Well we are back home and settling into home life and our normal routine. Seven weeks was a long time to be away from home so we were happy to get home but also sad to end this trip of a lifetime. Sleeping in our own bed and cooking food that includes green chile has been great. Also to be back with the people we love most is the best!
I thought I would let you know about some items/products that we had on our camino that we were really happy we had. I hope to make it easier on the path for future peregrinos!
This electrolyte mix is available in most grocery stores and on Amazon and on their web site. I found that the best price was at Costco. The individual packets were great to take in our back packs and easy to mix up. We mixed up one every morning before we took off for the day.
Having a way to charge our phones on the trail was critical, especially in the cycling since we had to use Google Maps more often since we had to divert off the official Camino route some days. I attached this solar charger to the top of my backpack to keep the charge topped off. It comes with a charging cord so we also charged it at night. i just carried this and a short charging cord in my back pack. Never failed us!
Available on Amazon
In this technological age, we always have to stay charged. The European adapter was perfect. I loved all the places to plug in.
Most places we stayed had a plug near one side of the bed so we just plugged in everything when we arrived. I had a little zipper bag with all the cords, plugs and the adapter. The 10 foot cord was great because it would reach to Anthony’s side of the bed. I had a shorter one on my side
A good microfiber towel was very handy. We didn’t really use it to dry our wet bodies but rather for getting as much moisture out of our clothes after we washed them. We had a good routine – I would wash and rinse the clothes in the sink and Anthony would ring them out and squeeze them in the 2 microfiber towels we had and then hang them up.
We brought large safety pins in a pill bottle to use to hang clothes as clothes pins would have taken up too much room. What we didn’t think of before we left was what we were going to hang clothes on. So Anthony bought a length of nylon rope and figured out what to attach it to every night. We sometimes had clothes hanging above our faces as we slept. We did sometimes have an outside clothes line available and occasionally we found a laundry mat.
Foot care on the Camino is so important. When you are on your feet traveling up and down mountains your feet can take a beating and they need a lot of TLC. We were meticulous about doing everything we could to make sure they got us to the end of our journey.
We each took hiking shoes and hiking boots. When the terrain was not too rocky or steep (not very often on the Primitivo) or not rainy we wore our shoes. The rest of the time we wore boots. Both the shoes and boots were well broken in before we left home. We met a man in one of the towns we stayed who was wearing new boots and and he had huge blisters on his heels and was sorry he had not broken his boots in.
Anthony really liked the silk sock liners under his light weight hiking socks, whether he was wearing shoes or boots. I found, before we left home, that I didn’t care for the extra layer. I found an absolutely wonderful product, HikeGoo! I slathered it on my feet, especially around my toes, every morning and then put on my hiking socks and shoes or boots. Most days, unless it was pouring rain, we found a place to take off our shoes and socks and let our feet breathe for a while. I always reapplied the HikeGoo at that point and it got us through the day. We took extra socks in our backpacks that we could change into if our socks were wet. Our boots were waterproof so on the rainy days with adding gaiters, our feet were often the only things that were dry. The gaiters were a godsend for keeping the mud off and for keeping water from wicking down into our boots. One thing we wish we had early on was a big rain poncho that covered us and our backpacks. We bought some in Lugo as we were expecting rain and then it didn’t rain! Compeed blister patches are great. The only time we both got small blisters was on a day that we were hiking down a steep rocky trail for 4+ hours. We put the Compeed patches on our little toes and they lasted for days before we had to replace them. The Compeed packets I bought before we left home contained multiple sizes and we needed just the little ones. Most all the pharmacies along the route carried Compeed and had packages of just the little ones. The tiny blisters never got worse nor did they bother us.
When we arrived at our destination for the day, after showering and washing clothes, we always made time to massage each other’s feet using the HikeGoo. It was one of the smartest things we did!
Our feet thanked us in the end for the meticulous care.s
OK, men look away. This final product is for the girls and, in addition to HikeGoo, was my most favorite product.
The Tinkle Belle!!!!! I don’t know about you other women, but squatting in the woods is hard on the knees, not to mention the fact that your behind is there for all to see. Enter the Tinkle Belle Female Urination Device! You can pee while standing up and do not have to remove any clothing. Easy to rinse and it washes up very easily at the end of the day.
Often times there was not a great private place to use the bathroom and this made it much less embarrassing if another pilgrim came around the corner at the wrong time.
I am a huge fan and will carry it with me on all future hikes!
Whatever equipment you have or are missing, you just make do and get from one place to the next. Even in the mud and pouring rain, wet clothes, steep hills, and long days, we enjoyed the journey. The destination and soft bed at the end of the day were great, but getting there is what we really loved.