Exploring Morocco’s Northern Gems: Tangier, Tétouan & Chefchaouen

 

Day 244 - May 28, 2022 – Tangier - Day 1

There are at least ten theories about the origin of Tangier’s name, but my favorite comes from the ancient Greeks who called it Tinjis, a daughter of the Atlas, the titan who supported the vault of heaven near the Gibraltar Straits. Under the Romans the name morphed to Tingis then developed into the Portuguese Tânger, Spanish Tánger, and French Tanger, where it entered English as Tangier and Tangiers. The Arabic and modern Berber name for the town is Ṭanjah.

I love name origins. Don’t ask me why.

On our first full day in the city we walked out the door of the El Minzah Hotel (see Dispatch XXVIII - The Mysteries of Morocco ) to a beautiful day: 70° with a predicted high of 84º. A sweet breeze out of the Mediterranean and not a cloud.

The night before we had prowled the nearby streets filled with Tangerians walking with their children and enjoying the view above the sea. Clusters of young people milled and joked, teasing and flirting the way teens do. Cyn and I found a cafe with Parisian style awnings and small round tables inside and out. The place was brimming with men, smoking, drinking coffee (alcohol is not part of the Islamic experience), discussing and debating in rapid Arabic. There was not a woman to be found, and Cyndy stood out like a rabbit among wolves. But the waiter was kind and we detected not an ounce of misogyny.

Tangier is everything I imagined. Vibrant, but not crammed. Old but not dingy, with the sounds of Arabic music, French conversation, Spanish voices in our ears as we passed scrumptious Moroccan bakeries filled with baclava and tiny, fresh pastries that your palette knows will go perfectly with a cup of hot mint tea — a Moroccan speciality.

The city sits above multiple hills and when standing on one of the them the view of the Mediterranean and the city’s sweeping bay made me feel that, yes, I really was somewhere other than home; somewhere exotic, marinated in history. It was a place I could stay for a long time.

Back in the 1930s, the expatriate writer and composer Paul Bowles thought he was coming to Tangier on a lark. He never left. “I relish the idea that in the [Tangier] night,” he once said, “all around me in my sleep, sorcery is burrowing its invisible tunnels in every direction, from thousands of senders to thousands of innocent recipients. Spells are being cast…” There was something to that. To me Tangier fell in with that small group of international cities that were once entirely independent, a city-state, unencumbered by the nations that surrounded it: Trieste, Monte Carlo, Ephesus, Alexandria. Cities like this take on a flavor and confidence that is more cosmopolitan than most. Bowles called it the navel of the world.

As much as Bowles loved Tangier, he adored travel just as much. While we were exploring the American Legation, I caught another quote of his that captured precisely the attraction that world travel has for me. “I feel that life is very short, and the world is there to see, and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it.”

We had found our way to the Legation — now officially known as the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies — by way of Tangier’s winding medinas. It and Morocco go way back. Morocco was the first country to officially recognize the United States when Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah issued the proclamation on December 20, 1777 clarifying for the world that the U.S. was no longer a British colony.  The Legation building was gifted by the sultan to the U.S. government to serve as a diplomatic post, and it remained there for 140 years from 1821 to 1961. It was the first American property to exist outside the United States, and is the only U.S. National Historic Landmark in a foreign country.

The American Legation in the middle of Tangier. Morocco was the first country to accept the United States as a nation, not a colony. 

Later in the day, Youssef, our guide, led us through the part of town where local looms turned strung wool into fabrics of all kinds — pillow covers, blankets, rugs and wall hangings. These looms are the pre-industrial variety where wool threads of different colors are strung through the loom one by one. It is hard work, but the results are rich, colorful and unique.

Local looms turned strung wool into fabrics of all kinds.

But that wasn’t until after we first toured the city’s Portuguese battlements where we got an eye-popping view of the straits that sweep in a great white and blue arc along Tangier’s coastline.

Not far away we found a newly built museum dedicated entirely to Ibn Battuta, one of the world’s truly great travelers, at least if you read his remarkable book, A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, more commonly known as The Rihla. The museum is a beautiful, multi-story building with an open courtyard and excellent interactive descriptions of the man’s journeys. Battuta was born in the 14th century and departed Tangier on 2 Rajab, that’s the Muslim year 725 Anno Hegirae, or by the western calendar, 14 June 1325 AD). A descendant of the Lawata Berber tribe, Morocco’s native inhabitants, he was twenty-one when he set off on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Normally that would have taken sixteen months. Battuta didn’t return again for 24 years.

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah - Was he the world’s greatest traveler?

“I set out alone,” he wrote, “having neither fellow-traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer, nor caravan whose part I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long-cherished in my bosom to visit these illustrious sanctuaries. So I braced my resolution to quit my dear ones, female and male, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests. My parents being yet in the bonds of life, it weighed sorely upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted with sorrow at this separation.”

It’s arguable Ibn Battuta travelled more than any other explorer in pre-modern history, 73,000 miles (and never by jet :-). He passed across northern Africa, deep into Egypt, explored most of the Middle East, headed into Persia, then north into Europe and East toward India and China. If true, his odyssey would have out-explored other great wanderers of the era like Zheng He , Marco Polo and Leo Africanus. Not all scholars agree that Battuta made everyone of these journeys, especially into eastern Europe and the far East. He apparently never kept notes and when he wrote his famous book after decades of travel he very likely fictionalized some encounters and plagiarized others. But even if he did, his book leaves a remarkable record of what much of the known world was like almost 700 years ago.

Near Ibn Battuta’s museum we heard a man playing his Oud, an ancient eleven-string Moroccan instrument, a kind of cross between a balalaika and guitar. We sat with him in a small, room off the square, shared some mint tea and watched his fingers fly over the strings. Big black glasses hung on his weather face. He didn’t speak a word and except for his fingers he hardly moved. He and the instrument were locked, two symbiotic creatures, each needing the other; each better together than apart.

A man plays the Oud near Ibn Battuta’s museum.

Early afternoon — Youssef sat us down for our first Moroccan meal together in a small cafe. We ordered and dug into tomatoes and olives and beets, calamari, and chicken tangine, and shrimp using khobz, coarse Moroccan bread, to place the food in our mouth instead of forks and spoons. It was all delicious. Moroccan cuisine is considered by many to be among the world's finest, and Cyndy and I weren’t going to disagree.  We had already witnessed  delicious food our first afternoon at the Diblu Restaurant, but with every meal the food only seemed to get better. Moroccan cooks specialize in spices, lots of them, including ras el hanout (a blend of 10 to 30 spices), coriander, cinnamon, cumin, saffron, dried ginger, and paprika. The combination of these flavors makes all the difference, IF you get them right.

Tangines are among one of Morocco’s more spectacular culinary gifts — stews of roasted lamb, fish or chicken with vegetables and spices of all kinds cooked in a cone-shaped terra cotta vessel that gives the meal its name. But you’ll also come across couscous with raisins or nuts and Harira cooked in a thick, tomato-based soup with chickpeas and meat traditionally served during Ramadan. During our explorations of the country, we found that every sector has its own specialties. But no matter where we ate, every meal was excellent, and healthy.

Day 246 May 30th 2022 – Asilah - Day 3

Food was still on our minds in the morning when we watched one of the cooks at the El Minzah making pancakes called msemen or rghaif, a kind of crepe you’re meant to enjoy for breakfast after you’ve rolled it with chocolate, honey or butter. One more delicious Moroccan concoction.

A cook at the El Minzah making pancakes called msemen.

That and some coffee and we were off to meet Jebriel and Youssef and head east toward the old town of Asilah where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic ocean. White beaches darted with colorful little umbrellas ran along the sandscape, but there was hardly a soul around except for a few teens enjoying the water.

Asilah is not far from Tangier and is famous as another fortress expanded by the Portuguese in its hey day, this time after it took the city in a massive sea assault in 1508. The fort is enormous and I could see the proof that Portugal had once been one of the world’s most formidable nations with a massive navy, a global trading system and colonies that extended from South America to the Far East. They remained formidable until the earthquake and tsunami of  1755 struck Lisbon and decimated the empire.

The ancient fortress city of Asilah where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean; a city lost in time; old double door knockers and local tapestries and artwork. (Photos - Chip Walter)

Though the fortress still stands at the edge of the sea, Asilah now is a tiny town made of walled and winding buildings hundreds of years old, a step back in time. The streets are narrow and both donkeys and the locals use them to navigate their way around. We walked past doorways with big wooden doors surrounded by high adobe walls. The doors, Youssef explained, usually have two knockers. One, larger and higher up at the center of the door and a second that was lower somewhere to the side and smaller. They existed to let people know what sort of person was knocking. Children and women generally clapped the smaller knockers and men usually wrapped the taller ones.

We were wandering the streets and the ancient battlements when I saw a man working inside the basement of one of the buildings. He stood at a big brick oven inside a floor of dirt, taking patted cakes of dough and passing them with a wooden paddle into the oven. He was making khobz, a grainy wheat dough patted with olive oil. Together they create a delicious soft crust as it is slow cooked in the stone oven. I bought a couple and we ate them fresh and hot right out of the oven. If only I could have gotten my hands on some tangine.

Making khobz, a grainy wheat dough patted with olive oil.

Later, we drove back toward Tangier. High hills rose up from the outskirts of downtown. It looked to me like the city was thriving. I checked. Its population is growing — pushing  1.3 million people in the metropolitan area.  I saw new rectangular houses and apartments outside on the city’s outskirts that reminded me of the Mediterranean-style apartments that are crowded everywhere in Athens - cement, square, awninged, brilliant white. In between were older homes where small balconies hung above tiny yards strung with sheets, shirts and dresses that furiously flapped in the dry wind. The people in this little sector of the human race were still living their lives not all that differently than Carthaginian laborers, or plebeians under Rome or sailors who had moved from Portugal or fleeing jews from Spain had in years and centuries past. Looked at the windows as we passed. Each had their own story. Each their own dreams, hopes, joys, sorrows and fears. And every day, the city itself evolved, powered by it all.

Day 247 - May 31st 2022 – To Tétouan, Chefchaouen and Fez

First thing the next morning, fortified with fresh msemen and apricot jam, strong Moroccan coffee and papaya, watermelon, pineapple and kiwi, we and our bags left Tangier behind and began winding by car to Fez, one of Morocco’s largest cities and the nation’s religious capital. Its history dates back 1100 years. But first we would stop by Tétouan, renown for its culture and art and one of Morocco’s many UNESCO World Heritage Sites. After that onto Chefchaouen, Morocco’s famed Blue City, also a UNESCO site. (Morocco has nine of them.)

Tétouan

Tétouan is a city of over 300,000 people that lies in a broad, brown valley that skirts the Mediterranean. Nomadic Berbers settled here, though it’s not precisely known when. Historians only know it was before Phoenician traders showed up 2900 years ago. For awhile, it was part of the Carthaginian empire until Romans arrived in the 4th century B.C and made it a colony under Augustus. The Berbers didn’t care for that and eventually drove them out of the nearby Rif mountains.

Many of the people in Tétouan still speak Spanish, partly because thousands of Spanish jews migrated to the city during the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th century when, under Catholic rulers Ferdinand and Isabella and the Spanish Inquisition, Jews were tortured, forced to be baptized Catholic or exiled from all lands controlled by Spain. The city is still sometimes nicknamed "Pequeña Jerusalén," Little Jerusalem.

Ironically, Spain itself came to control this part of Morocco when in 1913 it became the capital of the Spanish protectorate of Morocco. It remained the capital until 1956, when the region regained its full independence, another reason most Tétouans speak Spanish. It was here in this enclave that Francisco Franco raised his army, brought it in 1936 to Spain where he eventually took control of the country and ruled for nearly 40 years until turning it over to a new monarchy under the current king, Juan Carlos.

Despite its long Spanish history, Tétouen itself looks Moroccan down to its toes with its adobe buildings and broad, oak-lined boulevards. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the souks (marketplaces) but we navigated the tight alleys past cyclists, locals dickering over goods, and donkey-pulled carts, as we eyed the labyrinths of fresh fruit, open bowls of spices, iced fish, meats of all varieties, baskets of apricots, tomatoes, nuts, garlic, onions and carrots — all of it fresh and displayed beautifully by the family members who have been running the businesses here from the time in memorial.

“Through here come women who prepare the days meals,” said Youssef, “with fresh, local produce, meats and fish, herbs and of course pastries made with fresh dough, nuts and honey. It all sounded delicious to me, but time was short and we wanted to explore the city’s intimate Anthropology Institute because the relics inside date back to King Juba II, 200 BC, and later mosaics, sculpture, pottery and metal work, under Quito the Roman head of the region. I particularly loved an ancient sculpture of Hercules battling the titan Atlas.

With a few hundred years of ancient history crammed in my head, it was time to get to Chefchouen. Our car swung us away from the valley into the green hills that rose into the Rif mountains, ears popping. Soon were were passing through small, rolling farms of corn and peas and olives orchards winding generally south.

Chefchaouen

Chefchoan is indeed blue. You can see the village from a mile away, its adobe buildings clinging to a steep hill that rises above the flatlands below. We parked on the periphery and walked along the creek that flanks the east boundary of the town.

Everything about Chefchaouen is refreshing: the deep blue, sapphire, azure, lapis colored buildings and steps; the cold, gurgling creek where a local entrepreneur surrounded by every imaginable fruit expertly sliced chunks of chilled watermelon for us, singing a quiet song while he worked; the countless art galleries, woven tapestries and paintings that hung all around us until we reached the town plaza and the location of the old Kasbah and prison, built to keep Portuguese invaders at bay. Along with the Ghomaras of the region, and the Moriscos and Spanish and Portuguese Jews that settled in Morocco during the Spanish Inquisition, they fought to keep the Portuguese to the north. Ultimately they succeeded.

The Kasbah of Chechaouen functioned as a residence, arsenal, and this dreary prison.

Like Tétouan I could have spent days languorously exploring this intimate village, but we were on a schedule and I could only tag it as a place we would have be sure to return to some day. After another fine Moroccan lunch outside above the quiet square, we departed the Blue City and wound more deeply over and through the Rif mountains, past acres of olive orchards that Youssef explained are valued for the salty tang that makes its way from the sea-tainted ground into the olives you eat.

We drove for five hours through this country. Occasionally I would see a cluster of laughing children in a small village as we passed, or silos of grain, once a mule with a rider holding an enormous bundle of sticks precariously on the animal’s back. I'm not sure what sort of geography I expected to see as we passed through this part of Morocco, but it wasn’t the beautiful rolling landscape I was looking at. I felt at home, at ease, grateful.

Morocco’s salt-tanged olive orchards south of Chefchaouen. 

Still, after the long drive, we were happy to see the broad, low buildings ahead, the outskirts of Fez. We passed beneath a long, palm-treed boulevard and then bent toward the old city’s immense ramparts until at last Jabriel and our car took us through them and into Morocco’s holy, Islamic city and then to our rhyad hidden deep within the city’s labyrinthine medinas.

Resource: https://vagabond-adventure.com/library/exploring-moroccos-exotic-cities-tangier-tetouan-chefchaouen

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Day 774 Of Vagabond Adventure

 Patan Durbar Square. Across the Bagmati River in Lalitpur. Still standing. Still active. Still lived in.

See more: https://vagabond-adventure.com/

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Everything You Need to Know Before Walking the Camino de Santiago

 

When you travel the way we are, without the use of any jets, you stumble across places that don’t show up inside the Rick Steves or Frommer travel books. Vigo, Spain would be an example of that. It’s is a gem of a mid-sized city along the Atlantic Ocean just north of Portugal that also happens to be on one route of the famous Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of Saint James or El Camino, the holiest and most popular of all Catholic pilgrimages in Europe. Given its importance, we knew we had to walk it. Part of our goal as we travelled the planet was to trek as many pilgrim trails and holy places as we could — Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian.  Not that we knew much about the Camino Way, except a few insights from Wikipedia.  If we were going to go, Cyn and I agreed that we might want to do some research.

It’s not easy to describe the Camino Way because it isn’t really one, single pilgrimage trail that leads from point A to point B. It is a whole array of ways, more akin to the junctions and pathways of the human brain spread out all over western Europe with some tendrils linked to the Middle East where St. James, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, was beheaded. You can therefore tread over any number of Camino Ways. The main thing is that in the end you make it to the apostle’s grave.

St. James - Peter Paul Rubens

James was a first cousin of Christ and, along with Peter and John (James’s younger brother), considered Christ’s favorite. After Jesus was crucified, James made a point of spreading the word about his cousin’s remarkable story and beliefs, and at one point made his way clear to a Spanish port now known as Camino Finisterre, a cape beyond Santiago, meaning “the end of the world,” literally; a place where the craggy igneous rocks of the north Spanish coast meet the thundering waves of the Atlantic Ocean. (We visited there later and it surely did look like the end of the world, but that’s another story.)

St. James had also apparently spent time in a little village nearby eventually given the name of Santiago de Compostela and the locals developed an affection for him. After James’s unfortunate death, the story goes that his disciples brought him back from Jerusalem to the place they felt he loved most. The name Santiago comes from the Latin genitive Sancti Iacobi, “the church or sanctuary of Saint James” and evolved through Portuguese into Sanct-tiago, from its derivatives Diego/Diogo. Now, more than two thousand years later, a massive cathedral sits over the saint’s simple grave, and during that time millions of saints and sinners, beggars and kings, even Charlemagne himself, have walked the Way of St. James in all of its iterations.

Anyone can walk the El Camino any time he or she likes and after we poked around at a Spanish map, we decided Vigo would make an excellent place to begin. It was one of the shorter routes — 100 kilometers, a 60-mile hike along the far western edge of Spain, and it was just north of where we were at the time in Portugal.

First job, get from Portugal to Vigo.

Getting to the Beginning

Through much of June we had been working our way from southern Portugal north with stops to Porto, Braga, Nazarre, Fatima and Aveiro, known as the Venice of Portugal. We had now settled briefly in a lovely beach town called Costa Nova, which seemed to have dropped like a gift out of the sky. Its huge sandy shoreline was as empty as nuns in a brothel, and we loved its striped homes, quiet streets and cool breezes. We set a July 4 deadline, which made it time for a return trip to Porto there to deposit our rental car at the Campanha Railway Station and hop the 7:10 PM train to Vigo. Once aboard, the train rattled and screeched us north on rails that would take us just a hair beyond the Portuguese border. We passed small homes, with their orange terra-cotta roofs and then as the sun dropped over the Atlantic threaded our way through hills of pine, peach, eucalyptus and towering birch trees that danced in the stiff evening wind.

It was dark when we made the half mile walk to the Hotel Atlantico, our home for the next few days. Behind the hotel desk we found an elderly man with thinning hair and the serene face of a Capuchin monk who signed us in. He moved with the speed of a tombstone, or maybe it was that after the day we had had we simply wanted to get immediately in our beds. But there is always the credit cards and passports and the mangled interlocutions of unfamiliar languages and, inevitably, “how long are you staying.” By now it was now 11 PM. But once in our comfortable room, “nature’s soft nurse” as Shakespeare put it, had us soon snoring away.

Camino de Santiago Packing Tips, Preparations and Camino Way Credentials

We spent the next two days prepping for our self-guided tour of the El Camino. We needed to re-provision basics like shampoo and deodorant and figure out the bare minimum we would need. Then there was the problem of transferring our excess baggage while we trekked the pilgrim trail. I wanted to investigate new shoes too. We were looking at walking an average of 10 miles a day on our 60-mile hike.  (I didn’t buy the shoes until AFTER we arrived.) And we needed our “passport,” our El Camino credentials. Nearly anyone who walks the El Camino carries this piece of paper that can be stamped at villages, restaurants and hotels where you stay; proof you truly made the spiritual pilgrimage. Generally, you picked these little pamphlets up at a local catholic church.

Luckily, there was a cathedral directly across the boulevard from the Hotel Atlantico. Cyndy and I crossed the street three times to pick up our passport, but it wasn’t until the third try that we found the church doors open. Once inside I was fear-struck. But why? Was it my childhood as a catholic altar boy mixed with the dread and power of the enormous church inside that was the culprit? Hesitantly I walked to the sacristy door, certain that when I knocked a rogue nun would slap my wrist or shake me by the shoulders and waggle her finger at me for daring to invade the sacred privacy of the place.  But finally, I did knock on the big wooden door, very quietly.  Me, a heathen agnostic, fallen from the Church, wanting not a soul-cleansing journey to a sacred place, but nothing other than a credential for some personal adventure. I had interviewed Nobel Laureates, shaken hands with Henry Kissinger and met who knew how many celebrities, but here I was petrified.

The door opened. An elderly, kindly priest stood before me. He wore his cassock and collar. His hair was dark and thinning. He smiled at me. I stuttered out my purpose for being there in a few syllables of mangled Spanish. A two euro contribution was usually expected in exchange for the passport, but I only had one euro or €20. Did he have change? He gently waved his hand away. The money was unnecessary, and then handed me the “passport.” I felt right then that he must be the kindest man in the world, and thanked him far too many times. Outside I showed the piece of paper to Cyndy and grinned. I knew now that we were officially on "The Way."

Packed for six days of nonstop hiking. Everything a pilgrim could need.

Exactly how we would make our way along the Camino remained unclear since I could find no detailed map that pertained to our specific route. We only knew there were small towns and villages we would try to reach by day’s end. How we connected the dots was another matter, mostly left to our phones. The afternoon before departure, we did take the time to find the Vigo Trailhead and then we headed back to re-organize our bags. The Hotel had kindly agreed to let us keep most of our possessions with the two bags we normally carried everywhere in a locked room. All of the rest we stuffed like sausages into our little REI daypacks — a few pairs of pants, shorts and shirts, caps to protect us against Spain’s hot summer sun, power cords and enough toiletries to get us through six days and nights.  The next morning, we would head out and join the other millions who had made this pilgrimage.

We had no idea what was coming. But that’s the way it is with journeys. You never know what lay before you.

July 4 - On the Way and a Bagpipe

We walked out of the Hotel Atlantico, a full breakfast in our bellies, and headed north. Three miles in, on the outskirts of Vigo, we departed the urban pavement and the tan adobe houses and apartments capped with terra cotta roofs that surrounded us. Now it was only the crunch of sandy, rocky soil beneath our feet.

Brimming Garden near Vigo Estuary

On our right, we rose into steep hills brimming with small gardens; on our left the immense Vigo estuary, and its cargo ships anchored in the nearby waters. Once we crested the hill we found ourselves in a forest along a ridge high above the water. It was already 80º Fahrenheit, but cooler here. We could have been walking through the very woods that thousands had trekked 300 or 400 years in the past. We saw not a single sign of the 21st century. And then we heard the strains of a bagpipe. A bagpipe! Slowly the sound grew, and when we rounded a bend, there among the trees, near a babbling creek, we saw Maria, a young, dark-haired woman, cheeks puffed and fingers flying as she played a lovely Scottish melody. What the …!

Maria greeted us as though we were old friends and just happened to be passing by. She spoke excellent English with a Celtic lilt and explained the bagpipes. This part of Spain is known as Galicia, an area settled by early Celts even before the Romans showed up over 2000 years ago. (Galicia derives from the same word as Gaelic.) Celts ran this part of the world south to Porto and as far east as Léon. The bagpipe was an interesting musical move, I thought. Personally, I might have preferred a guitar or piccolo; a little easier on the ears, but the squawk of the old instrument made an undeniable statement. There was no mistaking it was Celtic because I have yet to hear a bagpipe anywhere else in Spain except in the arms of this uncommon woman. And for her part, it happened to be the instrument she knew best.

Beginner’s Rules for Walking the Camino Way - Avoid Blisters

We couldn’t spend too much time with Maria, delightful as she was. We had another 10 miles to cover if we were to make the little town of Arcade north of the estuary. So we gulped down some water, gobbled a handful of gorp and made a contribution to Maria before waving goodbye. A few more miles brought us down a wickedly steep paved street, back to sea level. That was where the blisters started. At first it began as a slight burning, but after descending several hundred vertical feet, I was pretty sure my right toe had caught fire. Luckily Cyn’s feet remained intact, at least for now. We walked through the small town, trying make sure we were following on the right path. This was not always easy. Sometimes you would see a sign that looked like the yellow rays of the sun against a blue back drop (often described as a clamshell) or sometimes simply a bright yellow arrow pointing you in the right direction. But here, passing through this village, we were back on urban streets and there was no sign to be found. We had seen some other pilgrims and followed them, hoping they knew their way around better than we did. My feet were scorched, and I had no desire to add to the day’s mileage.

In between creative ways to guide pilgrims, Cyn walks the 14 miles on our first day

I’ll spare you the details, but after another seven miles, through hills, cobble-stoned streets and the along a major highway where massive trucks whipped by in the afternoon heat (yes this was part of the El Camino too), we finally saw the edges of the small town of Arcade. We had both begun to feel we might never get there. The heat had wrung us out, our dogs were yelping and the blossoming blisters on my right foot felt as though they had been blow torched.

Thankfully, Cyndy had found a fine little restaurant/hotel in the center of town right across a tiny church where the statue of a medieval pilgrim stood, a reminder of our roots. Our pedometer showed we had walked 14 miles.

Nothing to your average Roman foot soldier, but it had decidedly taxed our physical endurance. It was stupid of me to have failed to bring the moleskin I almost always carried so once in our room I had no choice but to split the blisters and wrapped them with a few band aids. We showered and made for the little restaurant below, ravenous.  Our kindly waiter, handsome, 55, with a great head of thick, gray hair atop his square body immediately saw to our needs. He was almost as kindly as Said, the waiter we had gotten to know in Fez, Morocco. The specialty for the evening was cuttlefish, a cousin to squid and octopus, so we ordered it, and then consumed it as if we had never eaten before, which made the restaurant’s tiny chef no end of proud. It really was delicious, pulled, I suspected, directly out of the bay nearby and flash grilled to perfection with roasted vegetables and potatoes. That, chilled white and bread with olive oil made us both almost forget our cranky feet.

Next up: Day 2 of the Camino where we meet a priest and his delightful, trekking entourage of Philippine teenagers. And some revelations about journeys as an allegory for life.

If you are interested in learning about other routes you can take to Santiago de Compostela throughout Europe, explore here …

Other Camino Pilgrimage Routes in Europe

These are the primary pilgrimage routes leading to Santiago de Compostela:

Camino Francés (French Way): The most popular route, starting from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France and spanning approximately 780 km to Santiago de Compostela.

Camino Portugués (Portuguese Way): Begins in Lisbon or Porto, traversing northern Portugal into Spain.

Camino del Norte (Northern Way): Follows Spain’s northern coast from Irún to Santiago, covering about 817 km.

Camino Primitivo (Original Way): The oldest route, starting in Oviedo and merging with the Camino Francés in Melide.

Camino Inglés (English Way): Traditionally used by pilgrims arriving by sea, starting from Ferrol or A Coruña.

Via de la Plata: A longer route from Seville in southern Spain, covering approximately 1,000 km.

Camino Finisterre: Extends beyond Santiago to Cape Finisterre, historically considered the "end of the world.

Le Puy Route (Chemin du Puy):A French route starting in Le Puy-en-Velay, joining the Camino Francés in Spain.

This is Dispatch XXXVII in a series about a Vagabond’s Adventures - journalist and National Geographic Explorer Chip Walter and his wife Cyndy’s effort to capture their experience exploring all seven continents, all seven seas and 100+ countries, never traveling by jet.

If you’ve enjoyed this dispatch, please take a look at Chip’s other adventures (and misadventures) … and don’t forget to check the Vagabond Journal and our Travel Recommendations to help you plan YOUR next adventure.

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Resource: https://vagabond-adventure.com/library/camino-de-santiago-europes-most-famous-christian-pilgrimage-what-to-expect

 

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The Ultimate List: 10 Greatest Travel-Adventure Books of All Time

 

10. Into Thin Air - By John Krakauer

Despite being a true story about a misbegotten group of tourists attempting to climb the summit of Mt. Everest, John Krakauer’s book often leaves even fine novels in the literary dust. The story he tells rises, like the great peak itself, slowly, and then builds to a remarkable climax. Each of the characters is brought alive by Krakauer’s careful and detailed descriptions as they make their way upward; their backstories carefully tossed like seeds throughout the book so that when the climax (or multiple climaxes) arrive, the effect is horrifying, sad, exhilarating and satisfying all at the same time. The research Krakauer did to write the book places him in the pantheon of great narrative non-fiction writers like Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote. If you haven’t bought it, do so now and enjoy every minute. On Barnes & Noble.

9. Seven Pillars of Wisdom - By T. E. Lawrence

In this book T.E. Lawrence, the inspiration for the epic David Lean film Lawrence of Arabia, relates his own rise among the Arab tribes to help overthrow Ottoman rule during World War I. It’s an astounding story and whatever you may say of the outcome, it stands as one of the most remarkable military and human tales of the 20th century. Lawrence describes his role in what he called “a procession of  Arab freedom from Mecca to Damascus;” a series of battles that changed the face of the Middle East and helped meld tribes into the nation states we know as the Middle East. The experience tried his own mental and emotional mettle as he endured torture, thirst, horror and personal loss as well as military success. His writing, which can occasionally be overly dramatic, is also moving and eloquent. “For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert,” he writes, “under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of the stars.” The story does not digress; it is detailed, realistic and unflinching, and it pins you to each page like a spell because the cultures, climate, locations, politics, dangers and remarkable characters are unlike anything the world ever seen. On Amazon.

8. South - By Sir Ernest Shackleton

In 1914, veteran adventurer Ernest Henry Shackleton set sail to anchor his ship Endurance on the ice of Antarctica and then walk the length of the new and unknown continent, a feat that had never been accomplished or even attempted before. He dreamed that fame and fortune would follow. He was right, it did, but not for the reasons he thought. He failed at his goal, but then went on to lead one of the most remarkable rescues in the history of human adventure. Shackleton’s team was undone before they began when ice floes destroyed the Endurance and forced them to abandon it. Though they unloaded provisions from the ship, they were without shelter, limited food and nowhere near any sort of help. For  nearly 17 months they trudged across ice floes, hauling three lifeboats with them until in April 1916, Shackleton decided to plunge the lifeboats into the sea and sail for some spit of land. Five days later they found Elephant Island, a place never inhabited by humans. It was the first time the 28 men had stood on solid ground in 497 days. But Elephant Island was hardly a safe haven. On April 24th, Shackleton set out with five other crew members into the open sea with one of his 20 foot boats. The other two he left with the remaining crew. They promptly flipped them over into makeshift cabins where the 22 men planned to live until rescued.  For 800 miles Shackleton’s little lifeboat fought heavy seas, frigid cold and Force-9 winds. Yet, somehow, after 18 days at sea, Shackleton and their skiff made it to the island of South Georgia. But they had arrived on the opposite side of help. So with two other crew members, Shackleton spent the next two days crossing the island’s treacherous landscape until at last he found a whaling station. From there, after several failed attempts, he managed to get back to Elephant Island on a tugboat to rescue the remaining 22 men. When he arrived August 30, 1916, in the dead of the astral winter, every one of them was still alive.  This story doesn’t carry the elegance and force of a masterful writer like Saint-Exupery or Ted Simon or John Steinbeck, but it doesn’t have to because the story itself is so remarkable. Drama is on nearly every page, and you can’t help but want to know, how will they make it! And the photos that accompany the book are remarkably stark and beautiful. (You can buy an e-book version of this book with original maps, pictures and drawings for $2.99 at our Vagabond Adventure store.

7. The Great Railway Bazaar - by Paul Theroux

The 1970s were a time when baby boomers were growing into adulthood and some of them did not want to spend their days in faceless factories or corporate offices. That included Paul Theroux who decided to travel from London across Europe, through the sub-continent, down Southeast Asia, then circle back to London by way of Japan and and the length of Russia, all by train. He wrote The Great Railway Bazaar in 1975  when travel books had a dirty name, and along with Bruce Chatwin and Ted Simon brought back the thrill of new cultures and dangerous deeds like Patrick Leigh Fermor and Richard Halliburton did when they mastered the form in the 1930’s and 40s. Theroux is a writer with guts and a remarkable eye for the significant detail. The pages of this book bring the story alive with beauty and insight and absolute honesty. He never shies from the truth as he sees it, which can be brutal, funny, surprising and moving, the very elements you want to see in any story. On Amazon.

6. Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors - By Piers Paul Read

British writer Piers Paul Read’s Alive is one of the most riveting escape and rescue stories yet written. In some ways it surpasses Ernest Shakleton’s South. In 1972 a jet with 45  members of an Uruguayan Rugby team and their families and friends crashed in the Andes mountains. Sixteen people, traumatized and injured, somehow survived, but their prospects for living very much longer were long. They faced temperatures well below zero at 11,000 feet with little food. The two and a half months the group lived together created a crucible out which extraordinary decisions were made. They survived storms, frigid cold, an avalanche, and the anguish of losing so many loved ones by creating a miniature social system that was an object lesson in human in courage, determination and the finest in human behavior. Daily duties were divided, and food was rationed, including the grisly decision to eat the bodies of the crash victims, often members of their own families. There were squabbles and deep concerns over the eating of the victims of the crash, and not everyone pulled their weight, but the system worked. In the end, the group agreed to increase rations for two leaders, Roberto Canessa and Nando Parrado, so they could attempt to hike out of the mountains and save the group. For two weeks, carrying make shift sleeping bags and gear created by the survivors, they scaled a 15,000 foot mountain peak and hiked for ten days and 38 miles to the valleys of Chile where exhausted they finally found help. Read tracked down the survivors when the world heard their story and interviewed all 16 in immense detail. He toyed with fictionalizing some parts of the book (he was a novelist, former writer for the BBC and the Sunday Times), but decided that simply telling the story as clearly as possible was enough. He was right. If you aren’t utterly smitten but this book, I’ll buy you dinner. On Barnes & Noble.

5. In Patagonia — By Bruce Chatwin

For shear beauty of phrase and description, Bruce Chatwin’s book is difficult to top. But even better is his remarkable story telling ability. Once you begin to read In Patagonia, the book becomes your companion. And even when you put the book down, his words reverberate.  With the publication of this book in 1977, Chatwin helped revive travel writing when publishers had lost interest in the art. Chatwin himself said he didn’t see the book as a travelogue. Instead he meant it as a series of stories he wanted to tell as he worked his way by foot and bus and thumb across some of the wildest territory on earth. And he succeeds somehow weaving in tales like tracking the house down where Butch Cassidy lived, to mesmerizing fables about unicorns and Bigfoot like creatures shared by the people he meets. As he travels, you have  the sense of movement and travel, but you would be hard pressed to know what route he took precisely though the vast land. It doesn’t matter, though because in so many ways the book is a journey, but one of the mind. You’re enthralled with geology and history and myth, and above all the remarkable people he stumbles into. In this way, the book is utterly unique and unfailingly engaging. On Barnes & Noble.

4. Travels with Charley: In Search of America  - By John Steinbeck

Not long after Steinbeck wrote My Travels With Charlie (1962), he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his remarkable and considerable body of work (The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men to name just two of his masterworks). My Travels reminds you why. The book was Steinbeck’s personal effort to reconnect and understand America by circling the nation during the 1960s in a camper of his own design with his dog Charlie. On their journey he reveals bits of nation, its people, its varied cultures and himself, one simple story at a time to create a timeless mosaic. It’s not a travel adventure in the mold of South or The Worst Journey In the World, but its is a quietly powerful adventure nevertheless, steady, engaging, always insightful in the Steinbeck’s beautiful and direct language, and his unerring ability to capture dialogue.  Don’t think that the time difference makes the story stale. As with all of Steinbeck’s work, the writing is direct, but deep. Especially in this book you feel as though you are sitting down with a close friend as he reflects with disarming humor and intelligence all that he sees and experiences with the wry and authentic eye of a true genius. On Barnes & Noble.

3. Wind, Sand and Stars - by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Wind, Sand and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s most famous book is his children’s classic, The Little Prince, but his most beautiful and exciting book is The Wind, Sand and the Stars, tales of his days as an aviator for Aeropostale (later Air France) in the 1920s and 30s. It is simply one of the most beautiful books ever written, unless you don’t care for enthralling human insight, epic vision or love of the written word put to the pen of a master story-teller. Saint-Exupery was among a group of early aviators who faced danger the way knights of old slayed dragons. A flier first and a writer later, he skated through the skies on single-wing, sing-propeller craft at a time when by-the-seat-of-your-pants was the primary way to get to and from exotic locations like Casablanca, Tangier,  Cairo, Dakar, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile. The book is rich with daredevil adventures, near death experiences, stark beauty and the wonder of flight when flight was still a miracle. A key theme is that while flying these early contraptions annihilated time and distance unlike anything else before. It also opened the world to unknown cultures and people, and forced an appreciation for nature’s stunning and awful power.  Each chapter is broad and varied, but Saint-Exupéry fuses them with common themes of courage, honor, empathy and high purpose.  They read almost like fables, but stunningly rich fables, because in the end it is Saint-Exupery’s extraordinary mind and heart and command of language that raise the book far above mere autobiography or memoir. Yet, he is always humble and modest. His love of the common man is in every word. To learn more, read my article “A Prisoner of the Sands” about Saint-Exupery’s near death experience when his airplane crashed in the Sahara Desert. On Amazon.

2. The Worst Journey In the World - By Apsley Cherry—Garrard

It’s an unlikely title that lead National Geographic to choose  Worst Journey as the greatest adventure book ever written, but it is a classic, and absolutely true to its title. In 1911 Robert Falcon Scott, already a redoubtable British explorer, brought 11 men with him to Antarctica to become the first humans to reach the South Pole.  Scott would be racing another expedition, Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s competing party who were just as determined to succeed. Scott lost the race to Amundsen, but the story of his heroic effort lives on in this book written by one of the survivors, 23-year-old Apsley Cherry-Garrard. At least as astounding as the race to the pole, is Cherry-Garrard’s telling of another hair-raising expedition that began before the polar run with Scott. Cherry-Garrard and two others man-hauled two sledges into the teeth of Austral winter to locate and return the unhatched eggs of emperor penguins.  Nearly every day for weeks they fought temperatures 50 degrees below zero and winds of 100 mph. At one point winds whipped their tent away. Somehow, through all of this they, survived. Both of these stories, and Cherry-Garrard’s frank and powerful first person descriptions of what he and the members underwent, make for riveting reading that still stands up despite being exactly 100 years old. Included are unique maps and the stunning drawings and sketches Edward Wilson created to reveal a frozen world like nothing the human race had seen. Maps and photos of the team, even as they neared death, are also included. That alone makes the book worth reading. For me, this is truly one of the world’s most memorable adventure stories. It brought both the fear and exaltation of hazard and courage directly into my hands and I found it mesmerizing. I think you will too. (For more information read my article describing the remarkable journey in the dead of the Antarctic winter. An e-book version of this book with updated preface and original maps, pictures and drawings is also available for $2.99 at our Vagabond Adventure store.

1. Jupiter’s Travels - By Ted Simon

The last I heard Ted Simon is still alive at 90 and still riding his motorcycle. But in 1973 when he convinced the Sunday Times to back his idea of traveling the world on a motorcycle, he didn’t even have a motorcycle license. (After failing the test once, he did manage to pass shortly before departing.) The experience took Simon 64,000 miles, across 45 countries and through every adventure imaginable from being thrown into a Brazilian prison for ten days, to wrecking his motorcycle in Africa, to moments of ecstasy in Peru. He even fell in love in a California commune. Simon’s special talent (he has so many) is not simply his ability to describe what he sees, but to reflect on his experiences in profound, moving and often hilarious ways. His ability to look inside his own mind and then relate those thoughts and feelings to his readers is truly remarkable and often as powerful as any insight you might hear from the novels of Tolstoy or James Joyce. Sometimes his descriptions, internal or external, are so beautiful, that I found myself putting the book down not to stop reading, but to savor the phrases like an excellent wine.  Never egotistical, his unique and eloquent insights teach us about ourselves as much as about him and the people he meets. That he managed all of this on a single motorcycle in the span of four years is both remarkable and courageous, and you feel it on every page. The book never flags. On Amazon.

Resource: https://vagabond-adventure.com/library/the-10-greatest-adventure-and-travel-books-ever

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