystery of a deeper world. The old city’s streets are a maze of small plazas and arcades, ornate charms tucked away on stray corners, clusters of tables waiting to fill.

Slowly, Pontevedra comes to life. An intricate dance unfolds, residents and pilgrims alike, circling the narrow stone streets, seeking out bars and restaurants here on this Saturday night. Twice we cycle past a pilgrim couple we decide are Belgians, chatting the first time and laughing as we wave the second. A French-Canadian couple circulates past the mediocre brewery where we camp out to await an restaurant openings around eight; the first time around the wife appears peeved with the husband, the second time downright irate. Of course they are seated next to us when a taberna finally opens for dinner, and they too try the pulpo a feira, the simple but delectable Galician octopus specialty. Back out after dinner we go from square to square, every one of them filled with diners, boisterous with life and chatter, parents at one table, kids of all ages scattered at others, everyone here and finding their people, milling their way through the dance of Spanish urban life that runs late into the night. I could live this way for a very long time.

Day 6: Idyll

Sleep comes poorly in Pontevedra. Someone on the courtyard throws a birthday party complete with a botellón, the ritual smashing of every glass bottle consumed over the course of the night, leaving me groggy in the morning. That ends quickly: while there is a threat of rain on the initial walk out of Pontevedra, day six blossoms into the prettiest of the trip so far. The sun pokes forth, but it is never brutally hot; there is one moderate climb toward the beginning, but this is mostly a stroll down bucolic country lanes, the only disruption the Sunday bicycle riders. Early on we walk with an older Czech guy who takes it easy, our conversation all in halting English.

We do lunch at a restaurant with a sprawling terrace and a menagerie of goats, sheep, and geese parading by. Two more Galician delicacies await us here: eel casserole and then a stew with pig’s feet and tripe. Ron and Marnie from Phoenix plop down at the next table and we walk on with them for a spell, questions peppered steadily, and in time we lose them and pick up a British family, parents with two teenage sons. Mum chatters away about her oldest heading off to uni soon and the joys of the Camino, seemingly oblivious to her younger boy, who labors in misery on a gimpy leg. We leave the parents to wait for their straggling kids at a café a couple kilometers outside of Caldas de Reis, where we of course also find Alan and the Spaniards, stopped for food as usual.

Our lodging for tonight is a splurge: the Hotel Balneario Acuña, a grand old thing atop Caldas’ claim to fame, its hot springs. The French Canadians from dinner the night before roll into the room next to ours, and we share the warmer of the two outdoor pools with them and a Danish mother and son, and later Eduardo from Tenerife. The French Canadians are full of snobbish opinions (“It is essential to hike with poles!” “But of course we have the right shoes, we have no issues with blisters!”) but worth a laugh or two, the Danes are chill, and Eduardo spins a good yarn. We enjoy a shift in the indoor spa, a giant glowing tub with jets everywhere. Back outside the pool has become an amusing collection of aching pilgrims and retiree Spaniards. The place has vague Grand Budapest Hotel vibes, faded grandeur and a nod to a bygone era when a trip here was the vacation of a lifetime.

Outside its charming riverfront, where we have dinner at a tippy outdoor table down the row from the Poles and our Czech friend and the quieter-than-usual loud British girls, Caldas is a bit tired; we enjoy a good fish dinner and make a brief circuit, but my dad is ready to crash. I settle in at the dead hotel bar to catch up on notes.

This is very much my dad’s trip. A retired Spanish professor with a side love for Portuguese who enjoys long hikes and seeking out good beer: how could we design a much better venture? As the less interesting member of our twosome in these environs, I am along for the ride, content to make this trip his. In April, at least, the Camino crowd tends toward retirement age, though there are other scattered parent-kid combinations and a few youthful backpackers. While I would probably slide into this latter circle if I were alone, both our pace and our commitment to lodging with private rooms push against that, and on this trip, that is fine. It is more than enough to share this trip with my dad, a chance few sons have with their fathers, and when many fellow pilgrims observe this, I can only nod in affirmation.

The Spanish language offers a brilliant little glimmer that sums up this trip: the word for retirement is jubilación. Here in his first year out of the workforce, my dad is finding jubilation, the freedom to wander without the student charges he’s had on every previous visit to Spain, comparing notes to a Brazilian beer judge, sampling exactly what he wants to try in every town he visits. This is, indeed, how to do it right.

Day 7: Anticipation

The penultimate day on the Camino dawns damp, and we brush past our Czech friend and the British family before we trudge out of town. The rain increases in intensity. On a day like yesterday, today’s stroll through the woods would have been charming, but today it is a slog, our heads focused forward by the hoods on our jackets. The rain lifts for a bit when we get back on to country roads, and here Alan and his girlfriend Maria catch us for some extended chat on their life in Valencia; eventually they peel off to collect their crew, a necessity in a group of this size that I know all too well from extended family gatherings.

It rains again, and we take refuge in a Spanish trucker bar, where one man opines loudly over coffee where the rest stare vacantly at a nature documentary on TV. It only pours harder when we start moving again down a riverside valley path, any socializing with our fellow venturers left to a minimum. Many pull off at another café, and we wave at the Danes lounging on the covered patio. We soldier on, settling only for a brief stop at a self-service station with 50 Euro-cent bathrooms and a passable instant hot chocolate. The rain continues its off and on flips as we skirt views of industrial Pontecesures and drop across the Ulla River into Padrón.

Padrón is a small but dense town on the River Sar, a stagnant tributary of the Ulla. It was here that St. James is said to have first come to Spain; there is a monastery up on the hill where he first ministered, and the church in town has extensive art in his honor, first as a peaceful converter of the pagans and later in propaganda as Santiago Matamoros, slayer of the Moors. Our hotel is a charming, if rather cramped, time capsule from the mid-20^th century, the elevator dumping us out on a landing between floors.

With a week-long festival having ended the day before, the town is dead outside of gimpy meandering pilgrims; we deduce the Irish boys using their phones to ask after a McDonalds from the locals must be Roland’s food-poisoned charges. (There is no McDonalds here, and we later see them bearing plastic bags from some convenience store.) The one place we find open for dinner is a wine bar that fills steadily with the Poles and some grumpy Germans and the loud British girls plus two less loud British girls and some French and eventually two of Alan’s Spaniards, all in a very narrow space. No one is too social, but at least the wine is good. Today there is a sense of general tiredness, the party on pause before the final push. Tomorrow in Santiago.

Day 8: Jubilation

Our last day is our longest on the Camino: while some pilgrims break up the 16 miles between Padrón and Santiago, we have decided to do it in one push. We are up early, free to groggily frown at the hotel’s breakfast of two slices of toast, though Alan and the Spaniards appear shortly after us and have somehow procured heartier fare. We head out before them, through the mists of a Galician morning, chilled through a maze of homes on the rural edge of Padrón. The route largely follows the N-550 highway but hides it from us in fog and back alleys, busting out by aged Jesuit church in Escravitude. The young guns of the Camino fly past us early, and a few more trickle by as we stop for a real breakfast in A Picaraña. In time we are back on rural lanes, the sun finally burning through the grey shrouds.

In the concello of Teo everything is impeccable, flawless lawns and fruit trees and what passes for Spanish suburban tract housing, retirees on walks to wish Buen Camino and see us on our way. With 8.5 kilometers left we stop for lunch at an oversold roadside café, where we stand in line for a while as the British girls laugh like hyenas at the next table. We let them get ahead of us, but we catch and pass them in time. After an apartment block in the suburbs we catch our first glimpse of Santiago, the cathedral spires looming in the distance seven kilometers out. Eventually it is a long, steady tromp through urbanity with nothing to recommend it, just us and some Germans powering through toward the center.

The march into Santiago feels somewhat discordant. Suddenly there are throngs of people on all sides, a small Spanish city humming at its own pace. Pilgrims, so often the objects of attention in small Portuguese and Spanish towns, melt into the backdrop. No one offers up a Buen Camino, and amid the crowds and narrow streets, the fellow pilgrims ahead and behind us blend in. It is a reminder that the world goes on, that this inward drama has little bearing on the people just down the street. We all walk our own Caminos.

In time it looms up above us: the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the goal of this walk. Pilgrims collapse on its square, exhausted and freed, gaze about in a daze and lift their eyes toward its towering spires. A crew of kids from a Jesuit high school in Sevilla march into the plaza in full song, waving flags after a triumphant march here from southern Spain, and toss their teacher in the air in celebration. A Galician bagpipe trills in the background. All of the Brits we know trundle in, and a few other vaguely familiar faces, too. On our way to obtain our compostelas, the official proof of pilgrimage, we see the Possible Belgians from the plaza in Pontevedra, who have made a beeline for the beer. Two Canadian volunteers confirm our status and give us our certificates, and back in the square an Italian couple we’ve seen a few times arrives. Sure enough, Alan and the Spaniards are not far behind, victorious and ready for dinner.

We enter the cathedral and gaze up at its overwhelming altar of silver and gold; the horizontal organ, the crossbeams for the famed botafumeiro, the giant swinging incense burner; the side chapels to Santiago and his friends in ministry. We descend into the crypt, see the saint’s tomb, skirt the couple having a rapturous moment in its presence. From here we rise through a passage into the bowels of the altar where we are to hug the bust of the saint. I am more moved here than I was at St. Peter’s or in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, more caught up in the ritual: this is deep, ancient, freighted with whatever power the Catholic church can still move on earth.

A few more familiar faces trickle through: some French in the square, the Poles in the restaurant where we dine, and of course my dad has found the best craft beer bar on offer. We have completed the pilgrimage, arrived in Santiago, ready to rest our feet, sins forgiven and life renewed. The nightcap comes on our hotel balcony, the cathedral rising up just beyond us, and while the beer is mediocre, the accomplishment is complete. I sit on the cool balcony, clean up my notes, and head to bed when the bells strike midnight on Santiago. Somos peregrinos.

Part Four is here.