Logroño to Nájera – 28.3km, 6.75 hours, Duques de Nájera, 67€

This was one of those long days, mostly in the hot sun that you just have to put you head down and keep walking. The scenery was not as nice as prior days, there were only two possible stops for food or drink, many kilometers were alongside a highway, and the sun was pretty relentless once the clouds got burned away. So we just plugged away.

We left the hostal this morning a little earlier than the normal 7:00am start. I admit to being fairly slow from wake-up to “out the door” but we are getting better. Other pilgrims seem to take just a few minutes. We take about 45 minutes plus whatever time it takes to see if the Orioles won, check what friends posted on Facebook, double-check the weather, etc. We always set the vibrating alarm for 6:00am but it was obvious this morning that we were both awake earlier due to the loud talking going on outside below our balcony. Leaving the balcony door open all night may not have been the best idea. Melanie suggested that since we were both awake, why shouldn’t we get a head start to a long day. Great idea. She got up and went to the bathroom as I started to change into my walking gear. After glancing at my watch as I put it on, I chuckled. It was 5:58am. What a head start! We did get out the door by 6:40am but fairly quickly found a bakery selling juice, coffee and croissants. You need energy, right???

We were somewhere near a lake, Pantano de la Grajera, when Melanie spotted the full moon, trying to poke through the haze and clouds. It looked huge when close to the horizon and the following photo over a vineyard doesn’t do it justice. It took me several minutes before I realized though – wasn’t the full moon last week? Also, I think that moon is setting in the East which maybe it shouldn’t be doing. That pale white disk in the sky was the sun. It’s been that long since we have seen it, I guess. By 10:00am, it had burned away the clouds and was working on doing the same to us. It’s 6:00pm at the moment and it just started raining again so, who knows what is in store for us tomorrow.

We managed to get into Navarrete by 10:00am so we had a second breakfast of an isotonic drink and a shared banana. I think we are loosing weight. We also bought an empanada to share for lunch later in the day. It was supposed to be a ham and cheese sandwich but we met our Brazilian friend at the cafe and he insisted on helping me order. The empanada saved us a little more than a kilometer on a detour to Ventoso, where the other food stop was located.

That reminds me. We thought the Brazilian’s name was Johannes. German names are common there because of immigration in the early and late 1940’s. He calls us Smith and Rodrigues. We found out at dinner last night that his name is actually Jones. We are assuming that is his las name. We had met him in the street last night as we looked for a dinner venue. He recommended a place where he ate lunch so we invited him to join us. Just as we took our seats in the restaurant, Melanie noticed a pilgrim sitting by herself and invited her to join us too. Old Jonesy didn’t seemed pleased but he introduced himself as Senhor Jones. The woman turned out to be Brazilian too but from a different region. The two then spent most of the meal arguing in Portuguese like an old married couple. Everything was fair game for the arguing including how to pronounce words in several languages, the weather, the distances on the Camino and some other stuff that sounded like “you always leave the toilet seat up”.

Back to today’s walk, we passed through a lot of vineyards and the grapes will soon be harvested. Our rule is that the grapes (or any other fruit / vegetable, belongs to the farmer. Taking any is not right, although occasionally we have been given some other fruit. We are definitely in the minority of pilgrims in this view. Jones said that it’s okay to eat the grapes on Sundays because the farmer doesn’t work on that day. Today though, we passed a field of grapes that appeared to be abandoned. The weeds engulfed all the grapevines. I may still have to go to confession over it anyway though because I took two grapes from a vine next to the trail. We each had one and it was like an apple from the garden of Eden. Except we already had our clothes on. It tasted great.

When you can see your town where you are stopping for the night, it’s normally a joyous occasion. You know you will soon be to take off your sweaty clothes and boots and have a hot (or cool) shower. It wasn’t really that today. We could see Nájera from eight kilometers away. That is almost two more hours of walking. It was more like a teasing. Fortunately we ran into Brazilian Vanessa from Miami and another lady from our Orisson class. We chatted with them the last three kilometers into town and that made those klicks go very easy.

By the way, I put my iPad down an hour and a bit ago to go to dinner. Boy were we surprised. Apparently, Nájera is one of the few towns along the French route in Spain that exclusively sticks to a Spanish schedule. Restaurants don’t open at least until 8:00pm for dinner here and, even then, the chef only starts the ovens a half hour later. Most other villages along the way have Camino and Spanish schedules so we can be in bed by 9:30 or 10:00pm. We did find a grocery store open so olives and nectarines are staving off the stomach growls.

That’s it for today. Peace y’all. Good night George and Leo