SANTIAGO!!!!!!!!

On the 40th day of walking... Helen and Mary made it to Santiago :D :D woop woop!!!

On Thursday we ended up walking another 30km day and we met some friends from a week or so ago and decided that it would be cool to sleep under the stars for the last night. So we had a big meal at the 20km town and stocked up on food (and wine!) and walked another 10km where we found a perfect spot in the porch of a church just outside the town. We had some wine and watched the sun go down and then the stars come out. It was a really cool evening... except for one moment when were were almost asleep and it was pitch black and we opened our eyes to see a young boy coming into the porch, he hadn´t seen us and we screamed and he ran off!! It was scary, but then hilarious!! (I think the poor kid is more traumatised than we were!)

That meant that yesterday we had a 10km walk to Santiago - we left at 7ish and arrived in Santiago at 10am. It´s hard to describe how it felt to get here - we went into the Cathedral and both knelt down and said a tearful prayer. We arrived at a perfect time because there was hardly any queue to visit the relics of St James (last year we queued for nearly 2 hours!) and we got to spend a bit of time there. The pilgrim Mass at 12noon was packed, and everyone looked how we felt - exhausted but overwhelmed to be there!

We´ve bumped into quite a few friends who we had lost along the way which is really cool. And last night we went out for some amazing tapas and lots of sangria with the guys we walked the last few days with. It´s really cool to bump into so many fellow pilgrims and share the excitement of Santiago with them.

Looking forward to enjoying a few days in Santiago catching up with more people and celebrating!

Love from SANTIAGO!!! :D

Helen and Mary

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