There’s something special about The Bluffs on the Cape Fear—beyond the riverfront views, wooded trails, and marina access. It’s the people who live here who truly make it feel like home. Every neighbor brings a unique background, a different passion, and a story worth sharing. In this series, we’re highlighting the lives and adventures of our fellow residents, starting with Cynthia, whose love for travel has shaped not only her outlook on life, but the way she’s made The Bluffs her own peaceful landing place between journeys.

As my walking buddies in the Bluffs Women Hikers Team Reach group know, I like taking walks, and I especially like long walks. But even I never envisioned myself heading out on a 280 km trek, particularly one that meant scrambling up and down mountain ridges with a 14 lb pack on my back. I’d been intrigued with the Camino de Santiago de Compostela since I was in college, and when a friend suggested last spring that we give it a try, I agreed in a New York minute.

One year of preparation, scrounging supplies and clothing, figuring out our route, and learning some basic Portuguese to add to my very rusty college Spanish, and on April 23, my two friends and I were off. Eighteen days and 174 miles later, we arrived in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and into the plaza of the great Cathedral.

Standing there in the great plaza, after two and a half weeks of daily trekking up the rugged Atlantic coast of Portugal and Spain, over mountain ridges, through big cities and tiny fishing villages, under forest canopies of eucalyptus trees and past endless vineyards, sleeping in hostels, pilgrim albergues, guest houses, a sprawling old farmhouse, even a trailer in a campground, I had no words. To know that I had followed the same path as had millions of pilgrims before me from the Middle Ages to today, all to pay homage to an Apostle of Jesus. Some say that the remains of St. James lay in the sarcophagus beneath the cathedral, others declare it to be myth, wishful legend. The “Truth” of it didn’t matter, what mattered was the reality of my journey, and the connection to countless pilgrims before me.

And of course, there was amazing food, friendly, welcoming people, breathtaking scenery, and the knowledge that, though it was SO difficult at times, and each day I got to a point where I thought I could go no further, yet I did. To challenge oneself can be lifechanging. To take on a challenge at an age when our culture says it is time to be winding down and enjoying the fruits of our earlier labors lends a whole new meaning to the idea of challenging oneself.

Would I do the Camino again? I don’t know. Would I encourage anyone else to take it on? Absolutely, or to head out on another long trek, perhaps through England or Scotland, and I might even join you. Bom Caminho!