We chose a hotel tonight right smack in the middle of the tiny town of Orio. (Yes, pronounced like the cookie, more or less.) Our hotel has a bar downstairs and there are dozens of people in the street in front talking and laughing. There’s another bar next door as well and more people socializing
For years we have gotten Spanish SIMs from Vodafone. They are kind of the t-mobile of Spain, that is, they usually have the best deals but not always the best coverage. They also have the slow and generally incompetent employees. They did not disappoint today. Wynette got her SIM but it turns out that they
After getting off the bus we wanted to check our backpacks. Perplexity (google it) led us to a hotel which led us to the tourist office which led us to a phone store which, among other things, checked luggage. So we climbed the little mountain without packs.
The first part of the Norte is Basque country. You may have noticed the oddly spelled names that don’t seem remotely Spanish. Basque is a language isolate and is the last remaining pre-Indo-European language in Europe. Here is a notice from our room so you can compare it to some other languages. It is the
Mountains climbed: 1 out of 2Stair steps missed not climbing the mountain: 312Stair steps up to Monte Urgull: < 312?(although we walked down also)Phone SIMs purchased: 1Phone eSIMs purchased: 0Backpacks checked: 2 Remember how the first Norte stage was the hardest? After climbing Jaizibel from Irun to Passajes, the camino climbs Mount Ulia on the
The road not taken.
There are two routes. The upper one is harder but prettier. Reader, we took it.
The New Mexico state question is “Red or green?” One big Camino question is “Poncho or rain jacket?” The Camino forum has numerous posts about this. Ponchos are faster to put on but flap around in the wind. To put on a rain jacket you need to take off your pack, get out the rain
Pasajes is on a ria, a fairly wide inlet that turns into a river, so it has a part on each side of the ria. (The long way to say ria is estuary. We never knew the word ria until we came to Spain but turns out crossword puzzle makers like the word.) We have