Male: Beyond Leon continuing west on the Camino de Santiago toward Astorga. For travelers along the pilgrim route there are hostels, inexpensive accommodations sometimes even free where pilgrims can roll out their sleeping bags to spend the night, nothing fancy, just basic shelter and a refuge from the elements. These refugees are also where a pilgrim gets their little pilgrim passport validated, a document to prove that you’ve made the journey.

Female: Anna Curtis of Washington so the big jump of spot for the San Juan Islands.

Female: And how long have you been walking?

Female: Just this is for our second day, we started in Leon and we’re going to go on to Santiago.

Female: And how long will it take you?

Female: We hope to be there. We plan to be there October 9.

Male: Thank you. Tell us about this thing.

Female: It’s wonderful.

Female: It’s beautiful.

Female: The people are awesome. The people are so helpful and so friendly and they’re just great and their landscape is wonderful. It’s a big sky country. It’s beautiful. We love it.

Female: And surely they have probably told you about the passport. Have you received a passport?

Male: Yeah, that’s right.

Female: Yes.

Female: Right! Right! And if you have a passport then you’re able to stay in that refugee along the way. So of which we are not choosing to do. We consider ourselves princess of pilgrims. So we’re always in search of five star hotels.

Female: We’ll do it our way.

Female: Yeah!

Male: In past centuries up until the 20th, nearly all the pilgrims making their way along the Camino were Europeans. Now there are pilgrims from all over the world making the trek. Motives are as varied as the individuals themselves.

Male: We just met today.

Male: So you meet lot of friends out there?

Male: Oh, yeah.

Male: It’s just how you meet someone for a day and you hear the story and then you know maybe may took them again later on down the Camino but it doesn’t really matter because even one day you can just learn a lot, you know hear a lot and I just met this man today. I don’t even know his name yet. We just talked at two hours, walking together and talk to him and everything so it’s a quite funny for us to manifest the camera to bring along.

Male: Oh, I see.

Male: I hope this is a big message.

Female: Televisions up there.

Male: We are from Quebec.

Female: Canada

Male: Oh, yes.

Male: So how many days have you been walking now?

Male: It’s like 20 days.

Female: Today is 20.

Male: Yes.

Female: 20 days.

Male: Twelve.

Female: Twelve.

Male: Twelve, twelve!

Female: 33 days.

Male: Yeah.

Female: And where are you from?

Male: Quebec. Sherbrooke Quebec.

Female: Canada.

Male: In Canada.

Male: This is the first time you’ve been here?

Male: The only time.

Female: The only time.

Male: Only time, probably the only time, surely.

Female: 800 kilometers.

Female: Where are you from?

Male: I’m from Australia. I’m traveling with my friend Garrett. He’s from Britain. We met about two and half years ago and we’ve jump of doing the community walk for quite sometime. It’s quite funny because it’s very historic pilgrimage with that people who have hundreds of years and friends and a lot of different kings and queens but we’ve never heard of it until Shirley Maclaine had written a book about it. That she wrote the book and half the world found out about the Camino now and we started in Saint John the Paul. Is that right?

Male: Yes.

Male: In southern France walked across the Pyrenees and we’ve been walking for about 20 days. We found a few breaks about one or two days in the major cities within Leon for two days in Burgos and had a great experience. We went and stay with some in the monastery which some Benedictine monks who were famous back in 19—what was it?

Male: It’s Gregorian chanting and the place is called Santo Domingo de Silos and basically a good maybe ten years ago Emma and I went and recorded them and package that old beach of lake and it just was a big hit and its called Canto Gregoriano. It’s beautiful. Basically the monks are chanting, the Benedictine brothers and you can go there as a pilgrim and it’s free. It’s free for pilgrims and beautiful music, beautiful small, tiny place, very historical, gorgeous.

Male: They’ve got this eleventh century cloisters that you can go to you wander around and see them all but then you stumble across this gold record there with EMI so it’s quite contrast.

Female: What is the best part of traveling on the center on the Santiago de Compostela?

Male: The time to think and process things and to realign the life that they have for me.

Female: And you meet a lot of new people?

Male: Oh, yes in all different ages I can't believe the age groups that I made along the way.

Male: I would say for me personally today meeting yourselves and as I was saying to you before everybody has a story as to why they’re here, what they’re here for and it’s so international, so many different languages but there’s an equality on the work that everyone feels equal. Age is—you know there was a respect to everyone, young, old and nationalities, so it feels equal. Of course in life there can be a lot of barriers in general. You know age and things and just attitudes, woman, man but on community things feel a lot more equal that’s I would say.

Male: Are you saying that we are old?

Female: Yes, we’re old.

Male: No, I’m saying that you are amazing.

Male: No, it’s funny because some days we are less informed, less happiness and then we met people like them and we go home again with energy and each day are like the fact that you are there is that providence is something that happened and have to be open to.

Serge: We’ve walked for about an hour and a half together and swap intimate things about our lives but we don’t even know each others name yet.

Male: Yes.

Serge: What is yours?

David: David.

Serge: David, I'm Serge.

David: Serge! Right!

Serge: I guess you and I—

Female: And Garrett.

Male: It’s funny.

Male: And?

Female: And two Americans.

Female: Yes, we both live—

Male: Join the party.

Female: No?

Male: Are you going to them?

Female: Astorga, uh-huh.

Male: Astorga, yeah! It’s supposed to be very beautiful in there?

Female: That’s the way we understand. It looks lovely.

Male: And then once you reach Leon, it’s possible that you’re going to Santiago until that moment we think that we’ll not be able to do this or able to finish this walk. Then you see the sign is less. You’ve done halfway. You’ve been over halfway and it feels possible. That’s what’s we were just saying. It’s like you may have doubts in the beginning, am I going to actually finish walk. I am not even a half way. How is my body going to react? We’re just talking about having faith and something like all my life have never had so much focus on the feet.

You know my life is just your feet. Everyone is talking about feet. How you feet, of course your toes, you ankles, your lace, your knees, it’s just like you’re talking so much about your body and you never generally focused that much because you don’t ask your feet to walk 20 to 30 case a day on average. That’s over halfway—yes!

Male: It usually a great appreciation for those who walk that many centuries.

Male: Yeah and when this times when you walking by the main road and it’s like what is this Camino like. I didn’t expect it to be near and 120. You know most why, and you just think yeah, but years ago it was a different challenge for other pilgrims and when were talking to a priest, you said you know that pilgrims get and brought along the way in the old days and just think of the tracks they missed and have to walk along the dirt and the real field and there were no roads is such like we have at least tracks and some read these notes created for as you know and they don’t have anything. You know and they don’t think of good trek or boots so things like that, you know. They had sandals and things and so I do try and remember what it was like for the pilgrims before.