With a grant from Skidmore’s Student Opportunity Fund, my friend and I walked the Portuguese Coastal route of the Camino de Santiago to understand why a traditionally religious pilgrimage has turned into a tourist phenomenon. Through my photographs, I aim to convey the outright strangeness of the experience. Catholic iconography appeared next to amusement park statues; towns were empty and lifeless, liminal in their 20th-century conservative aesthetics; thick forests were contrasted with graffiti and medieval structures. Though a meaningful and profound endeavor, the Camino de Santiago can’t escape kitschy, travel-blog-saturated contemporary motifs, giving it a playful sense of humor amidst its fundamentalist Catholic ideals.