camino budget Archives - Cruisin with the Colemans

When we started this blog in 2018, we had a long-term goal of leading groups* on adventure travel. Initially, we envisioned this goal for after retirement. However, the time has now come for us to pursue it. We have been inspired and are ready to lean into this new direction. But before I share more about that, let me provide some background on our story. When we started this blog in 2018, we had a long-term goal of leading groups on adventure travel. Initially, we envisioned this goal for after retirement. However, the time has now come for us to pursue it. We have been inspired and are ready to lean into this new direction. But before I share more about that, let me provide some background on our story. Brian and I used to lead sedentary lifestyles. When we met and got married, we both weighed over 300 pounds. Although we both enjoyed traveling, we never imagined the adventures we’d had since then. The photo from the mud run (above) was a huge leap for us. We used to joke, “If we’re running, it must be because something bad is happening—like a bear is chasing us!” Haha! We started walking our neighborhood because we had put on even more weight after a year of dating and planning a wedding. I remember when the scale surpassed 300 pounds. I was mortified and needed a change. I was extremely fortunate to be with a man who was up for any crazy idea I had. We started walking our neighborhood, which led to fad diets but a bit of hope that change was possible. This hope led to trying more realistic diets; we did Weight Watchers and transitioned from walking to hiking in local parks. By 2012, we had both lost over 100 pounds. We spent our time tent camping and hiking epic trails all over the country. Our passion for travel had always been present, but we fully committed to planning significant trips, taking advantage of our ability as teachers to travel for a couple of months at a time.

June 2017 – the moment that changed us forever

In 2017, we embarked on our first Camino de Santiago, backpacking 500 miles across Spain from St. Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela and continuing on to Finisterre. This experience was life-changing, igniting a passion for travel that grew in ways we never anticipated. In fact, the lessons we learned on that first Camino are still unfolding for us. Less than a week after completing the Camino, we purchased an RV for more travel adventures. Since then, we have RV’d over 50,000 miles through 36 states. We have walked five more Caminos, including the Camino Portuguese, the Camino del Norte, and the Via Francigena. In 2018, during our first major RV road trip through Ohio, Michigan, Canada, and New York, we launched this blog. We also established our brand, Cruisin’ with the Colemans, because we anticipated that one day—though a long time from now—we would lead group trips. Given our background as teachers and experience leading groups, this felt like a natural progression for us. We have taken students abroad, on cruises, and to New York City, so pursuing this long-term goal seemed like a perfect fit. Foreward to now, Brian is only a couple of years from retirement, and my retirement date depends on our financial stability. But more importantly, we have typically made our summer plans by this time of the year. It’s not for a lack of trying, but nothing felt right. This week, we were honored to host Bill Bennett and his beautiful wife, Jennifer Cluff. We had an outstanding time talking about Camino, travel, and our mutual interests. By the last day, on our last drive together, during a conversation about destinations we should explore, Jennifer asked why we were not leading groups. Our answer has always been, “Because we are waiting until we retire.” I need to reflect on what I just typed. I realized that my previous statement is the complete opposite of everything we stand for. It’s a revelation for me. We’re not about waiting for retirement but about taking action and starting now. Ok, back on track. Our travel plans for 2025 are taking shape, and it is time for you to join us on our first group travel experience*. This will be a 12-day trip walking the Camino de Santiago from Samos to Santiago de Compostela, where you can walk the full 120 kilometers from Sarria to Santiago to earn a Compostela.

Finalized trip details can be found in this more recent blog.

Here is what you can expect on this trip from us:

You will have the option to walk all day, every day. If you don’t want to earn the Compostela, you can walk part of the day with less mileage. If you want to bike, okay, we have you covered (this will not earn you a Compostela). You don’t have to walk at all. There will be plenty to do for people of varying physical abilities.
The walk will be about 17-25 kilometers or 10-15 miles per day; you can do as much or as little as you want
Light continental breakfast, typically coffee and a pastry
Communal dinner every night, including multiple courses and wine
Private or semi-private (with another group member) rooms that fit your needs. If you want to save a bit of money here, we can work with you on the other types of room/bed accommodations
Daily luggage transfer, so all you have to worry about is carrying a light pack with just your snacks and water
Transfer to/from Santiago airport at the start of the trip
Daytime transfer if you need to skip a part of the walk or just don’t want to walk that much in a day
Rest day at the beginning of the trip in Samos to explore the Monastery of San Xulián de Samos, built in the sixth century
Rest day near the end of the trip in Santiago de Compostela
On the rest day in Santiago, we will explore the Cathedral and do a rooftop tour of the church
Enjoy a traditional guiemada ceremony after dinner in Santiago de Compostela
Group bus trip to Finisterre to walk to the lighthouse for sunset and celebratory dinner
Transfer back to Santiago de Compostela for the end of the trip
Advance support for planning your trip
Camino 101 Zoom sessions to get ready and get familiar with those you will be traveling with
Help to make travel arrangements to/from Spain, including suggested flights from the US to Spain
Credential, pilgrim shell, and travel wallet to carry your pilgrim credential and passport
Thumb drive of photos and completed summary videos of your trip

When is this happening? July 2025, shortly after the 4th of July holiday. The trip will be 12 days, so with your travel days, you are well within a solid two-week vacation. We will have a lot more details very soon.

How much will this cost? We will have details about the final cost of the trip very soon. Your only additional costs will be airfare to/from Spain, lunch, snacks, and personal equipment. We aim to keep this trip around $3,000 per person. From our research, we feel quite good about that number, but we need just a bit more time for a solid number. A deposit of $500 will be due shortly after the trip announcement. We are limiting participation to 12 people. A payment plan will be arranged, with the total amount due 10 days before departure.

This trip will not include:

Church or museum admissions outside of Santiago
Lunches and snacks
Travel insurance (but you are required to show proof of personal medical and travel insurance)
Transportation to and from Santiago
Personal equipment, such as backpacks, hiking poles, etc.

What’s the next step? Honestly, be ready to make a deposit. We expect the 12 slots will fill fast. We anticipate making the complete announcement next week. We have a few details to implement to ensure the highest quality trip possible. If you go Cruisin’ with the Colemans, you are going in style! Thank you for following this blog adventure to the end. Our goal remains the same—we want to inspire you to take adventures, but even more so, we want you to take an adventure with us this year!!

Do you have questions? Do you want to make a deposit? Do you want me to know that you are considering making a deposit? Whatever your questions, our email address is cruisinwiththecolemans@gmail.com—we would love to hear from you!

*We are not certified travel agents, but we are experienced travelers and educators with over 25 years of leading group experiences. We organize travel experiences to destinations we know well from our own journeys. However, we do not claim to be experts on the various cultures or locations we visit. We may hire a local expert to enhance your travel experience if available.

You can subscribe to our email list right here. We promise not to spam you and will not share your email with anyone!

This is a controversial topic – money! Before you read any further, we ask that you are kind to us. This is our budget for our Camino – you can spend a lot less and even spend a lot more than we did! We know there are a lot of ways to plan or not to plan your Camino, this is just what we did in 2017 and what we are doing for our 2019 Camino, we hope this budget helps a few people. Let me begin by giving you a summary of our goals when planning our Caminos:

Flight cost – find it cheap and the least amount of connections
Plan a few luxuries – this so we have little things to look forward to along the way.
Private rooms – this is important to us so we don’t have to pack sleeping gear/sleeping clothes and towels. It saves weight and we know we will get a good night sleep.
Enjoy the culture – this means we plan to have evenings out to enjoy the local food and don’t eat as many pilgrim meals in the evening.

Ok, so this is another way we are different than other pilgrims. We planned out our Camino from beginning to end, meaning we planned our stops and reserved all of our rooms in advance. We knew this meant that if we were suffering from illness or injury, we would have to taxi ahead to the next town vs. walking to it. Some will not agree with this philosophy, but this was how we planned our pilgrimage. In the end, for our Camino in 2017, we taxied about 20-25 km of our entire Camino. This is a number we could live with for the peace of mind of knowing where we were sleeping every night. We have to travel on the Camino during the busiest time of the year because we are teachers, so planning the rooms in advance helped ease our minds and helped us stay on budget.

Jean-Michel with us at his Bed and Breakfast in Saint John Pied de Port, France wishing a *Buen Camino*!

Let’s talk about flights first, I discussed this a little bit in our blog post entitled, Our Top 10 Pieces of Essential Camino Gear if you want to read it later. We monitor flights using the apps Skyscanner and Hopper and when they tell us to buy, we do. The best thing to do is look at direct flights from one hub to another. For us, we have found inexpensive flights from Boston to Madrid. In 2017 we flew Iberia Air and our Boston to Madrid tickets were $500 total, for both of us, and then we spent another $500 total getting from Ohio to Boston. For our 2019 Camino we are flying Air Portugal from Boston to Madrid and our tickets were the same price at $500 for both. We are still monitoring flights to Boston. You have to know where you are looking to fly, monitor flights, and be willing to wait to buy the tickets.

A foot bath and massage in Pamplona, I wouldn’t even call it a luxury because my body needed this treat!

We always plan a few luxuries on our trips because it gives us things to look forward to when we are exhausted, tired, or just plain grumpy. In Pamplona, we didn’t know where it would happen but we budgeted for massages. This city comes after hiking about 3-4 days (depending on if you stop in Orrison, as we did) and your feet will be so happy that you are treating them. This cost 100 euros for us both and was so worth! We planned to have a few more massages along the way but didn’t have as many opportunities as we hoped. Our total budget for luxuries was 500 euros, we mainly spent this money on nicer restuarants and wine.

Don’t fret, we planned other luxuries, like in the places we stayed at. Our lodging budget was to average 50 euros a night for a room. Fortunately, we had plenty of rooms that only cost about 35-45 euros so we could splurge a bit in other places. For example, we read in another blog (sorry, I can’t remember the name of the blog) that Casa de Tepa in Astorga was their absolute favorite hotel on the entire Camino so we booked a room. This room came in at 82 euros, sadly prices have gone up because the website says it costs 115 euros today. We stayed in the Napoleon Room, I encourage you to go to the website and check out their videos of the different rooms. This wasn’t just called, “The Napoleon Room,” it was the actual room that Napoleon stayed in! Crazy! The best parts of this hotel were the location to the Gaudi museum and the town square, the gorgous backyard patio, the reading rooms throughout the hotel, and the cash bar on the patio. It was a fantastic find and a well-planned luxury.

Private rooms were so important to us, as it’s an important way to end a long day of walking. I am a light sleeper and I heard so many people complaining about not getting a good night’s sleep on the Camino because of the sounds and smells of others. This meant our budget was higher than it was for others in a shared room, but sometimes not too much higher. The best part was that we did not have to carry sleeping bags, pillows, towels, or even sleeping clothes. We didn’t always have a private bathroom, that was something we were willing to give up in order to stay on budget.

Luxuries came in many forms from private rooms, to air-conditioned rooms, to massages, to couple fancy restaurants (the one featured below is not considered a fancy place – lol).

We found “Mexican” cuisine in Leon, Spain

Finally, we had to find luxuries by exploring the local life and local food. It was important for us to experience the culture, not just the pilgrimage. Sometimes that meant finding out what food tasted like in a Spanish-Mexican restaurant. The takeaway was that we full-filled the urge we had for tacos but don’t get a margarita (you’ll thank me for that advice, I promise)! Other times our goal was to truly experience the local food. For example, when in Galicia you must try pulpo (octopus)! I am not a fan of octopus here in the States, but I am not going to lie, I loved pulpo. As far as our food budget goes, we planned to spend 50 euros a day for both of us in 2017 but we were closer to averaging 60 euros a day. What can I say, we do love our food…and wine!

In summary, the 2019 Coleman budget for the two of us combined breaks down like this:

Flights: 1000 dollars
Private Rooms: 50 euros a night
Food: 60 euros a day
Other transportation: 300 euros
Luxuries: 500 euros total

We hope this helps you in your Camino planning because if you are still reading this blog post, we will assume you are a planner. Click the like button to show us some Camino love. We would appreciate hearing from you – in the comments please tell us about your Camino, what you are looking forward to on the Camino, or what you are nervous about.

Buen Camino! Brian and Michelle

Tag: camino budget

Our Camino Budget