El Camino de Rocio

The Camino de Rocio is a cultural and religious tradition that takes place every spring in Spain. It is essentially a four day long pilgramage through the countryside consisting of a long procession of wagon-like carriages pulled by bulls, old-fashioned covered wagons pulled by horses and these little houses similar to motor homes that were pulled by huge tractors. All are decorated with many different colors and ornaments and each is very unique. The Camino began on Tuesday morning and ends on Friday and people from all over come to Andalucia (the southern region of Spain) to join in. They walk to the church of Rocio to worship their relgious figure, Rocio. People either walk, ride horses, or ride on the carriages or wagons through the dirt roads of the countryside for 4 days. There is a set route and the procession stops at night in small villages where the people camp out and have festivals all night with lots of dancing, singing and drinking. They start walking the next morning as soon as the sun rises. People can come and go or can walk for the entire 4 days.

The trailers that families would sleep in at night

Our host parents had been talking about the Camino for a few weeks and even showed us a few youtube videos about it. The festivals are more exciting in the morning, if you go to one of the towns where people stayed the night before and see them start on their walk again, but we have classes in the mornnig so our family was bummed that we couldn´t skip class to go see this. However, they really wanted us to be able to see it so yesterday afternoon our host dad, Ale, took me and Alexis to the countryside to follow the procession. We picked up his brother in law, Javier, on the way because he needed a ride to the procession because he is walking all 4 days, until Friday! We drove about 30 minutes out of the city and started to see lots of women dressed in flamenco dresses and people riding horses. We turned down this small dirt road and started to drive to meet up with the procession. There were already many cars ahead of us and they move very slowly (because they are behind the slow moving procession) and Ale was unable to park the car so me and Alexis got out of the car and walked with Javier up the dirt road to go see the procession while Ale followed behind in his car. Javier was the fastest walker that I have ever seen and we had to run at times to catch up with him! We soon learned that all of the women, and even small girls, wear flamenco dresses which was so pretty but me and Alexis definitely stood out as the Americans! We had to squeeze past many bulls that were pulling the wagons and it was crazy to stand right next to them and see how huge they actually are! While walking I was surpised to see how generous and friendly everyone was- they were all offering food and drinks to the people walking.

We finally caught up with the group that Javier was planning to walk with and then we slowed down our pace but continued to walk in the procession. We definitely got the authentic Spanish experience because we were the only Americans in sight. The women immediately asked us why we weren't wearing flamenco dresses, but they were very welcoming and were continually offering us food and drinks. We walked with them for a while and then met back up with Ale to drive us back to the city. We were exhausted after walking only 2 hours... I can't imagine doing it for a whole 4 days! Once again, I think I definitely lucked out with my host family because they really want to show us everything about their culture and make sure we have the best experience... most of the other students didn't even know what the Camino de Rocio was and none of them got the chance to go see it!