For those of you who haven't heard of Camino de Santiago, it's a route in Spain which leads you to the tomb of Saint James which is situated in a little city called Santiago de Compostela. Actually, there are many routes along the way, and we decided to take the "hardest" one: The northern way. We started in a city called Bilbao and managed to walk 500 km to Santiago which took us a little less than a month. It was sure one of the best experiences in my life, and I'm so grateful for everything that happened, and the fact that we went there and managed to do it!
What I'd like to stress out is that every night we slept outside in the nature with our sleeping bags (without a tent). For us, it's a much better way to experience and learn about yourself and everything surrounding you, and you can also save a lot of money. But if you aren't that adventurous, there are many albergues (something like hostels) along the way where you can sleep and maybe eat something for a relatively small amount of money. We went only twice so we can take a shower and wash our clothes, but we realized sleeping in nature is much more beautiful. It's peaceful, more relaxing, more entertaining. I mean, you have a billion stars hotel right in front of you!
This is how our improvised tent looked like. 😅 If we thought it might rain, we put a panel above us, otherwise we put a panel underneath us. Every day we were getting better at this, and all the other things...
Also, along the way you have yellow arrows showing you which way you need to go. You don't have to track them if you want to go offroad like we did many times.
What to bring?
I recommend bringing only a few necessary things on this kind of trip, because you will have to carry your bag all the way, and every gram is an additional burden to you. I took a sleeping bag, only a few t-shirts and short pants, one long shirt and pants, a raincoat, underwear and necessary hygiene. Don't forget to wear a hat, it saved us from the sun. We also took a panel and ropes, and cooking equipment! We love to cook and every day something new was on the menu, from tortillas to stewed vegetables!
Expenses
There are 3 main types of expenses when you travel: transport, food and accommodation. We tried to minimize all these expenses and in the end I realized I spend only around 300 euros for the entire trip. That included also bus tickets to France, Spain and in return to Paris, Vienna and Zagreb. 1 month of traveling for 300 euros, not that bad right? How did we do that? Let us see the expenses of transport. We used the most slowly, but totally free transport: our own legs. To get to Spain we used Flixbus who had some cool cheap offers. On our Camino we were just walking, except for once when we used a bus to cross around 200 km because otherwise, we couldn't get on time since we had some obligations in our home town. Next one, food. We didn't go to the restaurants, except on our last day when we arrived in Santiago de Compostela when we treated ourselves. All the other days we bought food at supermarkets and cook for ourselves. And the last one, accommodation: every day we slept under the stars with our sleeping bags, even without a tent. We only went twice to albergues because we had to wash our clothes and take a proper shower.
I'm not saying this is for everybody, but if you are able to get out of your comfort zone and enjoy the little things, you can travel with almost no money!
So, here is our trip. I hope you'll enjoy reading this and maybe decide to do it yourself! There's nothing stopping you.
CAMINO
We went on our trip at the end of July in 2018. From Zagreb, we took a bus to Marseille in France where we stayed for one day, and in the evening we took a bus to Toulouse (also in France) where we slept under the bridge. I remember rats rushing by us and some homeless drug addict offering us something. Not a nice place to sleep. 😅 I recommend sleeping outside the big cities. In the evening we took a bus to Bilbao in Spain where our camino began.
In Marseille before the beginning (left to right: Petra, Denis, Huk, 
Bilbao is a city which is very modern in comparison to all the others we saw on our trip. Since we arrived there in the evening we needed to find a place to sleep. There wasn't any nature so we just slept in front of some university which wasn't so comfortable.
We started walking to Portugalette, but we didn't follow those yellow arrows and we ended up hiking to some hill. It was quite hard to climb with the sun directing at us and with a burden on our backs. But we managed to come to some nice place with a city view where we slept.
The next day we were walking and came across a random horse who was tightened up in the middle of some park.😥We kept him company and he listened to the sound of our music...
That day we decided to go to albergue. A few hours ago we called to check if there are available beds for us. We came in the evening and realized that everyone was waiting for us to come so that we can have a nice dinner together.😊 We ate salad, some lentil stew and fruit yogurt. After dinner, we took a first shower in days and went to bed... After a few days of camping, we realized it was more comfortable to sleep outside. There are rules in albergues like you have to go to bed at 11 pm and leave until 8 am. Also, there are lots of people in 1 room and almost everyone is snoring. So we decided to avoid albergues as much as we can.
The next city was Castro Urdiales, the first one at the seacoast. I was so happy to see the ocean and because of the fact that in the following days we'll be walking alongside the ocean.
After swimming and fooling around at the beach, we hiked to some hill nearby where we decided to sleep.
The night already fell, when some of us noticed a tick on himself. Everyone started looking and we realized that ticks occupied our bodies. Denis had literally 50 on him.😨 The next few hours we were twitching the ticks in the dark and after we finally removed all of them (hopefully), we went to sleep.
Early in the morning, a cow awakened us. 😄
We decided to go offroad and it was quite challenging. We were walking uphill for a few hours until we reached the clouds. I'd like to mention that first few days, our legs, shoulders and back muscles hurt a lot. We often walked in thongs or barefoot to avoid getting blisters.
We went so high that we literally touched the clouds. It was like we were on some kind of Sky Island.
We moved on and went to some bar by the road. We had a few beers and were pretty drunk.🤪 It was getting dark and we ended up at some sandy beach where we decided to sleep, and it was the worst (or the best depending on how you look at it) decision on our way. There was an enormous quantity of some little crabs who were hopping around us and in our sleeping bags. We tried to ignore them and cooked lentils, but some of them jumped into the pot and cooked themselves. They were tasty after all. 😅 After we finally managed to fall asleep, the water awoke us early in the morning. High tide came and we almost drowned. We were too tired and didn't even notice that our legs were already under the water.
It was 6 am, cold, wet, dirty, and our staff was all over the place and some of it in the water. We were grumpy and nervous, but the only thing we could do was to accept our situation and move on. Now when I think of it I just laugh and I'm grateful for these situations because they stuck in my mind and I think they made me a little tougher.
We came to some town and were walking for over an hour on a beautiful long beach. We decided to hop on a quick boat to a little town called Sontana. There we found one albergue where we came to sleep and wash our clothes. Albergue was empty, we were the only ones there so it was quite nice. After a long day, we made tortillas and enjoyed the evening.
5km long beach
After days without showering,
Santander
washing our dishes
nice beach, but too many people
We came to the city called Camillas and it was Friday afternoon. We found some meadow and put our sleeping bags and then after a while we heard people having a party near us, drinking, fooling around and listening to loud music. We were so tired from walking all day we just fell asleep and didn't care less. 😄
Camillas
The next day we walked to Unquere where we slept and again had a problem with thicks.
Milka cows
la cucaracha la cucaracha 🎶
beauty
donkey hot
she's got the balls
walking and walking...
Our next aim was city Llanes where we stayed on top of some hill where people walked with their families all dressed up, enjoying the evening. Imagine the scene of people walking by and us cooking pasta and preparing our sleeping bags. What's cool about Camino de Santiago is that people are used to pilgrims and tend to respect them. So nobody thought that we were doing something strange or inappropriate. Usually, people would just say to us "buen camino", which means "have a nice trip".
The next day we swam, showered on the beach, had breakfast, coffee and took a bus to Ribadeo. There we slept on some beach and the next day we got up later than usual and did a short yoga and had breakfast.
our improvised tent
We walked to the famous beach called Cathedral's beach where you have to pay for the entrance so we decided not to go there. Instead, we bought some local cherries from one guy and headed to the woods where we put our improvised tent and cooked curry.
It was already midnight and all of a sudden the rain started falling and the wind was blowing really hard. Everything became wet so we had to take our staff and continue walking in the middle of the night. We were walking and trying to find some shelter where we can sleep, but we couldn't find anything for a couple of hours. Although it was raining and we were sleepy and tired, we didn't complain but had fun instead. Finally, we slept in front of a supermarket. 😅
The radio on the wall over our heads awoken us at 6 am. We walked to Lorenze where we went to some random cafe bar. It was the best cafe bar in my life. Some woman was cooking in the kitchen all the time and bringing us tapas (something like snacks) every 5 minutes. From tortillas to little sandwiches, baked paprikas, croquettes...We were so happy and we stayed there for extra few hours drinking cervezas (beers) and eating free tapas!
Walk to Abadin was beautiful, we were hiking through the woods to some hill. Out of nowhere, some grandpa approached us and said that he noticed us cleaning our feet at some fountain and he thought to himself 'I have to meet these guys. He was the coolest grandpa ever, telling us that he was just like us when he was young and calling us dirtbags... He is 72 and living in Arizona. We talked with him about his early life when he went to concerts of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. He told us about his walks all around the world and his plan to walk the 1000 km route which follows 88 temples in Japan. All the time while talking, we were walking and grandpa was ahead of us. We were ashamed he was in better form than us. 😄
After a long day of walking, we slept near the road on some grass and that was the coldest night on our trip. Denis and I had some cheap sleeping bags which were not so great to endure at 10 degrees Celsius. It was 100% humidity so our bags were wet from outside to inside and our clothes started to get wet too, it was so cold we barely slept. The only good thing was the stars which were so bright and beautiful. We got up at 7 am and everything was wet and we were freezing. The sun got up only at 10-11 o'clock.
After some walking, we came to Vilalbe where we bought food at the best bakery ever. Then we went to some restaurant to have some coffee and there we were served more tapas! 😊
After a while, we walked to Baamonde and decided to sleep at the school's playground. I made mushroom soup and we talked, played music, laughed, got drunk, and fell asleep. After spending weeks together, we got really close, like a family.
The next day we were walking and when the dark started falling we couldn't find a good place to sleep so we walked further. The forecast was rain, but finally, we found a perfect place with shelter near some abandoned church. There was also a source of water so we couldn't be happier.
When we woke up in the morning, we realized that the nearest market was 25 km from us! We had only one small pack of porridge and water. Luckily, along the way, there were lots of wild blackberries which really saved us! It took us about 5 hours to get to the market. I ate 3 cans of fish. 😅
Later we found some nice place with tables and benches where we could cook our dinner easily. We cooked chicken in white sauce with gnocchi and after that fell asleep like babies.
the only time we used this hammock 😅
cooooooking
After 3 long weeks, we finally got to Santiago de Compostela. It was quite an interesting feeling knowing that after that we won't have to walk every day for 25 km. It was unbelievable to reflect on what has happened in those 3 weeks and how much we walked. We went for buying some souvenirs for our families and friends. Also, first time on our trip we went to the restaurant and kill ourselves with food. After the restaurant, we ate ice cream and after few hours we went to some bar to drink cervezas where we got tapas and we became hungry again so we ate hamburgers. 😅 That night we slept in some park in the city and the next day went on a bus to Paris.
Welcome, Santiago!
Santiago de Compostela Cathedral
It took us a 4-hour bus ride to get back to Bilbao. It was like a short recap of a 3-week long journey. 😄
We spent a day in Paris strolling around and then went to Vienna where we stayed the evening with Emanuel's friend. This was the first time after a while that we sat on the couch and took a normal shower. We were so happy and realized how we took for granted these things when we had them every day every second of our life.
When we came home to Zagreb we learned to appreciate the little things like shower, bed, water, food, fridge, oven, everything.
Camino de Santiago was the best period in my life where nothing worried me and my mind was completely free from stupid thoughts. We were only thinking about where to sleep and what to eat each day. Everything was so simple and beautiful, just walking and slowly enjoying nature with every step. We learned so much more in that 3 weeks of traveling than in school our whole lives. We learned that we can do anything we decide to do.
THE END
Hope you enjoyed our adventure. 😊 Until next time...
All photos were taken by
