Our first Camino – the same one that we will walk this time – was a bucket list item that almost jumped into our bucket all by itself. It pushed itself in and made sure that we didn’t ignore it.

Our first time that the Camino popped up on the edge of our consciousness was in May 2007 when two Bangkok-based hashing friends of ours sent us a postcard from Roncesvalles. Wichanee and David are great travelers that have covered most corners of the world. Over the following few weeks, we received more postcards from them from other small villages in northern Spain – each one from further west than the one before. We had no real idea what they were doing but we were curious. It stuck in our minds as something to look into when we retired.

By the end of June 2010, Melanie & I were both retired. We had already established our plan for life after work. We would scuba dive half the time, volunteer half the time and travel the other half the time. We obviously planned to be very busy in retirement. We immediately started some bucket list items like trekking and volunteering in Ladakh, India, climbing Mount Kinabalu in Sabah, visiting Lake Toba on Sumatra as well as diving and exploring in Timor Leste, and volunteering at Mercy Relief and Willing Hearts in Singapore. Finally, we also flew back to Baltimore to see family at Christmas.

It was during the December 2010 trip to Baltimore that we saw a documentary on television about the Camino de Santiago. Melanie and I both had one of those realizations that smack you in the face – “Oh! that is what Wichanee and David were doing!”

In 2011, we spent a few months diving in Thailand, Komodo, Lembeh and Malaysia. We continued to volunteer at the soup kitchen in Singapore and fit in a holiday in Laos as well as several trips back to Baltimore to see family. Later in the year, on the plane to Baltimore, we watched the Martin Sheen / Emelio Estevez movie “The Way”. If you haven’t seen that movie, I encourage you to do so. It’s about the Camino and we took it as a sign.

We started to plan walking the Camino Frances in the Spring of 2012. Mom’s passing moved the plans to later in the year but it was the end of August 2012 when we took our first pilgrim steps. Other than when COVID struck, we have been walking just about every year since.

I think we are addicted.

By the way (pun intended for Camino friends), the reason I posted this now is because we have recently started late Spring cleaning in the house. Melanie found the postcard in a book, one of many, that we are clearing out of the bookcase and donating to the local library. Postcards make great book markers. And memories.