Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port is a small town in

southwest France, sitting in the foothills

of the Pyrenees mountains.

It would be totally unknown if it weren't for the fact

that it's the traditional starting point for the

Camino de Santiago, a 540-mile historic pilgrimage

across northern Spain.

That's why I ended up there, anyway.

Okay, so I just got the pilgrims' credencial.

It's a passport that you use on the Camino.

Normally, my brother and I meet every year

for a backpacking adventure.

Hank: We've made it to the top of the North Rim

of the Grand Canyon on January 1st!

But he couldn't do it this year because he got married

and needed his vacation time for his honeymoon.

So, sad that I'd be walking alone,

I decided to head out on the Camino de Santiago by myself

with a plan to walk all the way across Spain

to a lighthouse on the ocean.

This is the door to Spain and the Napoleon Route.

So, onto the Pyrenees!

People come from all over the world to walk the Camino

and a lot of them want their Caminos to be inward, spiritual journeys

as well as physical ones.

(Brock Currie) I'm doing the Camino because

the Camino is happening from here to here.

And, walking the Camino with so many other international

representatives of the world gives me a great deal of hope.

And I find myself marveling at

the beauty of the common spirit.

I'm not exactly sure why I'm doing the Camino de Santiago.

Really, the main reason is just for the adventure.

So, I'm not sure if I really believe

in the transformative aspect of it.

On the first day, I took the Napoleon Route,

a notoriously difficult, 25-kilometer climb over the Pyrenees.

It is pretty tiring. It's straight uphill the whole way.

If it anyone tells you the Camino de Santiago is easy, it is not.

It's quite a view up here though.

And it wasn't long before my fears

of being lonely disappeared.

These guys are hiking with me. This is

Katie, Mosta, and Grant & Ashley.

And, we are halfway to Pamplona!

But, by day three, I realized that, maybe, sitting in an office

for six months wasn't the best way to train for this trip.

It's a beautiful morning here.

This is supposed to be the easiest day so far, so,

that should help because

I have horrible blisters on the bottom of my feet.

I'm on the way to Pamplona, and I have three blisters

that are like pressure blisters on the bottom of my feet

and they hurt like a-- like crazy. Ugh.

Why am I doing this?

I mean, if it's this painful the whole time,

there's going to be some serious questions that need to be asked about

whether I really need to go the full 35 days.

But, wow, my feet hurt right now.

But, I was almost to Pamplona, so I kept going.

So, I'm here with Ky, a friend of mine from Germany.

We're hiking here through the city of Pamplona.

The strange thing about this is that we've been hiking

across the Spanish countryside, now, for days,

and, suddenly, we've just walked right into a huge city.

And there's music everywhere,

and it's pretty jolting and strange.

But, my feet hurt like crazy.

But I was happy I made there.

We've been having a picnic in the Pamplona park here

with some tasty...

(Ashley) ...morsels!

(Hank) Grant, how excited are you about this sandwich?!

Grant: Aw, yeah!

(Hank) Ashley, are you excited for this sandwich?

Ashley: Oh, yeah!

(Hank) Katie, how is it?

Katie: Number one sandwich.

So, I'm here in a restaurant here in Pamplona,

and, as you can see, we've finished

one, two, three, four, five, six

pitchers of Sangria!

(Hank) Katie, how are you feeling right now?

Amazing!

Uh, yeah. We've been drinking sangria all afternoon and

suddenly we have more energy than we've ever had on the Camino.

We're ready to do a whole other stage this afternoon.

(Hank) Ky, what do you think of the--

what do you think of the sangria?

It's pretty good.

But, in the morning, my blisters were so painful,

I could barely walk.

There was no way I could keep up with

Katie, Ky, Mosta, Grant & Ashley,

and they quickly left me behind.

It's the morning of day four, and things are

not looking good for me right now.

My blisters on my feet hurt so much.

I'm not sure I can hike today.

I'm going to start trying to hike and see how far I can get.

One of the things that's really interesting about the Camino

is the transitory nature of the relationships you have with

the people that you meet on the trail.

You're hiking and everyone hikes at different speeds

so you might meet someone on the trail

and you really like them; they seem great. But,

turns out they're hiking a lot faster than you,

and, suddenly, you talk to them for 10 minutes, and then

you walk away ahead of them, and you realize you may

never see them again for the rest of your life.

But, I kept going.

My feet hurt so much that I was walking at a quarter

of my normal speed, but at least I made it to the next town.

I've only walked half the day today from Pamplona,

but my feet just can't take it anymore; the blisters are so bad.

So, I'm going to stay here overnight and see how that goes.

I'm really pissed off and disappointed.

But my foot pain turned out to be a

blessing in disguise that day.

Stuck in town, I met up with Amalie.

I was really angry yesterday because

my blisters were hurting like crazy

and I only walked half the day.

But, I put threads and needles in my blisters yesterday:

tried to drain them out.

So, today I'm here with Amalie.

Amalie: Hi!

Hank: Who you can see right there.

And we're going to try to hike and see if my feet work.

Amalie and I walked together through rolling hills,

blanketed with thousands of green stalks of wheat,

shivering in the breeze.

When she told me that she was a medical student

walking the Camino to decide on her specialty

and to find an American's Netflix password to steal,

our shared sense of humor made us best friends

almost immediately.

(Hank) What are you eating?

Oh, you're video taping this?

(Hank) Mm hm.

I'm eating a snack pepper. That is some thing.

That's a thing.

(Hank) How long-- how many days have you been

carrying that in your pack?

I'd rather not tell.

But, with every step, my blisters only got worse.

Things have gotten pretty desperate here on the Camino.

We're taking these pads,

which are usually used for something else,

and we're trying to put them in our shoes

to make the blisters go away by reducing moisture.

I have no idea if this is going to work,

but, anything that could work, we're trying.

I'm here with Amalie.

I'm at the Centro de Salud which is the

health center here.

My blisters have gotten so bad on my feet that

I am ready to cut off my feet but instead of

cutting off my feet, I thought I would try

going to the Spanish doctor and see what

they want to do, especially because I want to make sure

it's not infected.

I have two nurses fixing my feet.

So, hopefully, I will be able to walk again soon.

But, boy, it hurts.

While the nurses worked to bandage and clean my feet,

the doctor was clear with me about one thing:

I had to stop walking for three days.

It's a pretty sad day on the Camino.

Amalie couldn't stop her Camino just because

my feet were hurting, so she had to hike out this morning.

And, so, I had to have a sad moment where

we said goodbye, and I may never see her again.

I meet people traveling all the time, but

there is something special about Amalie

that I can't quite quantify.

There's something pure about her spirit,

and inspiring about her that made me want to stay with her.

So, it's really hard to have to say goodbye to her.

Even though we only hiked together for three days,

it feels like we're already very good friends, and,

the idea of never seeing her again seems terrible.

It's very hard to let go of that feeling

of not wanting to let people go,

not wanting to let people get away.

I always have the sense of wanting to say,

"Well, if I never see you again for the rest of your life,

it was great meeting you!"

in a way that's kind of weird, and

you can't really say to someone you just met.

But, you want to because

you want to just appreciate the people in the moment.

The Camino really forces you to appreciate that moment

because that moment's fleeting.

In just a minute,

the person you're talking to will be gone,

and you may never see them again.

And, so, you just have to relish

that moment that you have.

(Gardur) This is the third Camino in three years.

I'm doing 1,800 kilometers

and that's because of my fiancé.

I did the Camino in 2007,

and, after one or two days, I met her.

I just saw her neck!

I fell in love with her neck!

I approached her, and

we walked the Camino together.

And then there was no contact in eight years.

And then we both decided to do the Camino.

Separately. So she contacted me on Facebook.

So, we said, "Let's see if the

feelings are still there."

And they are.

After letting my blisters heal for two days in Estella,

I started walking the Camino again by myself.

Well, it's a different kind of day on the Camino today.

I'm the only person I've seen hiking the Camino

the whole day.

And, I'm in tens of miles of wheat fields

that just go on forever.

And, it's a very different

experience, which gives me a lot of time

to kind of think to myself and relax.

I spoke to a man from Iceland, and

he has walked the Camino every year, I think,

for the past eight years.

And he says that every time he does the Camino,

he gets closer to his true self.

Hiking today through these miles and miles

of wheat fields by myself,

I can kind of understand how

maybe if you just do this a lot,

you become more and more at peace with

who you are, and you really get to understand

what you're thinking and feeling

and how that affects you.

This is one of the prettiest parts of the Camino so far.

I'm the only one out here today,

because I left very late because of my feet.

So, it's a little bit lonely, but it's just gorgeous.

It's been an extremely long day, but

I'm at Logroño, which means: 100 miles!

I've hiked 100 miles across Spain,