Our Camino journey
Our Camino Portugues journey! In the summer of 2019, my dad and I went to Portugal to walk the Camino Portuguese.
One plane ride later we found ourselves in the middle of Porto with a pair of trail runner shoes and a 25l backpack.
We landed in Porto late at night on the 1st of June. We took a couple of days to look around the city and of course, buy a souvenir or two. When we were ready to start our journey we took a short train ride to Maya (about 10 km further from the center of Porto) since we wanted to avoid the factory aspect of the city.
For about 3-4 days we only walked 10km a day so we could get used to the pace. After that, we walked around 25 km a day.
Along the way, there are a ton of cafes and restaurants with which you can stock up on food, water, and basic supplies. At the end of each day, we stayed in some sort of hotel. Since we wanted to enjoy ourselves on this long trip, we stayed in a hotel every night except for two nights. There is also the cheaper option of private albergues with which you can have a little more privacy. The people both in Portugal and in Spain were very welcoming and usually fluent in English.
Everywhere you would go someone would wish you Buon Camino which really made our day :). Every couple of days we took another day in cities which we enjoyed, so we could still be tourists on our vacation. We meet a lot of nice people, mostly teachers or independent workers because of the time of year.
There are also some detours along the way if you don’t feel comfortable walking on the busy street. We found our small backpack was just big enough to fit all our things in. The only thing we bought for the Camino that was more expensive was socks. We ended our journey 100 km further from Santiago de Compostela since we wanted to see the so-called ”end of the world”.
Throughout our whole Camino Portugues journey (the whole 340 km) I only got one blister which was at the last 50 km. Good shoes and socks we found were the most important thing on the journey.
So the question is ”Is it worth it?” the answer is ABSOLUTELY YES. My dad and I never had such an amazing experience as on the Camino. Because of this, we are planning to do another one soon. There is also the cheaper option of hostels with which you can make the price of the Camino like a normal vacation.
Want to know what we brought on the Camino?
Click here to see our packing list!
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