And Here We Go…

On October 12th of this year, we celebrated our one year of completing the Camino De Santiago. It’s still hard to believe it’s been a year already. The Camino was an experience like no other, so much so we’re planning on doing another one next year. This time from Lisbon, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela. More on that on another post.

While on the Camino, we met several people we have remained in contact with throughout this year. It’s been wonderful to keep in touch and share our every day lives with them. Not only have we kept in touch virtually, we are actively planning trips to see our friends.

In May of this year, we visited Dorita and Jose in Puerto Rico and had a wonderful time reminiscing and also discussing some future trips we could go on together. Today, we are realizing a trip which we started planning for early this year to see our friends Gavin, Marie, Graham, and Hillary who all live in New Zealand.

We met Gavin and Marie the very first day of our walk and did not let them go. Their warmth, sense of humor, and genuineness were so endearing to us. Marie and I have our education profession in common and Gavin and Jim are cookie fiends. They were always up for a dinner or a coffee.

Hillary and Graham were introduced to us by Gavin and Marie who met them along The Way. I still remember the first night we all dined together with Ann and Robin. We laughed the entire time. After that meeting, we saw Hillary and Graham almost every day. We had countless dinners, chocolate croissants with coffee, and good laughs together.

To say I’m excited for this reunion is an understatement. We will be visiting Gavin and Marie in Christchurch first. Gavin and Jim have been working on our itinerary for our time there while Marie and I have been sharing stories about our adult children and Marie’s grandchildren. After, we head over to Auckland to see Hillary and Graham. Hillary has been incredibly helpful in planning our time with them. One of our missions is to solidify our 2024 Camino Portugués so we can walk it together.

From New Zealand, we will head over to Australia to visit Melbourne, Gold Coast, Cairns and Sydney. We feel incredibly blessed to be able to go Down Under and look forward to creating new memories we will cherish for a lifetime. ❤️