14 Venezuelan Women Walk El Camino de Santiago in the Rain

By Daniella Mini

I traveled with thirteen women from my high school class to Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, the year we all turned 50. I had been close with several of my fellow travelers while in high school, but I’d only stayed in close contact with one of them over the decades.

That Venezuela, the country of our birth, had spiraled politically and economically during our adult years, causing millions to leave the country, hadn’t helped. Of our graduating class, the class of 1987, perhaps a quarter still lived in Venezuela. The rest of us were scattered all over the globe.

At any rate, it was with a mix of trepidation and excitement that I signed up for our first trip in 2019. I was nervous! I hadn’t been popular or felt particularly confident in high school.

Would I feel some of that inadequacy thirty-two years later? Would I feel bored and out of place? 

Well, I didn’t—not one bit. I had a wonderful time. Maybe our country’s history has humbled us, but I found our group’s vibe to be uplifting, generous, and, above all, fun.

And so, when my class organized a second trip this year, the year we all turned 55, I was one of the first to sign up. If we continue with these reunions every five years, then we have six left until we’re 85, and I shall go on every one of them, almost no matter what.

I hope our remaining trips will be as long as our Camino voyage in Spain so that I get to experience the unique warping of time and self I felt during those ten days.

By day three, all thoughts of the worries, thrills, frustrations and satisfactions of my normal life had dissipated. For many hours at a time, I forgot I was a mother, wife, homeowner, taxpayer, daughter to aging parents, and special education advocate.

I forgot that I’m forever charged with the health, safety and happiness of my 30-year-old disabled son. I forgot to ponder my 28-year-old son’s emotional and professional well-being, which I can’t help doing, no matter how great his life is going. I gave no thought to my marriage and the care, effort and give-and-take that maintaining a loving and fulfilling relationship entails.

Even when I talked about my life with any of my thirteen former classmates, it felt as if I was referring to a parallel me who existed apart from the person traveling with them.

I was again an unencumbered teen, except that I also had the little bit of wisdom that comes with age, mainly a much greater ability to focus on the moment and enjoy it fully, to listen, appreciate, love, to admire other people’s accomplishments independent of my own, and to learn from others without trying to teach them anything.

There was a great deal of laughter on our trip. How could there not, what with the daily updates on bowel movements and snore volume?

I didn’t get to weigh in on the two known snorers. I twice shared a room with snorer number one, and either she didn’t snore, or I slept so soundly I didn’t hear a thing. As to snorer number two, I was excited I would be her roommate on our last Camino night, but she was hit by a vomit fest, and we agreed I should find space elsewhere.

My friend Corina and I did get to share a room with an unexpected snorer, Marisa, who sounded, in Corina’s words, like a “Malaysian tiger.” She was so loud that Corina and I wondered why she hadn’t yet been outed as a snorer, the top snorer.

The next morning, poor Marisa woke up with a very swollen eye, the result of a bug sting on the first day of the Camino. Three days later, she had to bail out of the Camino and be driven straight to Santiago, sick with a fever. She was the trip’s heroine, having walked for three days while feeling under the weather and never complaining. It turned out she had Covid.

Why is it that, among friends, we laugh at situations that would have angered us if we’d been with family?

For instance, I would’ve killed my sisters if they’d brought bags as large as those of four of my friends. One suitcase was the size of a coffin for a very large man. With my friends on the train between Madrid and Santiago de Compostela, I found the joint task of fitting all the bags in the train’s baggage space hilarious. It was like playing Tetris and felt like one of those fun team-building activities where members work together to accomplish a tricky task.

I get annoyed when my husband exaggerates or changes a story, yet I found it hilarious when my friends did just that by turning Adriana’s small heat sensitivity comment into The Epic Tale of how she had been rescued by Vanessa from a life-threatening heatstroke.

“I’m gonna pour some water on my head,” Adriana had said at a rest stop. “I tend to heat up easily.” Somehow, Vanesa’s anecdote of how she and Adriana had pushed each other through the last few (uphill) kilometers of that day’s 28-km stage was distorted from telling to telling until it became an epic tale of near death and survival.

A topic we kept going back to was the ways of the Galician people. We found them — waiters especially — to be particularly rude. They treated us like parents annoyed at their child’s incessant whining. One waiter, for instance, did nothing but scold us whenever we asked for anything or tried to get his attention. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” and, “You’re gonna have to wait before I can help you,” he said.

Even the waiter at Árbore da Veira, a Michelin-starred restaurant no less, would take no nonsense from a paying customer. After a dozen hors d’oeuvres, a first course, and a main dish, my friend wanted to decline the second main dish to save some room for dessert. Not wanting to offend, she made up a silly medical story about why she couldn’t eat whatever that second main dish was. The waiter, who wasn’t fooled, tersely replied, “Then you’ll eat no more,” and arranged her fork and knife in the shape of a cross in front of her.

By the end of the trip, it occurred to us that “rude” was perhaps not the best word to describe the locals. Compared to the Galicians, maybe we Venezuelans are just overly deferential in our communication. Galicians were certainly direct, abrupt and brutally honest, but they did soften up eventually.

For instance, when the first waiter finally took our order, he treated us like a grumpy yet kind uncle, making suggestions and even bringing out the chef, who, like us, had been born and raised in Venezuela. As to the Michelin-starred restaurant waiter, he did offer my friend the desserts, one of which, according to our group’s serious foodies, was the best millefeuille they had ever eaten.

There’s nothing like walking and talking with people whose company you enjoy, especially when they have hysterical stories to tell. Well, hysterical in hindsight.

One time on a flight, one friend recounted as we walked, she was watching a movie on her cellphone with the volume up and was asked by a flight attendant to quiet her device.

“I didn’t have earphones and really wanted to watch the movie, so I decided to go to the bathroom to finish it,” she explained. “I lowered the toilet lid and sat there to watch my movie. But then,” she went on, “when I opened the door about twenty minutes later, there was a long line of people waiting in the aisle. The other bathroom was out of order!”

Huh? Sitting on an airplane toilet for twenty minutes watching a movie: Who does that?

There were emotional stories as well, about loss and family drama.  Those, of course, stayed in El Camino.

We walked 100 kilometers, the minimum distance required to receive a Pilgrim Credential (“La Compostela”), but we didn’t do the “minimum” if one accounts for the weather. It rained most of the time, and it was quite windy. We were always wet, wet and happy.

The end of a journey is invariably bittersweet. The challenge, the quest, the mission is over. But the sense of accomplishment, however short-lived, is something to live for, at least for me. If I’m honest, I didn’t care about La Compostela or the destination but about sharing a special adventure with my friends.

Our trip was conceived as a reunion of old friends and as a journey for each one of us. The reunion allowed all of us to catch up and reflect on one another’s achievements, heartaches, good choices, wasted opportunities, and unexpected joys. At the same time, however, we all had our journeys. Mine was about reconnecting to my essence, the sensation that no matter how connected I feel to others (my family in particular) and how embedded in my roles I perceive myself to be, I am separate from it all.

My first thought when I returned home to Connecticut was how grateful I was to my husband for so forcefully encouraging me to go on these reunion trips. No matter the state of our budget or how busy our lives may be, he wants me to go. His attitude is generous and drives home to me that my happiness makes him happy. Simply, I feel loved.

Toward the end of our time in Spain, there was much talk about what kind of trip we should do next. I truly don’t care where we go. I just hope I can be the first one to sign up.

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Names have been changed to protect my friends’ privacy 😊.