Camino de Santiago Coastal Route

Camino de Santiago Coastal Route

Some pilgrimages begin with a grand gesture. Mine began with a need for quiet.

Not silence exactly — I wanted the right kind of noise. The kind that drowns everything else out. I'd heard that if you walk close enough to the Atlantic on the Portuguese Coastal Camino, the waves are loud enough to fill your whole head, leaving no room for anything else. That's what I came for.

Porto was my starting point — a city of azulejo tiles, steep hills, and the wide brown Douro sliding out to meet the sea. It felt like the right place to begin something. From here, the Coastal Route stretches roughly 280 kilometres northward, tracing the Atlantic all the way through into Galicia and eventually to Santiago de Compostela. Less crowded than the famous Camino Francés, less rushed than the Central Portuguese route — and for long stretches, just you, a cliff path, and the ocean doing exactly what you needed it to do.

I did come to test myself physically and tick off a bucket list but most importantly I came to let the waves be louder than my thoughts. This blog is for anyone who understands that feeling — and wants to know if the Coastal Camino delivers.

(Spoiler: it does.)

What I didn't expect was the people. Twelve days on the road has a way of dissolving the usual social barriers — somewhere between the second steep climb and a shared table at a restaurant, strangers become something closer. The Coastal Camino gave me the waves I came for. The people were the part I didn't know I needed.

Twelve days walking the Atlantic coast, surrendering my thoughts to the waves, finding unexpected kinship with strangers on the road — and then, because life doesn't stay poetic for long, catching a Bad Bunny concert in Barcelona. The Camino gives you what you need. What comes after is up to you.

Eat, Pray, Perreo...

Final Day 12: Padron to Santiago 15.6 miles!!! Total: 282 Km/ 175 miles

In our way to Santiago...

I was up before the others.

Something about the last day wouldn't let me sleep in. The adrenaline was already there before the boots were on, before the pack was shouldered, before the first step. The goal that had lived for twelve days as an abstract promise was suddenly, almost frighteningly, close.

I started walking alone in the early morning quiet. But the Camino, true to everything it had already taught me, wouldn't let me finish that way.

One by one, familiar faces appeared on the road. People I had walked with for hours. People I had passed with nothing more than a smile and a Buen Camino. People whose names I knew and people whose faces I'd carry without them. Everyone moving in the same direction, everyone smiling, everyone radiating something that you could genuinely feel in the air — a collective energy that had been building for days, for weeks, for some of them for years, all converging on this last stretch of road.

I will never forget those faces. Not one of them.

Everyone had their reason for being there. Their personal, private why that had gotten them out of bed and onto a plane and into a pair of sneakers/boots. Most, when they shared it, came back to the same few words — healing, peace, clarity. The things you can't buy or schedule or think your way into. The things you have to walk toward, apparently, for twelve days along the Atlantic coast until the noise in your head finally gives way to something quieter and truer.

I found that. I found that and more. And somewhere on that last stretch of road, with the familiar faces all around me and Santiago getting closer with every step, I understood that I was ready. For what's next. For all of it.

And then — the church.

You see it before you reach it and something in the body responds before the mind catches up. Happiness and sadness arriving simultaneously, which shouldn't make sense and makes complete sense. Proudness that starts in the chest and has nowhere big enough to go. Hope — real, quiet, solid hope — settling in like it intended to stay.

We walked through the arch into the plaza and the world cheered. Strangers cheering for strangers, which is the most Camino thing of all. Magical is the word and it is not enough and it is exactly right.

I cried. A tear or two, as one does. 😅

Twelve days. Sun and rain. Jungle and forest. Sand dunes and boardwalks. Cobblestones and steep hills I never need to see again as long as I live. Porto to Santiago de Compostela, on foot, one yellow arrow at a time.

Mission complete. Emily, Olena & Me....

We opened the Cava. Of course we opened the Cava. The people around me — this accidental, magnificent, multinational group of humans the road had assembled from Puerto Rico, Denmark, Australia, Mexico, Venezuela, Texas, the Netherlands, Italy, Panama, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, England and everywhere in between — these people will forever be my Camino family. I didn't know any of them twelve days ago. I can't imagine the trip without a single one of them now.

Am I already planning the next route? Absolutely. Immediately. Without question.

But first — Barcelona. Bad Bunny. Because the Camino gives you peace and clarity and a deep connection to something ancient and human.

And then life reminds you that it's also just life. 🎶🍾

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Buen Camino, everyone. To the ones still walking — keep going. To the ones thinking about it — just go. You'll find what you're looking for. And probably a few things you didn't know you needed.

Day 11: Caldas de Reis to Padron 11.6 miles

Not Every Day is the Highlight Reel

I'll be honest. Not every day on the Camino is a Michelin star sunset and thermal pools.

Day 11 was the reality check. Leaving a city that had given so much, arriving somewhere that gave considerably less — it's a particular kind of deflation that catches you off guard after days of everything exceeding expectations. The accommodation didn't sing. The food options were thin on the road and thinner at the end of it. A hungry pilgrim, it turns out, is a grumpy pilgrim. I was not a happy camper.

And yet.

The forest was fantastic — deep, green, and generous in the way forests on this route keep being, like the Camino knew it owed you something and paid it in trees and light and quiet. The steps, the endless accumulated steps of eleven days, had built something in the legs and the spirit that meant even a disappointing day was still a day spent moving through beauty.

There's something the hard days do that the good ones can't — they make the ending sweeter. Every blister, every brutal hill, every sparse meal and rainy mile is quietly doing the work of making Santiago mean something when you finally get there. Day 11 understood its assignment.

And just when the mood needed lifting — two lovely ladies from Texas appeared, warm and funny and full of the particular energy that means you end the evening smiling despite yourself.

One day to go. One single day.

After everything these legs have carried, that is almost impossible to believe. 💜

Day 10: Pontevedra to Caldas de Reis 13.2 miles

Thermal Waters and a River Dinner

If Day 9 was the Camino at its most elemental, Day 10 was its idea of an apology.

Thermal pools. Warm water. The kind of soak that reaches places no amount of stretching or willpower can get to after nine days of hard walking. Every muscle that had been silently suffering finally got to say its piece and then, mercifully, let go. Aguas termales — two words that should be written into every Camino itinerary in bold.

The weather had shifted too. The grey and rain of yesterday had given way to real heat — the kind that reminds you that you're in Spain now, properly in Spain, and summer has opinions. After days of poncho weather it felt almost disorienting, like a different trip entirely. A better one.

And still the people kept arriving, each one a small gift the road hadn't finished giving. A wonderful family from Valencia at the pool — the kind of easy, generous company that makes you feel like you've known them longer than an afternoon. Then new friends from Denmark and Italy for dinner beside the river as the evening cooled and the wine appeared and conversation moved through languages and laughter without caring much about either.

I keep thinking it can't get better. Every day proves me wrong.

Santiago is close now. The end that felt abstract on Day 1 in Porto is suddenly, startlingly real. The feet know it. The heart knows it even more.

Santiago, here we come. 💜