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.