My Journey to Santiago de Compostela Part I
About me
I was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Saturday, 24 November 1951, in my grandmother’s house at Bois Verna, a neighborhood just one kilometer away from the National Palace. I was the third of five siblings, the Benjamin of two older brothers and I was followed by two younger sisters. I was named after my grandfather, Jacques Philippe Emile Manuel, a Haitian Congressman, who died in 1929 at the age of 54. Saint Jacques and Saint Philippe are the Patron saints of the city of Jacmel, where my dad was born. I was baptized and on my birth certificate, I show up as “Jacques Marie Philippe”, son of Frantz Bellande and Eliane Manuel.
I do not recall the first time I heard about Camino de Santiago. It may have been from the movie “The Way”, starred by Martin Sheen. All I know is that it has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. In 2022, a couple of events brought me closer to achieving my dream of walking the Camino. I moved to Spain in January and in June, Roberto, a former work colleague, came to visit me in Malaga. He had walked the last stretch of the Camino from Sarria to Santiago years ago and wanted to do it again but from Saint Jean Pied de Port all the way to Santiago, an eight hundred kilometers journey across Spain starting from the other side of the Pyrenees in France. He asked me if I would join, and I immediately said yes. We decided to start our adventure on the 1st of September.
Day 1: From Saint Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles
Distance 27 Kms in 10 hours and 34 minutes with elevation gain of 1,479 meters and 56K steps
It was hard for me to fall asleep thinking of the coming days and weeks and not knowing if my body and my mind would be able to handle the pilgrimage to Santiago. I barely slept three hours but felt great with the adrenaline rush and the excitement that finally the day had come to achieve one of my dreams. We left the hostel around 8:00 and headed for St Jean. By the time we left the place considered as the “starting point”, it was 9:00 am. Orisson, our first stop was 7 kms and two hours away. The climate was gorgeous, cloudy and not too cold. The first couple of hours we walked through a paved road with limited traffic. Then into a dirt road and always climbing up. The view was magnificent, and we could still see the town we had left just three hours ago at the foot of the Pyrenees.
We reached Orisson, (altitude 900 meters),shortly after noon and decided to stop for lunch at the Auberge. There we sat next to a couple from Arizona,Juan and Gaby whom we had met the day before at the Pilgrims’ Center in St Jean. They would be our companions for the coming days until we reached Pamplona. Then after lunch and some beers (OMG why did we eat and drink so much!!)came the hard stretch. Climbing the next nine kms to Col de Bentarte (altitude 1230 meters) then to Fontaine de Roland(altitude 1344 meters).
At 5:45 pm, we crossed the border into Navarra, Spain and after climbing up to Lepolder (altitude 1420 meters) headed down to Roncesvalles/Orreaga. Climbing down was much harder than up. We reached Roncesvalles after dark, at 9:00 pm, 12 hours after leaving Saint Jean. We arrived too late to find a spot at the local albergue so we had to get transportation to Burguete the next town 2 kms away where luckily we found rooms for all of us.