Spain
The reunion
After the Portuguese Way in 2019, the plan was simple: meet again the next year and walk. Then Covid arrived, and the world shut down. The 2020 camino never happened. For two years the Camino Brothers were a conversation instead of a crew - messages between Canada and Germany, keeping in touch across an ocean and a pandemic, waiting for the trails to open again.
By the autumn of 2021, they could finally go back. But two years is a long time - and the three of them had, after all, been strangers who shared one evening in Portugal before deciding to walk together. Would they still travel well together? There was only one way to find out.
The reunion began at a sprint: a tight connection in Frankfurt, Mike still taxiing on the runway while Nicki waited at the gate, both of them willing the Madrid flight to hold. It did. They reached León on October 3, 2021, and walked out the next morning on the Camino Francés. Dennis had to sit this one out, so this time the brothers were two. Ahead of them lay the Montes de León and the Cruz de Ferro, Ponferrada, and the climb to O Cebreiro. At Sarria they took the bus to Santiago - they had both walked into Santiago before - and the next day they walked out again, all the way to Finisterre, the end of the world, where the land runs out. About 285 kilometres on foot in total.
There was one scare along the way. A cough that wouldn't quit landed Mike in a clinic in Santiago - a Covid test, a prescription, a €250 bill, and then the best word in any language: Negative. They walked on.
The answer to their question came quickly. Some things a pandemic can't touch - it was as if no time had passed at all.
And the trip ended the way it should: back in Germany, where they met up with Dennis. Three brothers, together again.