90. What You Discover Walking 100km+ of the Camino

**Calvin Rosser** (0:03)
It actually still is on my bucket list.

**Steph Smith** (0:06)
I looked up nothing. Didn't know where we were going.

**Calvin Rosser** (0:10)
I'm like, you absolutely have to do it.

**Steph Smith** (0:12)
Zero expectations.

**Calvin Rosser** (0:14)
Tim Ferriss claims that Kevin Kelly is the world's most interesting man. Is it true?

**Steph Smith** (0:19)
He genuinely believes that he is the luckiest man on earth. He spent six months as if he were dying.
He doesn't regret anything. And you really believe it.

**Calvin Rosser** (0:30)
It's actually like the real deal.

**Steph Smith** (0:32)
It was this fun medley of ideas. I don't know if I've shared a lot of these.

**Calvin Rosser** (0:37)
I don't think you've shared any.

**Steph Smith** (0:38)
This turtle was around close to the Civil War.

**Calvin Rosser** (0:41)
Those pines remember when coffee was one cent.

**Steph Smith** (0:44)
She really injects the most wacky things in her life that anyone could do.

**Calvin Rosser** (0:50)
He steals sand from our beaches? Welcome back to the Shit You Dont Learn in School podcast. This is Calvin Rosser.

**Steph Smith** (1:02)
And this is Steph Smith.

**Calvin Rosser** (1:03)
And today we're gonna be talking about a magical experience walking the Camino.

**Steph Smith** (1:13)
You know what's crazy about coming back, having walked the Camino, is that this was never on my bucket list. I think it's something that a lot of people have as this thing that they want to check the box around. And it was just never really on my radar. Was it for you?

**Calvin Rosser** (1:31)
Have you ever seen the movie The Way?

**Steph Smith** (1:34)
No.

**Calvin Rosser** (1:35)
Okay, it's been a while since I've seen it, but broadly speaking, it's about a dad who loses his son, and I think somehow he reconnects with his son's spirit via this walk on the Camino. And when I saw that movie and I heard other people walking the Camino, it actually has been and still is on my bucket list. Now, you did an abbreviated version of it. I think there are some versions of it where you can walk for a month plus.
But that movie, I think if you don't know what the Camino is, The Way, again, is the movie, is actually a pretty good story and a good entry to what it's like to maybe walk this trail and what it means to a lot of people. It's somewhat of a spiritual pilgrimage, one of the most famous in the world. And when you receive the invite to go on this thing, I'm like, you absolutely have to do it. This is something I definitely want to do. Obviously, I can't do it because I'm not cool enough to get the invite for this trip. But you should do it. And let's see if you have a spiritual awakening yourself. And we've talked about your trip a little bit. But honestly, one of my friends asked me, how did Steph like the Camino? And I'm like, I think she liked it. But I don't know as much as I'd like to know about your trip. So I'm excited to hear more here.

**Steph Smith** (2:43)
Yeah, I think I went into it with zero expectations. And I don't know if this was a good idea or not in retrospect. But I looked up nothing. So I knew it was a pilgrimage route. But I didn't know where we were going. I didn't know how spiritual it was. I didn't know the people I was going with other than Kevin Kelly, who invited me. And so because I had heard that it was this, like, for some people awakening, I didn't want to preempt that at all. And we're going to talk about all kinds of interesting things that I learned and ideas that I explored along the route. But at least for me, it didn't end up being a super spiritual thing. But I do think it's worth quickly covering what the Camino is. To your point, there's several routes. The most famous one is one called the Camino Frances, which goes mostly through France and the north of Spain.
And it's 500 miles and takes four to six weeks to complete. By the way, there's many routes that were actually pilgrimage routes that would go through Portugal, which I went through.
But even within Portugal, there's the coastal route, there's inland routes, there's routes through Spain.
And as I mentioned, through the Pyrenees and France, for example, and all of this actually dates back to the ninth century where remains of St. James the Great were believed to be discovered in this place, Camino de Santiago, which all the routes kind of converge on. And it's over that time turned into one of Christianity's most important pilgrimage destinations. So all of that is to say is there's, yes, a lot of history behind it, a lot of ways to do it, different lengths. And one thing that we did see is a lot of people do it on their own. So I think maybe in those cases, it can become a more spiritual version. But for me, I did it with eight different people. And we only did about seven days of walking. And I think it totaled around 80 miles or over 100 kilometers, nothing on the order of people who do it for over a month.