Wynette: We are seeing more flowers. The poppies and lilacs and redbud and fruit trees are blooming. Today I think I saw a stork flying. Haven’t yet seen one up close. We hear lots of birds singing. Today passed a boggy area and heard frogs calling each other.
Wynette: Night before last we stayed in Navarrete. This was the pretty view from our hostal window. We went inside that church earlier in the day. It was spectacular. I’m amazed what large, beautiful churches these tiny towns have. Of course, the churches are very old. Literally 1000 years old. From a distance, as we’re walking into a town, their towers really stand out.
Wynette: In books we read by people who have walked the Camino, occasionally they would mention that they started out in the morning before the coffee places opened so they had to walk to the next town before having any coffee. When I read that I said “no way I’ll ever do that.” But, yep, that’s what happened to us the last two mornings. The weather turned quite warm so we have been starting out around 7, hoping to miss the worst of the heat by doing most of the walking in the morning. But the towns we stayed in were small and the bars weren’t open by then. (You’ve probably figured out that bars are the main places to get the wonderful café con leche. The bars are more like cafes. They do sell liquor but also many other things and people of all ages, including kids, go into them.) So yesterday we had to walk 4 miles before we had any coffee and today we walked about 3.5 miles before coffee. It might be in my mind, but I have felt much less energy when I’ve had to start out without. Above is bar in tiny town of Azofra where we had delicious coffee this morning. There were lots of early-rising pilgrims there. Check out all the packs on the bench.
The two women in pink are women we met on the camino day before yesterday. We’ve passed each other a few times. They are Canadians who immigrated there from Denmark in the mid 60s. They are a little older than us. They said they “looked at their birth certificates” and decided if they didn’t walk the Camino now they never would.
PS. The weather actually turned quite cold again today.
Charlie: Or whatever the plural is. We have been starting early so we are walking with groups of other pilgrims. There are seven in the distance. Notice the long shadows.
Charlie: We started at 780 so we passed 200 km today. We were talking to a pilgrim from Canada who said she liked km because they were shorter. This is at about 7:15 this morning.
There are services to transfer packs and tired pilgrims.
The taxi ad below was slapped onto one of the camino markers a few miles before the next town at a point one might be tempted to call.
Another taxi opportunity along with offer for massage. Just what these weary pilgrims long for.
Wynette: About half of our walk today was through a park-like recreation area outside Logroño. Several miles. We saw the above sign there. We were interpreting what they meant by the cute little pictures without looking at the text. Charlie decided the one below was “No Snoring”.
Charlie: We sent home a box of things we weren’t using yesterday. This included our rain pants, never used, the shoes that Wynette bought that didn’t work out, and lots of cold weather gear since the weather has turned warmer. About 5 pounds. We have talked to a few other pilgrims who have sent things home.
The post office provides boxes for you. This helps them too I think because the boxes are a standard size, four sizes actually, and have a bar code on them for tracking.
It was about $50 for 2.5 km in a ‘large’ box, size three of four.
You fill out a form and then the clerk types them into the computer. That part could be a little more efficient, especially if you have a new clerk like we did.
The big problem was the return address. We talked to a women from England who said to put the to and from addresses the same. That caused no end of problems. We finally changed it to the address of our hotel and got it to work. So it took 45 minutes longer than it should have.
But we are thrilled to have five fewer pounds to carry. We took it all from Wynette and she is doing better with less extra weight on her foot.
Charlie: It seems my GPS runs a little fast. When we do the same track with my phone and Wynette’s, mine is 5 or 10 percent high. We tested it on the car a while ago and got the same thing.
I think about it like having one of those slimming mirrors. We look a little better than we really are.
But my tracks run maybe ten percent high, so you can adjust for that as you look at the daily tracks.
Charlie: We stayed in Logroño for two days and had a fine time there, a very nice city. We sent home five pounds of things we didn’t need including both of our rain pants. We rearranged the packs so Wynette is carrying less weight, plus she had two days of rest.
We were back on the Camino today. We went over eight miles which is more than we have done in a while. And a lot of that was on pavement going out of the city. (Turns out pavement/concrete is very hard on the feet.) Wynette felt better and we are going to try ten miles tomorrow. This will be on the red clay of La Rioja so it should be easier.
Wynette: Above photo is view from our hotel room in Logroño. It was rather late in the evening, but people were still out enjoying the evening.