The Camino de Santiago to Finisterre is the only route that runs along the Atlantic coast, from Santiago to Finisterre, a place known as “The End of the World.” Join me on my solo female Camino de Santiago adventure from 2024!

The Camino de Finisterre is even older than Christianity itself; there is evidence that pagans traveled this route to Fisterra on the Costa da Morte, where they believed the sun died and the realms of light and darkness converged. At the precise moment the sun set, pagans would pray and make offerings of thanks to their gods.

As to my own journey, when I was in being in Portugal in 2024, I headed up to Spain on the bus. My friend Elena from when I had lived in Spain and been part of a local hiking club and I decided to meet up and hike on the Camino de Santiago again. (Link to when we hiked back in 2021). A lot had changed since then, she was now married and with a baby and had a new job. My van had caught fire, I had new friendships, a new job, was getting ready to move, and was in a new relationship. We met up at a hostel. I arrived earlier in the day and settled in to work, which ended up being very stressful and reminded me why I don’t like to stay in hostel dorms on working days. But in the end, it was all good. She arrived later at night and we got everything set for the next morning and got to bed.

THE HIKING ADVENTURE DAY

The next morning it was a rainy morning, but we started off towards the cathedral of Santiago to start our hike. The only route that starts in Santiago (instead of finishing there) is the Camino a Finesterre, the trek to the end of the earth. We set our goal to hike to Negreira that day. It was a very cool start to the day because the Cathedral was open and the guards let us go inside and watched our backpacks for us.

Throughout the day, we traveled through quaint towns, forests, and hills before arriving in Negreira. Early in the hike, we met two American girls who were also trekking and unfamiliar with the route. Since I had the trail downloaded on Wikiloc (how did we ever manage to hike before with no maps or downloaded routes?), we took the lead until we encountered a large number of other hikers. At that juncture, we went our separate ways but crossed paths with them from time to time. Following their recommendation, we decided to book the same hostel as them for the night.

We enjoyed a beautiful hike during the day, and finally arrived to Negreria in the afternoon. We stopped for lunch and then got groceries for an early morning hike to where her husband was going to meet us the next day. Upon getting groceries, we realized it was still a significant trek to the part of town where we had booked our hostel, so we decided to get a taxi to drop us off there. The taxi driver told us it was a steep, long, and sunny stretch of trail we had skipped, so we felt we made the most of the day and were glad to relax in the evening.

We stayed in the pastor’s house next to the church, overlooking the graveyard. The house was very old and made of stone. It was pretty neat!

The next morning, we started off early to head to where we were going to meet with her husband. We wanted to make sure he wasn’t waiting for too long with us, since he was also traveling alone with their son. It was the first time she had left her son since he had been born, so of course she was excited to be reunited. We started along the Camino de Santiago, but eventually had to deviate from the trail and follow the highway and back roads to the restaurant where we had decided to meet up with her husband. Several well meaning people let us know we were going the wrong way, which we had to chuckle about. Clearly with our backpacks, we were peregrinos on the Camino de Santiago. We ran into a little farm with some loose goats and animals, which was pretty fun.

We made it to the meeting point a little before her husband David, so we settled in at a cafe and got a drink and snack while we waited. When he arrived, I got to meet their son for the first time and we were catfhing up, since i hadn’t seen her husband in two years, and of course she and I had been talking the whole time on the hike.

We went for a very nice lunch and then they dropped me off at the hostel where I was staying that night. It was really nice to see them again. One thing about being a traveler is that you have friends and contacts all over the world. Check out our adventure in the video below and come along for my solo female Camino de Santiago adventure!

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