What a wonderful day and trail for a hike today.  It was a bit colder than I had judged based on the photo of the pharmacy thermostat below. I had to reconsider my choice to not wear a coat when I saw that. In reality, it was just chilly before dawn and in the early light but great for walking.  It eventually got sunny but there were enough clouds around to mitigate the temperature. Before we could get overheated, a cloud would say, “hold my beer” and rush over a baby cloud the give us respite again. There was also a cool wind or strong breeze blowing throughout the day which made it even more delightful. There was also only one climb more than 100m and that was going into Villamayor de Montjardin. Other small steep hills or descents barely bothered us. 

Another thing that made kilometers seem to fly by was the people we spoke with along the way. We walked for more than an hour with a lovely young agriculture engineer from Barcelona. Aina had a fair number of piercings and tattoos and when she slowed down to chat with us, I wondered why she would hang out on the trail with two retirees that have trouble remembering their 60th birthday so long ago. Nonetheless, we chatted about other Caminoes we have done or want to do, our jobs or former jobs, shoes, the cost of living in Barcelona, why we all were walking, other people we have met and a dozen other topics.  It was such a delight to walk and talk with her.

We also walked with other people we have been seeing over the past few days including Yorkshire Carl, an Aussie living in England whose parents were Spanish immigrants in the 1950’s so he is fluent in Spanish, the Taiwanese and Chinese guys who walk together to sort out some detente, Irish Michael & Seamus who got upgraded last night from their normal albergue bunk beds in a common room to a private en-suite room (“with a refrigerator”!j and a young Japanese woman who made my day. We had only exchanged pleasantries when we saw her before but I saw that she was about to pass me. When she was close enough, I started quietly to sing a line from a Japanese children’s song that our friend in Singapore taught us. When she recognized the song, her face lit up and she finished singing every verse of the song. She sings very well!

The only unhappy moment we experienced was at the Irache wine fountain where every day the people from the winery hook up a cask of wine to a fountain and offer it to passing pilgrims in the true spirit of the Camino. Most people take a small cup of the wine, others sip a small tasting from their scallop shell symbol of the Camino, and a few other just put their mouth to the spigot and go to town. Despite the germs of the last one, that is what is supposed to happen. While we were there for a few minutes though, I saw two people each filling a liter water bottle with the wine. Another pilgrim passed us later with his stolen liter of wine proudly hanging from his backpack. Another person just opened the spigot and let the wine go to waste in the drain underneath because he wanted a picture of the flowing fountain. What is wrong with these people??  That fountain operates daily from 8:00am but I’m sure the cask was empty after the first hour today. 

The Pension Los Arcos is where we are staying tonight and we stayed here two years ago as well. When we checked in though, the woman recognized us and remembered our last stay on the day of the great Spanish floods. In addition to her wanting to give us all the information about the small hotel, she wanted to talk about her baby and our last trip here. Unfortunately, she must have forgotten that we don’t speak Spanish to her level of competence.  The speed that Spanish came out of her mouth is astounding. She must be a retired auctioneer or something similar.  Fortunately, we know the do’s and don’t’s around pilgrim hotels pretty well and we could follow the important parts. 

Well the chores are mostly done, we have showered, washed our clothes, dried them in the Spanish sun and wind, eaten a small lunch, written the blog (almost finished), booked tomorrow’s room, arranged for our bags to be forwarded, and laid out tomorrow’s outfit for the day (which is the same every day’).  I just have to shave, add pictures to the blog, publish it and take a ten minute nap before dinner. In other words…

Peace y’all!  Good night George, Leo and Stella (with a special message to Stella – please let Dad get some sleep. He can’t always walk you to sleep and he is useless at breastfeeding while Mom is working.  Don’t demand too much.).