No, it's not that Johnny Walker. This Johnny Walker is a delightful Scotsman living in Santiago who splits his time between overseeing a pilgrims' support organization and playing the organ at St Augustine church. His real name is John Rafferty, but JohnnyWalker is his pseudonym on the Camino Internet forums, blogs, and as the author of several guidebooks for various Camino routes. It was special for us to meet him because it was he and one of his volunteers from the Amigos del Camino that found our backpacks that were stolen at the end of our 2013 Camino. Many of you may remember that incident from our blog entries at that time, so I won't repeat the story again, but it's still in the blog archives for anyone who's interested.
John arranged a lunch with us, Stephen, who actually found the backpacks, a couple of their friends from Canada, and a visiting American professor who's researching and writing a book about some of the sociological aspects of the Camino--an interesting group to be sure, with quite a stimulating conversation around the table. Much our discussion, of course, was about the backpack incident, from both our experience and theirs. They were, for us, camino angels extraordinaire. I will try to post a photo or two, but am still limited by the weak signal in this ancient stone building.
In closing, one edit from last night: it was late and I got my miles and kilometers mixed up. We walked 260 kilometers on the Camino Portugues, which is approximately 160 miles.
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