Day 38: Salceda to Santiago de Compostela
The hospitalero’s wife loaded four eager pilgrims into her van and drove us back to Salceda. Santiago was a day within reach on healthy legs, maybe two days on my legs. But, Andrew reserved two nights at the Seminario Menor in Santiago de Compostela on my credit card. I had no choice. Game on to Santiago.
At first, we made very good time, despite getting turned around in a few places. The Camino does change in response to construction, safety, and business interests. I looked for the site of a favourite picture I’d snapped of Andrew in 2013, but the Camino now skirted around the fountain at Santa Irena, and I missed it.
Still, for each memory doused along the Way, we enjoyed memories of other places and people. We simultaneously recognized the tree stump I sat on when interviewed for a Dutch video. Now that’s amazing!
Confusion over yellow arrows at Santa Irene.
O’Pedrouzo for coffee. No wifi. A handwritten sign in Spanish next to the cash register admonished patrons: “Do not ask for wifi. Talk to each other.”
Past a chain link fence stuffed with every possible bit of pilgrim garbage and blessing: shampoo bottles, toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, a poncho, letters, hair bows and elastics, a roll of toilet paper, single shoes, flip flops, holy cards in several different languages, ribbons, prayers scrawled on torn notepaper, and crosses fashioned from worn, knotted socks. A fence covered in humanity’s junk, yet more human than the fences of Cirueña stuffed with fake green garland to block prying pilgrim eyes. The fence along the woodland path through Cimadevila invited lingering and conversation and contribution.
On to San Paio for coffee and wifi. 
At Lavacolla, we stopped again for café con leche, wifi, and a long talk with Graham, the Scottish film producer in the midst of his Camino documentary. He snapped pictures along the Way to remind him of places and people. He looked to make a documentary about the Camino that differed from both The Way and Six Ways to Santiago. Those films, he felt, were similar because they looked more at Camino relationships than the Camino. After we parted ways, Andrew and I discussed Graham’s idea that a Camino film could be divorced from relationships. Good luck to you, Graham.
Monte del Gozo, the Mount of Joy. In 2013, I watched Andrew climb the hill and photograph the enormous four-sided monument honouring Pope John Paul II, Saint Francis of Assisi, and pilgrims. This time, I climbed Monte del Gozo with Andrew. I waited my turn as pilgrims, excited before the final five kilometre push to Santiago, snapped pictures atop the hill. The Notre Dame choir arrived ahead of us. The white-robed nun stamped credentials with the sello from the tiny chapel of San Marcos. Her habit dusted the tops of her dirty brown hiking boots as she bent over a table piled with the choir members’ pilgrim credentials. The choir sang French hymns inside the chapel. Divine. I forgot my frustration with them in a few moments of song.
Onwards to Santiago de Compostela. From experience, we knew backpacks were forbidden in the Cathedral, so we continued on to the Seminario…the long, I-think-we’re-lost, extra kilometres way. At the Seminario, we waited nearly forty-five minutes to check into our cells followed by a climb of eighty-six steps and several hundred metres to our beds on the far side. 
We are still married.
The Seminario deserves a separate blog entry. We slept separately in single cells with single beds. The communal showers were spacious enough once you were in. The opening to the shower was similar to pushing a camel through the eye of a needle. I thought I might need lube to squeeze my ass into the shower stall.
*****

Pilgrims walk to Santiago de Compostela for different reasons. Often, the reason you walk changes as you walk. When pain, reflection, and relationships give new perspective on the walk, and new reasons, the walk becomes a pilgrimage.
We held hands and walked together under the pilgrim arch into Praza Obradoiro Catedral. The Catedral de Santiago de Compostela remained majestic. Unchanged. 
We were different. 
¡Ultreia!
~Penny