The Long Way Home

Walking the Camino de Santiago trail in Europe is for many a spiritual pilgrimage. For Christchurch mum Julie Zarifeh it was a way to cope with devastating grief. She talks to Emma Clifton about how the 800km trek helped her refocus her life after the tragic loss of her husband and son, and the poignant encounters she had along the way.

For someone who has suffered the unimaginable tragedy of losing a husband and a son within 16 days of each other, Julie Zarifeh uses the word “lucky” considerably more than you might imagine. The Christchurch mum of three is one of a team of six New Zealanders and Australians who star in Camino Skies, a documentary about the famous pilgrimage route through Europe, the 800km Camino de Santiago.

Julie, 55, had first heard about the walk back in 2010, when the movie The Way came out, and had mentally pegged it as something she might want to do one day. But when the idea reappeared seven years later, life was very different. It was in late October 2017, and Julie’s beloved husband Paul Zarifeh was in the final stages of his three-year battle with pancreatic cancer. She saw an ad for the walk, calling for New Zealand and Australian pilgrims who would be interested in hiking the Camino de Santiago as part of a documentary. The walk was due to start the following April, and Julie knew that by then, Paul would have died and she would be in the beginning stages of life without him. “It appealed as something to do and get away from New Zealand for a while, to do this big adventurous activity. I knew it was going to be daunting to go and do it on my own; what appealed more than anything was that there would be fellow Kiwis and Australians doing this walk.”