Leaving in the dark of the morning, I am both too late for
the Danes (who take off at 5AM) and too early for the rest of the pilgrims I
know, and for a while I walk alone in substantial amounts of pain. My blisters are a constant source of pain and
worry at this point – I both refuse to take a day off and don’t know what else
to do other than bandage, pray, and curse.
I know that I’m resilient enough to muscle through, but I’m really
hoping that I won’t end up slogging through pain every day just to get to a
town and limp through the evenings, distracted from the purpose of pilgrimage.
Somewhere in the early morning, before Logrono, I meet up
with a tall, lanky woman from Chicago named Brooke who accompanies me into and
beyond the city. We stop for breakfast
at a Way-side café in the middle of this strangely quiet city – midmorning the
previous night’s wine festival has left the streets empty, the town quiet, and
not unsurprising amounts of wine bottles and trash on the ground.
Breakfast is delicious, we sit with an older couple from
Canada who I will see intermittently over the next month, and after getting
lost navigating our way out of the city and onto the bike path that leads away
from Logrono (and having a surprisingly touching conversation about the state
of the Catholic Church in America), I stop to investigate my feet and she
pushes on. She’s aiming for 40+
kilometers a day, and that’s crazy talk.
She’s a witty, highly intelligent woman and I’m sad to see her go – the challenging
and reciprocal conversation has kept me from thinking too closely about my
feet.
The next section largely weaves in and out of wine country
(we crossed into the Rioja region from Navarre already) and through a large
park/wilderness reserve area that has bicyclists, families, day hikers, and picnickers
happy in their element. In the early
afternoon I stop at a shelter to chow down on a leftover bocadillo and run into
yet another Canadian couple and Martina, the German woman from Hostel
Jakue. We walk together for a while and
talk about organic farms and living sustainably for the end of the trek into
Navarette, where I catch up to Joseph on the edge of town.
What I should probably say is that the day is blisteringly
hot, there is almost no shade, and I’ve found the one measly shady spot next to
the wall of an ancient, ruined pilgrim’s hostel where I can relieve my bladder
(on the sunny side) and then sit and stare at my ruined feet in deep, deep
irritation when Joseph comes merrily traipsing up along the path and asks me
how things are going. It’s enough to get
me moving and make the final push up the hill into town, grumbling all the way.
Navarette is large enough to be interesting and small enough
to see in a few minutes’ walk – Joseph and I splurge at the private hostel on a
shared double room and then go in search of food. It’s a great time to practice my Spanish and
after getting some local recommendations for a place to eat we end up at a pilgrim-centric
bar facing a tree-shaded square. Brooke
is there taking a break for an early dinner, and so we get to share an outside
table with amazing small plates of paella and tall, cold glasses of beer.
After a much-needed nap at the hostel, this is where we all
end up again for dinner: Gitte, Jeppe, Joseph, myself, and a random Irish woman
named Emma. Round two of the paella for
me (did I mention that by the time this walk is over I’ll have lost 12
pounds? Considering what I ate along the
way, it’s a wonder I didn’t gain 20.
Paella is… not ‘lite’. Anyhow.)
and the rest of the night devolves into laughter and conversations that float
in and out of languages and coherence.
It’s another good ending to another (admittedly rough) day on the
Camino, and I have a plan to deal with those blisters… tomorrow.
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