Day 40: Arzúa to Lavacolla (28,9k)

Day 40! My Camino needs a Porsche and some cool jeans. A mistress. An Amazon Prime subscription to Rogaine.

Instead, my Camino got drunk. Yes, again. Can you blame her? This last bit of Camino is not the Camino I once knew. Solitude and contemplation is a thing of the p to the a-s-t.

We used to walk alone through forests. Not see a bar for 25k, a human sometimes all day. Now, we queue. Bars are every 2k and they have oat milk. 45 minutes it took me to get a coffee at eleven. Even on the path you sometimes feel like you’re queuing, as you try to overtake nineteen 73 year-olds with day packs who all started in Lugo. Today we saw souvenir sellers, fruit stands, a man playing the flute next to his donkey.

The sign where I did not have a mental breakdown

In the beginning, we were shellshocked. What were all these tourists doing on our Camino? And it’s sad that the milestones (kilometre-stones?) are now covered in graffiti and there’s used pantyliners behind each bush. But generally, I feel great acceptance of this sudden influx of paper-chasers who have elected to walk only the last 100k that you need to get the Compostela certificate. There is no more solitude, but that’s okay. I’ve reached all my conclusions anyway, had all my epiphanies.

Now, it’s time to fucking party. Celebrate. My Lord I’ve walked. 865k according to official Camino info, but way more according to my step-counting app. Either way, it’s a lot. So let’s fucking have another round of Ron Barceló for lunch. As Aya Surf Babe put it on her mega-hot Insta: merecedísima. Very well deserved.

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