Intermission: Well, good morning

Life as a pilgrim is funny.

Every afternoon, I lie in a dormitory room with a new bunch of people I´ve never met - might be 6, or 20, or once, 120. We´re often strangers at the beginning, but by morning we´ll know the intimacies of one another´s sleep, the scruffiness of his morning hair, whether she wears a lace bra or a sports tank, how much belly hangs over so-and-so´s too-small jocks.

Glimpses into people´s most private, sensitive moments. You end up knowing things about a 12-hour acquaintance that you don´t even know about close family members.

And then you do it again the next day and the day after that. It´s odd.

Day 9: 8/5/09 Viana to Navarrete

• Hannah´s backpack & the bread stick poking out the top makes her look like Star War´s Bobba Fett.
• Passing through the endless vinyards all day. The vines are generally not grown on wires like in Aus -- they seem to be cut down to stumps & regrown each year.
• It turns out that it´s Friday (we´d lost track). We followed a popular walking path through Logroño for several kilometers. Perhaps unsurprisingly for being along a pilgrim route, the Spanish seem to have an active walking culture. For the number of people out walking, we´d initially thought it was the weekened.
• We arrived in Navarrete just before noon, and already there were about 16 people waiting at the albergue. The convention is to place backpacks in a queue so that it´s first come, first served (or bedded, as the case may be).
• We had our first negative experience today. The albergue manager upset quite a few people by having them wait for several hours... only to tell them that there were no more beds. Then he´d let a few more in... then he´d arbitrarily turn people away again. We found out the following day that he ended up turning away an 83 year old man at 8:00pm, making him walk an extra 6kms to the next town. A few people are going to report him to the authorities. Not that it matters, but he wasn´t Spanish. I haven´t yet met a single Spanish person that hasn´t been more than willing to go out of their way to help pilgrims. We once had a car pull up blocking all traffic for several minutes while giving directions. Road works had diverted the normal path, and there was aaaaaaabsolutely no way they were going to let us get lost. Other people have stories of locals walking kilometers out of their way to ensure pilrims got to their destinations.
• We were over eating out at restaurants and were craving a homecooked meal with a good dose of veggies, so we spent 20€ in the local supermarket and bought enough to over-feed half the albergue. That´ll keep the scurvey away for a few more days!
• There´s supposed to be a storm overnight. The wet & cold don´t come in through our clothes, so I´m almost hoping the rain will continue until tomorow. In a few more days we´ll hit the open flats of the meseta where there´s very little variation, so it´ll be good to mix it up a little first. :)
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Day 8: Los Arcos to Viana (19.5kms)

I´m developing a good case of ¨Camino Neck¨. It´s like ¨Truckie´s Arm¨, but specific to the Camino. We start walking before sunrise each morning, and continue until about noon. This means that the sun is always either on the back of our neck, or the left side of our face. So everyone os developing a good tan... except for the right sides of their faces. I suppose it´s like a secret handshake for pilgrims... except everyone can see it.

We heard that this town had a bit of character. We met one of these characters within a minute or two of sitting down for a beer. An old Spanish guy stood by our table for a minute or two without saying a word. One of our travel partners, Ben, a Maltese from Canberra, offered the guy a drink. A moment later the old guy picked up my beer and started drinking! He sat with us for several minutess, and we think (one of?) his names may have been Francesco. He was saying something about the moon, but we´ve no idea what. (¨Don´t stray from the path under a full moon¨possibly?)

We later followed the crowd & church bells to the Iglesia de Santa Maria to what we thought was mass, but it turned out to be a funeral. We decided not to gatecrash.

Some pilgrims are doing the Camino with various animals. A group of French woman have a donkey carrying their gear, and I´ve taken a few photos of their ass. A German guy is doing the Camino with his dog, which coincidentally happens to be a German Shepard.

Day 7: to Los Arcos

Estella to Los Arcos (21kms)

Once again, the entire countryside is changing. Late in the walk today we walked through a grove of bushes with tiny Lilac blossom -- buzzing with bees & huuuge bumblebees the size of wallnuts. The pungent scent of honey was overwhelming, and I resolved to do a honey-layback as soon as I could get my hands on some.

The morning we stopped at the famous wine fountain. It was more of a trickle than I´d imagined, but it delivered as promised. One lady we spoke to later had been patient enough to fill her water bottle. If ever there was a reason for patience being a virtue, this was it.

Even though we don´t speak the languages of many of the other people here, we can tell they´re often talking about similar day-to-day things to us. ´Albergue´, kilometers, opening times & meal times are common themes.

Tonight we met a group of Aussies & had the obligatory Melbourne/Sydney rivalry. One day those Sydneysiders will realise that Sydney is sooooo 1780s and move somewhere better, like Melbourne. :)

Day 6: Hannah´s epic [Boots of iPod] (+20% speed)

Once again, Hannah donned her iPod for a little while in the morning. When she gets into a songshe likes, there´s absolutely no catching her. She just leaves a dust trail like Speedy Gonzalez.

After trying to catch her for 20mins, I switched from the relatively mellowThe Decemberists (folk rock?) to Dethklök (parody speed death metal). There´s no music in the world that could have suited the scenery less, but I gained a bit of ground on her.

On paper, this day didn´t seem like a big one -- 22.4kms over a few mountains, but they were much smaller than the ones we´d done in the first few days. However, Hannah was fading in the last few kms, and I wasn´t too far behind her. I think it´s partly (or mostly) our pack weight. I´ve got 14kgs plus 2 litres water for a total of 16kgs. Some people have only 6 or 7 in total. While walking I mentally made a list of items that seemed essential earlier, but will now be posted back home.
* 10-24mm lens (600g)
* backpacksecurity mesh (600g)
* incompatible power adaptors (100g)
* 2nd thermal long sleeve top (200g)
* spare pillow slips / bag separators (30g)
* bathers (can use shorts instead (100g)

So, there´s probably over 2kgs I already know I can post back, even before I actually unpack my bag. Hannah can probably compile a similar list. It certainly won´t get us down to the 6 kg mark, but it´ll make the end of the long days easier.

However, I think a lot of our fatigue was brought on by the speed sprints induced by Dethklök and whatever Hannah was listening to (I know Whitest Boy Alive was in there somewhere, and a bit of Michael Jackson).

The villages we´re passing through are incredible. The age of these villages is completely, and literally, foreign to us. Many of the cathedrals and churches date from the 1600s, and many of the stone bridges we cross date from the 1100s and 1200s. It´s just incredible to me that so many of these are still in day-to-day use for the general population. They´re not really tourist attractions, they´re just there.

After checking in with the albergue, we laid in the sun by the river, next to a towering stone church. The lunch we´d carried with us (bread stick, a tomato, olives) was followed by a snooze on the grass. It doesn´t get much better than this. :)

We spend dinner with two Aussies from Adelaide, Peter and Erin, and spent the evening talking about travel, house renovations and volunteer work organisations (Erin´s field of expertise). I think this was the first night infinite wine wasn´t included, so we settled for a cerveza (beer) instead. :)

Day 5: to Puente de Reina (21kms)

Cizur Menur to Peunte de Reina (21kms)

We walked about 21kms today. I think we´ve crossed the bulk of the Pyrenees, but there are still quite a few decent hills & mountains to cross. We climbed on of these and walked along the top ridge for a few kilometers.

We´ve made it into an aread where there are massive wind power generators along the top of each ridge. At first I thought there were dozens of them. Then I thought there may be hundreds. But as we reack the top of each new ridge, I can see more on the horizon in all directions, and I´m wondering if there are thousands. Each one of probably as big as a 10 story building, with the massive fan blades spinning leisurely around. Up close you can hear them humming, but it´s still quiet compared to the noise of the wind up there.

The more rugged bushland we´d been passing though is now giving way to open fields of dark green that is probably wheat (or barley? I´m not 100% sure), and fluro yellow rape seed. These are often bordered (or infiltrated) by thousands of vibrant red wild poppies. Considering we´d only moving at a walking pace, it´s amazing how quickly the landscape changes.

(out of internet time, more later)

Day 4: To Cizur Menur (about 5kms)

Today was a very short day of walking. Our legs needed a rest after the 70kms we´d walked over the past 3 days. Even though we´d walked around 800kms of training walks over the past 6 months, it was generally 5 to 10kms at a time, on flat land, in good weather, rarely carrying more than a few kilos.

Now, we´ve just walked about 25kms each day, up and over the Pyrenees, through the rain & mud, carrying about 16kilos. Our legs were a little tender, and Hannah had picked up a few blisters after getting damp feet in the mud. We decided to have a short day and walk to Cizur Menor.

We´d also heard that there was a lady there that specialised in blisters. I´d been the ¨Blister Doctor¨for the past few days, popping them with a safety pin, but this lady took it to a whole new level. She gave Hannah a syringe (a new one!) & taught her how to pierce them and syphon the juice out. Eeek. Everything about blister control is gross, but it´s so very practical & neccessary during a walk of this duration. If we were getting blisters by day 3, it´s something that´ll become a huge issue down the track if we don´t learn how to manage it. Prevention is better than cure.

So. Blisters come from two main sources: rubbing and moisture.

To avoid the rubbing she showed Hannah a dofferent method of lacing our shoes so they stayed tighter and didn´t let our feet slip forwards. We´ve also been using a thin inner ´toesie´sock under our normal sock.

To avoid moisture... she gave Hannah sanitary pads so use as insoles. WTF? LOL!

She also showed Hannah a way of cutting bandages to allow them to wrap around small toes effectively.

OK. Enough about blisters. They´re under control now.

The albergue (like a hostel, but only for pilrim´s) we stayed at was wonderful. It had a huge garden with plenty of room to spread out on the grass to read/write/sleep/sunbake. One section had a small pond full of turtles.

Fact: Some turtles love cat food.

These turtles were wrestling (as much as turtles can wrestle...) to beat each other to the owner´s Whiskers laden fork.

We had dinner at a modern restaurant that served a pilgrim´s menu with a few people we´d travelled with over the past few days. Generally Hannah & I walk by ourselves during the day, either passing or being passed by other pilgrims, but rarely do we walk with anyone else for more than a few minutes. Everyone goes at a speed comfortable to themselves. Sometimes we head to dinner with people we know, other times it´s pot-luck, mostly it´s a combination of the two. One night (Pamplona) we sat with a group of mostly German people, but quite a few of them also spoke English and acted as unofficial translators. The food quality ranges from average to great, but the atmosphere & company is always interesting.

At the albergues it´s policy to have the lights out by 10pm, rise by 6am, and by out the door before 8am. At home I´d rather have the schedule of sleeping 1am to 9am, but I´ve settled into this routine quite easily. We´re doing so much during the day that I don´t really want to stay up much past 10pm anyway.

The dorm sizes vary from town to town. The smallest we´ve been in was the 1st night with 6 people. The largest was the 2nd night at Roscenvalles with 120 people in a single vaulted ceillinged room. A few people snore or make noise during the night, but this is nothing that a simple pair of earplugs can´t fix.

I was a little apprehensive about this sort of accommodation at first, but everyone is in the same situation & respect each other´s privacy. The shower facilities aren´t really an issue either. Everyone seems to shower in the afternoon or evening after arriving at the albergue. This gives the towels a change to dry overnight (you definitely don´t want wet clothes/towels inside your backpack). There´s the option of showering in the mornings, but nobody seems to do this. It´s lights on at 6am, out the door by 8am, so by the time you get up, repack your bag, fill your water bottles, etc, where wouldn´t be much time anyway. Plus, you´re about to head out for a 5 to 7 hour hike, not a black tie dinner. :)