Editor’s note: Rick McKay, Joe Masonick, and Jack Karolewski, have been travel companions for more than 50 years to a variety of sites with many goals. This week’s adventure is the 32nd and final in the series, a 14-day hike in 2005 across northern Spain’s intriguing Camino de Santiago, known as the Way of Santiago, for a religious retreat and pilgrimage. Visiting various villages on the journey requires continual hiking and climbing. Previously the trio’s exploits were focused on an 11-week trans-Asia trip in 1977. This week’s journal is of Day 17 on the journey to Finisterre (end land) and then into Portugal, Madrid, and home in the United States.
The previous part is at thevoice.us/pilgrims-mass-in-santiago-many-nationalities-attend
By Rick McKay
Day 17: Finisterre, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2005.
Got up around 8:30 a.m., had the buffet breakfast, hired a cab to take us to the airport, picked up our Hertz rental car, a black Peugot hatchback diesel, and were off toward Finisterre before noon.
It was about a 40-mile drive through very hilly country, but suddenly Finisterre Bay opened up to us, and soon we were at the top of a gently-ascending slope that ends in a modest parking lot just below the lighthouse on the promontory.
The lighthouse stands on top of a finger of land jutting into the sea, ending in a high outcrop of rock. The view from the top is quite dramatic, waves crashing against the stony wall facing the open sea, the wind gusting off-shore and rushing out over the bay. To the ancients, this was the end of the known world, thus Finis (end) Terre (land).
It is traditional for pilgrims who make it all the way to Finisterre to burn their clothes, and indeed there were ash-filled blackened areas among the rocks that had obviously been used for that purpose.
A single hiking shoe in bronze sits affixed to the top of one boulder. Nearby, a small shrine has been erected by a peregrino with a small wooden cross at its center fashioned from a couple of tree branches lashed together and held upright by a mound of small stones. Other similar memorials can be seen scattered here and there among the rocks.
After having our pictures taken at several locations, with the seemingly endless sea as a backdrop, we climbed back up to the crest to depart and ran into Joseph of Ireland, Rob of Toronto, and a couple of Canadians accompanying them. They had just arrived by bus from Santiago.
After a short chat, we bid them farewell, got in our car, and began the long drive, first east then south into Portugal, and finally back to Madrid and home. And so our amazing journey on the Camino de Santiago de Compostella comes to an end!
Feedback:
I have loved sharing my series on Camino de Santiago! Because the series is nearing its end, I include a YouTube link, youtu.be/wiN2l1eBnm0, to a one-hour video I created of my adventure.
Any interested readers can send questions and comments to rmckay.camino@gmail.com.
— Rick McKay