I've dreamt of walking the Camino for a very long time
but hard to afford being away more than three weeks.
I know this will be my one and only opportunity to do the Camino
There is not just one RIGHT way to do YOUR Camino, but there are preferred ways each of us would like to do our Camino. We all have to plan our trips around the constraints of Time, Money and Health. If the cost of two additional weeks of dog sitting is keeping you from doing your preferred trip I urge you to delay your trip until you have saved that extra sum of money to cover that cost. Then do YOUR “one and only opportunity” the way you dreamt of doing it.
If your principal motivation for doing a Camino is to see the tangibles…particular sites, churches, bridges, landscapes, restaurants, cities, etc… and you want to see as many of these things on your list as possible then I agree it is best to combine some walking with taxi’s, busses and trains. A tour package might be best for you but I agree with the consensus here that it is an unnecessary expense and it locks you in to a schedule that cannot be modified. You will sleep, eat, start and stop on their schedule and if finances are a concern, accommodations and meals will be much more expensive than planning travel, accommodations and meals on your own. Download the app – Rome2rio on your phone and you can easily make travel arrangements while walking your Camino. Play with it on your home computer so you can experience just how easy it is to use before you go. This will help eliminate your worries about making your own travel plans in a foreign country while on the go. Keep in mind this type of trip is somewhat self selecting in terms of the kind of people it attracts…helpful, kind, open, adventurous, religious, diverse, multi-lingual…the point being just about anyone you ask for help will be happy to share their knowledge, will probably speak english and will be delighted to help you solve any problems.
The tangible highlights are easy to identify and plan your travel around. Of course you and 95% of the people planning their first camino have some sense of the intangibles that people experience on the camino but it’s much harder to put a value on them before you go and they are actually elusive if you actively try to find them. You cannot plan this part of your trip. But you can do things that will facilitate these intangible experiences. One part is just having an open mind, living in the moment, being open to every new person and experience, eliminating expectations for the day/week/trip. Another way is to have that continuity of the longer through walk. The longer walk, especially the meseta, helps provide a meditative state of mind. The longer walk yields an enhanced sense of group with all the positives and none of the negatives. You get this feeling of belonging with the continuity of this loose or tight group you start with and then interact with along the way. You can float in and out of the groups seamlessly, with no explanations or justifications, it feels natural and normal in this context. All of this gets deeper and better with time on the trail. It can and does still happen on a shorter camino but I think you get the chance to experience more of it if you have the luxury of more time and more continuity. So if that is something that ranks as a high value experience, there are things you can do to improve your chances of experiencing it. If doing the Frances, a first night in Orisson sets up this dynamic beautifully. You get to see first hand the possibilities and then carry that forward to every experience that follows.