Km 15, airplanes overhead, and 600 km on paper. Oh, and beer to delay arriving. Some endings deserve to be postponed. Day 32 – we made it.
📊 Stage Quick Facts:
- Distance: ~20 km (the most emotional kilometers of your life)
- Time: ~6 hours (plus one strategic beer break)
- Difficulty: Easy on the legs – impossible on the heart
- Terrain: Eucalyptus forests, airport runway views, and 9th-century cobblestones
- Elevation: Mostly flat – the only thing rising was the emotion
- Final stamp collected: ✅
- Compostela certificate: ✅
- Tears shed: countless
Today I started surprisingly early- just after 9:00 AM. The Camino was still winding through forest areas, and I found myself soaking in the texture of the trees, ivies, and flowers, all while surrounded by the growing crowds of pilgrims. A heavy sadness started to kick in, the realization that this would soon be over, so I stopped at Cafe Kilometro 15 for a coffee with a fellow German pilgrim. We talked about our way- about the people we met, the places we saw, and the moments we shared. I’m typing this now, and I already have tears in my eyes. Seeing the number “15” on the marker looked surreal, especially when I remembered the hunders of kilometers I had started with back in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port.
Around noon, I made another stop for lunch and a beer (partly to delay reaching the final destination of this trip as much as I could). After a brief moment of connection with some beautiful horses along the way, I moved on. The Camino leads you through the suburbs of Santiago, right past the airport- with airplanes taking off just above my head- and straight into the city. And just like that, around 3:00 PM, I reached Santiago de Compostela.
I was staying in the city center, and it took me a while to navigate my way there. From the residential areas, the Camino brings you into the Old City (Zona Vella), a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was fascinating to see the local citizens in their daily clothes mixing with us pilgrims, still sporting our dusty backpacks and carrying our poles.
With a mix of happy sadness, I dropped my backpack at my hotel and headed straight to the main square to soak in the energy of this place. There is actually a word for this in Portuguese –
saudade. A longing for something beautiful that is ending. That’s exactly what this felt like.
Since I have a rest day tomorrow (the last one, indeed!), I decided to head to the Pilgrim’s Office for my well-deserved Compostela and my Distance Certificate. Seeing “600 kilometers” on paper- it’s an unbelievable number to me, and I am quite a walker!
I spent the evening in quiet reflection, walking through those 9th-century streets, studying the faces of other pilgrims who had just completed their own journeys. I found myself guessing their stories, their reasons, and their conclusions. Did they emerge reborn like a phoenix? Did they walk their pain away? Did they clear their heads and mend their broken hearts? Did they find clarity for their future life paths? And, most importantly, are they already dreaming of another Camino, just like I am?
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