We came to this monument our fourth day of walking. If you’ve seen the movie The Way it will look familiar. A fellow pilgrim, Stephan from Germany, asked us if we’d like to have him take our picture. This was on a high Ridge. Lovely monument and gorgeous views all around. We took some broader pictures (the monument is much bigger than what you see here) and some videos. Will post when we can. This WordPress app for android has been very flaky.
Wynette: Night before last at dinner with others in the albergue in Cirauqui where we stayed and had dinner we sat next to a man from Czech Republic, Prague. At first he was very quiet then as we talked a bit he said he was ill and feeling poorly. (He was handsome, looked like Russell Crowe.) Later the owner of the albergue stopped by our table and told him he was not sick, just sad. He left the table before we did and she came again to chat with us and said she has seen 40000 pilgrims in the 10 years she has had her albergue and she tries to talk to all of them and she has learned to tell the difference between sick and sad. She said many, especially those walking alone, often carry heavy burdens. Tonight at dinner in another town we sat with a young man from Russia. He too was traveling alone and he seemed sad. At one point Charlie asked him what kind of work he did back home in Russia. He hesitated then said he was a teacher then said on the Camino he didn’t want to talk about his life back home. He wanted to focus on being a pilgrim.
Note: Above photo was beautiful view from our room in the albergue in Cirauqui
We stayed in Estella in a nice hotel. Wynette got some new shoes to see if that helps, so a short day today, just 6 miles and then 7 tomorrow, better than trying to do 13 miles in new shoes.
We are staying in Monjardin in a cute little casa rural with three rooms.
Charlie: Cirauqui is a pretty hill top town where we stayed. We stayed in the albergue but in a private room. They had two private rooms and 28 dormitory beds.
The place is very pretty and artistic with colorful painting, artwork and lots of quirky and interesting little touches all over (see photos above and below). It was fun to stay there.
The owner was chatting with us after the communal pilgrim dinner she provided, which was very good. She had owned the place for 10 years and was getting tired of it. She wanted to sell but the economy in Spain is very bad and selling would be hard.
She also said that the Camino had changed in those 10 years. She said that before almost everyone was there for spiritual reasons, that they wanted to rethink things and change the direction of their lives.
Now, she thought a lot of people were on the Camino just for a good time or a vacation and not to change their lives.
It is hard to know exactly what to make of this. People are always thinking that things are not as good as they used to be and not like the good old days. But I suppose she could be right and things have changed. Maybe it was mostly religious people who knew about it before. Heck, everybody and his brother are doing it now, even Charlie and Wynette! Who’d of thought it?
Actually I had been thinking of the walk as a way to reevaluate my life now that I am almost 65. And I thought maybe even someone 65 could change the direction of their life.
Clearly on a long walk you have a lot of time to think things over and think about changes.
I guess the big question that everyone faces is “What should I do with my life?” both in terms of the next few days and the next few years. Actually that is pretty much the only question if you consider both the short and the long term.
So I guess that is why I am walking the Camino.
Charlie: I think we mentioned it in the blog and careful readers of the tracks will have noticed that we took the city bus out of Pamplona to Cizur Menor and joined the Camino there.
We had walked through Pamplona on the way in and it was not that pleasant. And Wynette was having foot problems and this took three miles off the day’s walk. All good reasons but every pilgrim feels bad about taking the bus for any part of the Camino.
Some of the books and blogs talk about the idea of who is a “true pilgrim”. The answer sometimes is that anyone who does less than you is not a true pilgrim. Like the people on packaged tours, or the people on bikes, or the people who take buses, or the people who don’t stay in albergues, or the people who don’t wear a heavy cross, etc.
This all gets back to why you are walking the Camino in the first place. A question that maybe is not so easy to answer.
Charlie: I meant to say this before but didn’t and it relates to the next post.
We took the bus from Pamplona to Roncesvalles in an hour and then took three days to walk back to Pamplona. This seems like a strange thing to do and makes you think about why you are walking the Camino at all.
Actually it is kind of hard to say really. It’s just something you want to do and you want to walk the whole way even if you have to do things like this.
We didn’t however start in St. Jean France. Roncesvalles seemed okay and a logical place to start but Burquette just 3 km farther along would not seem right.
All this is hard to explain.
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/myoj7lca96dew12/lbzpntXDOK
More from the walk from Pamplona
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/g5icjkydxrm4jsp/2e86_lR2G3 These are all at the top of a ridge after a long hard walk up. This place was shown in “The Way”. You can see Pamplona in one direction and your path ahead in the other direction.
We are in a nice hotel in Estella but the wifi is slow and not steady. It seems like Dropbox had better programmers than WordPress because it managed to upload our media. So we are creating shared albums in Dropbox and sharing the link with WordPress. This means the items are not labeled but we want to get them published. We’ll refer to some of them in other posts.