Day 1&2 paris to sjpdp


	My Camino - Chapter 1 Preparing for my Camino I first learned about el Camino de Santiago in 2001 when I picked up Shirley MacLean's book entitled The Camino in a bookstore at the Vancouver Airport just prior to boarding a plane for Montreal. I was going home for my 25th high school reunion. As I read about her pilgrimage, I felt called to one day walk the camino, (literal translation “the way”) in Spain and my vision was that I would do the pilgrimage at age 50. And I did. Almost ten years later, I embarked upon my camino in the summer of 2010 at age 50. Paulo Coehlo, another of my favorite authors, claimed that he began writing after walking the Camino, and that was a big incentive for me. I hoped that walking the path might open the floodgates for me too. … like Elizabeth Gilbert when she wrote Eat, Pray, Love… I wanted Meg Ryan to play me. I booked a month off work and watched the airline prices go up and down as they typically did, kind of like the stock market. I always got the lowest prices by booking a week or two before departure date. It was a gamble but it seemed to work. Having done some research and read some blogs I planned to do my trip during the warmest months of the year with a bare minimum of luggage. I bought a small backpack and a light, down-filled sleeping bag that could roll up into a tiny ball that would fit into my tiny backpack along with the tiny clothes I was planning to bring… I planned to bring only the bare necessities: two pairs of hiking socks, two pair of underwear, thongs no less, two sports bras, two pairs of athletic shorts, two tank tops, one light texture sports hoodie made of a quick-drying fabric, one pair of running shoes and a half a yoga mat. That’s it! And of course, the clothes that I wore on the plane: a long white cotton dress with light grey stripes for walking across a desert and my knee-high leather hiking boots. The tiny backpack was small enough to qualify as carry-on. The intention of tiny was to deter from bringing too much or anything that might potentially be discarded along the way. I had read in blogs that backpacks tended to get heavier with every day of walking so I thought it best to avoid the inevitable dilemma I might have to face about what to leave behind. As a petite woman weighing in at under 100 pounds most days, I was very aware of my physical limitations. I wanted to enjoy the walk rather than suffer the backpack. At seven o’clock pm the night before leaving Kamloops to drive down to Vancouver, an acquaintance of mine called to say she would join me on the Camino. I was so very happy for the company. I had only known her a short while through the friend of a friend and I liked her very much. Her name was Fran. From that moment on I referred to her as Camino Fran.

Day 1 & 2: Vancouver to Paris to St Jean Pied de Port

July 11 - 12, 2010

View: 1st picture top left, left to right and down (clockwise)