Day 11: Bivoac in Burgos

Yesterday's slog, it turned out was, 41.8 kilometers, way, way more than my longest of 32 kilometers from the Portuguese Camino four years ago.  We were wiped when we got to town.  We checked into a hotel where we'd stayed before with the family, showered, and napped.

Last night, we had dinner at a fabulous asador.  An asador is a restaurant specializing in roasting meats, usually suckling pig and baby lamb.  In this part of Spain, the specialty is baby lamb: cordero lechal.  The restaurant, Casa Ojeda, is famous, and dinner, early as we had it, was fabulous.

Casa Ojeda

This morning, we learned that our traveling companion Karin had opted to continue the Camino.  Tonight, we learned that she caught up with our young friends Tristan and Antonio from the past week in the town of Hontanas, where we plan on being tomorrow.

Karin and Tristan in Hontanas.  Even with new socks, we'll probably not catch up to them.

Ours was both a day of rest and a day of making crucial changes for the Camino.  I bought new socks in the hope that less bulky socks would lead to fewer blisters.  We mailed back Tina's sandals and my old socks.  The package was 1.1 kilograms--that's the better part of 2.5 pounds.  There's no reason to carry that much extra weight for three to four more weeks.  How much would you have to pay to buy a bike that weighed 2.5 pounds less?

The glass ceiling at the Burgos main post office.

We also bought toiletries and a three way expander so we can charge all of our devices when we have to share a single outlet at an albergue. 

Burgos is a beautiful city.  We've stayed in a bunch of tiny towns that didn't even have gas stations, but this is a real city with everything you need.

The 900 year old Burgos Cathedral from the front.

The Cathedral, viewed from the side.

I wanted to have lunch at something other than a traditional asador, so I found us a farm-to-table restaurant near our hotel.  This was not Camino food.

Salad with Goat Cheese

Eggplant and red pepper with anchovies.  OMG!

Merluza, AKA hake.

Monkfish.  Sorry!  I already took a bite!

After lunch, we tried planning out the next phase of the trek.  The Meseta is the high plains of Spain.  It starts here and goes on for something like 160 kilometers before you get to the city of Leon.  Tina's got an aggressive plan that's predicated on us starting in the wee hours each day to avoid the scorching sun.  Tomorrow, will be the first test.

Tonight, when we were ready to go out to (1) find where to rejoin the Camino, (2) buy fruit for the journey, and (3) get some dinner, we were greeted by thunder storms.

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Plain.  (The Meseta, in this case.) Tina alongside El Cid, who's buried here.

We paid for our hotel room tonight, and we'll hit the road tomorrow around 5 AM, ready for anything.  Tina will let you know how it turns out.

Day 10: Villafranca de Montes de Oca to Burgos

The Camino is a time for reflection.  It’s a time for introspection, and for paying attention to the small details that escape us when we’re focused on our hectic daily routine.  It’s also a time to develop a sense of thankfulness for the “little blessings” in life.  Today’s hike was an experience in all of the above.

Paco, Karin, and I started our walk at 5:45 am.  Europe is in the middle of a heat wave, and the first task ahead of us was to climb 500 meters up a mountain and make our way back down, to the village of San Juan de Ortega.  We started in the dark with headlamps lighting our way.

Thankfully, it was cool and misty with a low fog layer.  We walked through pine forests, with mist from the fog glistening through the headlamps.  As dawn appeared, we reach the Monumento de los Caídos, a memorial that marks the shallow graves of 300 local citizens executed at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.  This monument was particularly moving for Paco, whose family supported the Spanish Republic when the Civil War broke out.

Paco at the Spanish Civil War Memorial

We continued climbing for hours. 

Karin and Paco on Mountain Path at Daybreak

We reached the village of San Juan de Ortega at 8:30 am, having walked over 14 kilometers in search of our morning cup of coffee.  As we’ve experienced before, the town was not quite ready for pilgrims looking for coffee.  Thankfully, one café was just opening and enjoyed a quick refreshment before moving onward.

We took a longer rest break at the village of Atapuerca, about 6 kilometers further along the road.  This town was named a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2000.  The surrounding prehistoric caves are the source of the earliest human remains found in Europe and date back over 1.2 million years.

At this point, we had to walk up another mountain, 200 meters this time, and the terrain was rocky and steep.  Paco was very excited to make it to the cross at the top.

Paco at Cruz de Matagrande

We descended the mountain and were walking along chalky white hilly roads. According to our guidebook, there were two alternate routes to our next objective: the older Camino path, or a more recent path that was slightly shorter and recommended by the author.  Caveat: the new path was not well marked.  We chose what we thought was the new path.

The sun was bright and hot. There was no shade. Anywhere.  We walked as we thought the guidebook instructed, confirmed by the internet app our friend Karin had downloaded.  We walked down the hill toward the town in the distance, passing many Camino markers along the way. 

View from the Mountain top

Village in the Distance

 We crossed a bridge over the highway, then trudged through a large, long grassy field, emerging at a Camino marker…and a road.  And no more markers.

We turned right and continued a few kilometers along the road toward the village.  The sign at our arrival caught us off-guard: we had walked to Villafria, 3.5 kilometers north of our objective, and significantly east of where we had hoped to land.  We were crushed.

It was 1:30 in the afternoon.  The sun was relentless.  The temperature in the sun was 91.4 and humid. We stopped for a Coke in the café and came up with a new plan: we would continue walking an additional 7.7 kilometers to Burgos.  We were actually on an older, alternate Camino path which was a little shorter than our preferred route.  The remainder of the walk would be hot and sunny, but we’d be at our destination a day earlier than originally planned.

And so we walked.  In the sun.  Through the industrial outskirts of Burgos.  And we walked.  And it got hotter.  And we walked more.

And then we arrived!  It was 100.4 degrees in the square as we checked into our hotel around 4 pm. Having made it to Burgos in one day, we decided to stay for two nights and enjoy the city for another day. 

Burgos Cathedral behind small town square

Burgos Gate at Night

We walked 41.8 kilometers in one day.  My fitbit said we walked 53,000 steps upon arrival, 58,000 steps when we went to bed.  We made it!

Day 9: Grañón to Villafranca Montes de Oca, gingerly

The main street in Grañón.

I took this picture yesterday.  This morning, we left town at 5:30 AM with headlamps on.  We'd made reservations at a nice sounding albergue in Villa Franca Montes de Oca, almost 30 kilometers away, and wanted to get a head start before the sun got too high in the sky.

Finding Camino waymarkers isn't easy in the dark, but we were aided by the fact that there were two groups of pilgrims with headlamps ahead of us.  Even though they were just pinpoints of light, they gave us a clue when the path would take a turn.

You have now entered Castilla y Leon

It was still dark when we came came across this sign saying that we'd left Rioja and were now in Castilla y Leon.  It's going to take days to cross this province.  The itinerary is going to look something like this: one or two days getting to the beautiful medieval city of Burgos.  After that a number of awful days crossing the Meseta, the boiling hot high plains.  The prize is the city of Leon.  If all goes according to plan, we'll stay at the Parador that Martin Sheen and the other actors in "the Way" treated themselves to.  (A Parador is a luxury government run hotel in a historic building.)

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Rioja may be famous for wine, but the further we walked the fewer grapes we saw.  By the end, it was primarily wheat fields.  As we walked into Castilla y Leon, there were Sunflower fields as well as wheat.

Wheat, Women, and Sunflowers.

Back to the Camino.  Hitting the road at 5:30, my feet were on fire from yesterday's blisters.  The more I walked, the less my feet hurt.  I think that's a natural reaction to pain.  You block it out.  Later in the day, we'd stop and sit, and when we restarted, the phenomenon would repeat itself.

Spain is a country that stays up late, especially on Saturday nights.  Sunday mornings can be a very challenging time to get a cup of coffee, even in Madrid.  This morning was no exception.  We hoped to get a cup of coffee in one of the small towns that we were going to limp through, but town after town was asleep.  We trudged through the centers of 3 towns before we saw a single old man awake.

Finally, we reached the town of Belorado.  We'd been walking for close to four hours and all conversation had stopped.  The cafe we picked had nothing gluten free to eat, so we ate all of our leftover chorizo, dried fruit and nuts.  I was not in a good mood, but what a huge increase in energy!

Amber waves of Wheat (contains gluten)

Yes, much of the day was spent walking through fields, but periodically, we'd come across some amazing historical stuff.  Next to the tiny town of Tosantos, we saw this abandoned hermitage carved into the side of a mountain: Ermita de la Virgen de la Peña (Our Lady of the Crag).  The ancient cave dwellings were once home to hermits.  Look closely at the holes cut out from the mountains surrounding the hermitage below.

Ermita de la Virgen de la Peña

That's it, behind the wheat.

Most of the way, we were blessed with a low cloud cover, almost fog, making for cool, if humid, conditions.  It didn't burn off until noon, and then the trip got really hot and tedious.  Fortunately, the early start meant that we would arrive at Villafranca by 1:30, after eight hours of walking.  We'd discussed moving on further, but with that midday heat, we stuck to the original plan.

3.6 kilometers outside of Villafranca, we came across the remnants of Monasterio de San Feliz de Oca from the 9th century.  As you can see, there isn't a lot left of it, but hey, it's historically significant.

What's left of the Monasterio de San Feliz de Oca from the 9th century

We're in a fabulous albergue that's built into a very nice hotel.  The owner walked the Camino and wanted to do something for his fellow pilgrims.  For once, I'm not in a top bunk!  (The WiFi is painfully slow.)  They have a bar and gluten free beer!

Tomorrow's walk starts with a multi hour 600 foot climb through the mountains, so our next step is to buy groceries so we all don't get super "hangry" before we find a town with coffee.  Tina and Karin are talking about starting even earlier than we did today.  You can read about it when Tina updates the blog tomorrow.

Day 8: Nájera to Grañón…Blisters!

Because afternoon temperatures rise into the 90’s, we decided to get an early start on our day.  We arose at 4:45 am and were on the road shortly after 5:00.  We wore headlamps to cut through the darkness and made it onto the Camino to start our walk.

No, we’re not the only crazy pilgrims to start this early!  There were many others already along the route.  We could see the faint glimmer of their headlamps ahead of us.

We walked a long time in the dark.  Yes, it was cool and yes, we made a lot of progress.  But it’s a shame not to see anything along the way.  It’s better walking in the light.

We reached our first town, Azofra, at 6:30 am.  It’s 6.8 km from our starting point, and its existence centers on serving perregrinos.  Thankfully, there was a café open and serving great coffee early in the morning when we arrived.  It made Paco’s day!

Our walk today followed wheat fields, vineyards of La Rioja, and passed many medieval ruins and waymarkers.  

Scenes from the walk to Santo Domingo

Here’s a photo of Paco and our Swedish friend Karin with a medieval waymarker, La Picota.

Paco and our friend Karin at La Picota

By 10:30 am we reached Santo Domingo de la Calzada.  This is a beautiful medieval town which owes its existence to a young man named Domingo Garcia, born in 1019 to a family of very modest means.  He felt a calling to become a monk, but was denied acceptance by the local monastery because he was illiterate.  Instead, he devoted his life to improving the roads and infrastructure for pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela.  He built a pilgrim hospital, which is now the Parador, and a church, which evolved into the Cathedral.  It’s a very cute town and a great stop for refreshments and a rest.

Paco and Karin at the Medieval Wall at Santo Domingo

We picked up an important tip from a fellow traveler: to reduce stress on your feet, change your socks mid-trek.  We’ve been doing this for a few days, and it really makes a difference.

Except Paco started having issues with his feet.  Our discussion revolved which town would be our final destination: Grañón (6.7 km away) or Viloria de la Rioja (14.1 km).  We decided we’d wait to see how we felt as the day progressed.

Scenes from the Walk to Grañón

Two kilometers later, Paco called it: we’ll stop at Grañón.  His feet wouldn’t make it any further.  Just to put this into perspective, that makes a total of 29.5 kilometers for the day.

Grañón is a beautiful little town, with Iglesia San Juan Bautista at the center of the action. The church is beautiful, and Mass was very moving.  The special blessing for pilgrims on the Camino was very special.

Church of San Juan de Bautista in Grañón

We intended to stay at the albergue run by the Jacobean monks, adjacent to the church.  Upon arriving, we were shown the accommodations: two large attic rooms with 20 mats laid out side by side on the floor in each room.  One bathroom and one shower for all forty pilgrims.  We decided upon an alternate arrangement!

Poor Paco spent the afternoon tending to his sore feet.  Tomorrow, we hope to walk another 30 kilometers, if Paco can manage.  Otherwise, there are many other towns along the way that will pique our interest.

Paco's Toes: Day 8

Day 7:Logroño to Nájera, over 30 km in 7 hours

Last night, we said goodbye to two of our traveling companions from the first week.  Phil  Martin from Dublin and Cristina from Barcelona.  Some people come to do the whole Camino.  Some come for only parts.  Some hurt themselves, and don’t finish.  As you walk, you get to know a cohort, but things remain in flux as you leave some behind and catch up to new people.

From the left, Gregor, Tristan, Karin, Me, Phil, Antonio, Oliver, and Cristina

This is not a race, but if you dawdle on the road, the afternoon sun will kill you.  Our plan is to start early, keep up a good pace, and get to our daily destination in the very early afternoon.  The afternoon temperatures next week are supposed to be in the low 100's. (40+ C.)

Spain is in the wrong time zone.  It should be in the same zone as Portugal and Britain, but the former dictator, Francisco Franco, wanted the country to be on the same time as his Axis buddies in Berlin and Rome.  Nobody ever changed it, so with daylight savings time, when your clock says noon, the actual geological time is 10 AM.  Two in the afternoon is really geological noon.  After two is just plain hot.

We left our hotel room in Logroño at 6:00 AM and walked alone through the city streets towards the edges of town.  We walked through parks, around a lake, and quickly into the Rioja vineyards which are everywhere.

Pilgrims have attached crosses to this fence overlooking a major highway.

This part’s for our California friends.  The vineyards here are fascinating.  Some are dry farmed.  Some have irrigation using sluice gates, the way they do in Mendoza, Argentina.  Some have drip irrigation along the ground.  Some have it above the ground, like back at home.  Some vines are trellised, and others look like bushes.  Some of those have the canes sprouting starting a few inches off the ground.  There are no rules.

We walked through vineyards for the better part of seven hours today.  We seldom ever saw more than one person working the vines.  Usually, we saw nobody at all.  Contrast that to how labor intensive California farming seems, and you wonder how the math works.

Outside Logroño, we saw an experimental state farm where they’re growing white Tempranillo.  Who knew that existed?

Me outside Navarette.  Before coffee.

Back to the walk.  It took us two hours and 45 minutes to get to the town of Navarette, where I finally had my morning cup of coffee in the tiny Plaza Mayor Alta outside their main church.  As we sat, our friends Tristan and Gregor from Germany and Antonio from Croatia joined us.  Afterwards, Tina and I went into the church to light a candle for her mother, and we were awed by the splendor of the place.  The classical music helped.  Check out this video.

Navarette was beautiful, but we pushed on... and on, walking through just countryside.  After about four hours, we took refuge under a tree with a young man, Ramon, from Belgium.  He started from France the day before us.  It became apparent that all the people walking around us were in his Camino cohort.  We drank water and shared the dried chorizo sausage that I’d been carrying since we started.  We all needed the energy. 

The Camino isn't always easy. Old roads and Roman roads can look like this.

At 1:20 PM, we arrived at Nájera.  This is a funny town.  You walk into the new half of the town and you’re unimpressed.  It’s modernish, it has stores, schools and people.  You cross the historic bridge over the rushing Najerilla river, and you enter the old town, where it seems like 25% of the buildings are for sale or just vacant.  It could be beautiful.  It’s not there yet.

Our albergue is wonderful, and all of our friends are here tonight.  It’s called Puerta de Nájera.  Note this: none of these places so far have had air conditioning, so your ability to sleep in a bunk bed with seven other people in the room is dependent upon how much it cools off outside and if there’s cross ventilation.  I have my fingers crossed!

So as I write this, we’re sitting in the shade in a park along the riverbank waiting for the weather to break.  We’re having a really nice bottle of reserve Rioja that cost me 7.65 Euros, and we’re planning tomorrow’s trek.

Our plan is to walk 30 kilometers in very high heat to a very special monastery in Grañón where for hundreds of years, they’ve taken in all pilgrims who knock at their door.  It’s supposed to be very special.  We’ll tell you about it–if they have WiFi!

Day 6: From Los Arcos to Logroño

Once again, we left in the dark.  This time we weren't the only ones.  There were many people ahead of us on the road, and others close behind.  Everyone has figured out that you need to leave early to beat the heat.

And when you do, you're treated to joyous sites, likes these resting sheep, and the moon still afloat across the plains.

Sheep sleeping by the side of the road

Views of Viana at dawn

After a brisk 6.8 km walk, we arrived at a roadside cafe in a town called Sansol for coffee.  Of course, we were joined by many other pilgrims, all looking for the same thing!  We met a wonderful Spanish woman from Barcelona named Ana, who accompanied us on much of today's journey.  A veteran of many Caminos, she shared lots of great insights along the way.  She also helped identify many of the varieties of local vegetation we encountered: berries, tree fruit, grains, and more.  We asked what the locals did with the huge thistle plants that grew along the paths.  She said they peeled the coarse stems and sliced them thinly, serving this as a vegetable.  Who knew?!

We reached the beautiful town of Viana around 10:30.  It's a delightful medieval village of 4,400 people, with much of its historic nature intact.  We enjoyed a soda along the main road, across from the 13th century Viana Iglesia de Santa Maria.  The tomb of the notorious Cesar Borgia can be found just outside.

Paco at the Viana Cafe having a Coke

The stunning Viana Igelsia de Santa Maria

At this point, pilgrims have 2 choices: stay and enjoy the rest of the day in Viana, or set out for the provincial capitol of Rioja, Logroño, almost 10 kilometers further on.  We heard many people discussing staying in Viana for the day.  Paco and I chose to continue further. 

Midway along our path, we crossed into the province of La Rioja, one of the prized wine-making regions in Spain.  Previously, we had been in the province of Navarra, which also produces tremendous quality wines.  We've walked alongside many fields of grapevines, wheat, barley and corn.  This is a very rich and productive part of Spain.

Paco at the outskirts of La Rioja

Logroño is the capital of La Rioja.  It's a beautiful and fast-growing city of 155,000 with a cool mix of medieval and modern.  There's lots of construction and renovation all around.  This area is on a real upswing. 

Churches, of course, connect our path along the Camino  The crown jewel of Logroño is the Catedral de Santa Maria de Redonda, a 14th century Gothic gem that sits in the center of old town.

Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria de Redonda

Old town has beautiful streets filled with artisan shops, cafes, restaurants, bars, and everything else imaginable.  Laurel Street is a 3-block stretch filled with tapas bars, where everyone hangs out in the evenings--Paco included!

We splurged tonight and stayed in our first hotel of the journey.  What a delight!  Air conditioning, fresh sheets, our own bathroom, hotel-provided towels, soap and shampoo--what's not to love?  We'll be back to our pilgrim albergues (hostels) tomorrow.

We hiked 29.3 kilometers for the day.  Tomorrow's objective is 30.4 kilometers.  Our feet are very sore at the end of each trek!

Day 5 from Lorca to Los Arcos, almost 30 kilometers

Our alarms went off at 5:00 AM.  Our room in the Albergue only had 4 beds and only 3 were taken, so for once, we almost woke nobody.  Almost.

We hit the road at 5:30 wearing headlamps, which this time we really needed.  On the way down the stairs, Tina slipped and got pretty bruised up.  Remind me why we're getting up so early?

The objective for today is to get to the town of Los Arcos.  Since we finished yesterday prematurely, it's a full day from the book plus another eight and a half kilometers.  The total could be over 30 km for the day.

We left in the dark and the first two towns we went through, everyone was asleep.  Read that: no coffee.  Grrrrrrr.  So why were we leaving so early?  Because we knew it would be a long slog and the last 8 km were going to have no shade.  We wanted to get to Los Arcos before the day became unbearable.

Let's talk about Fitbits.  We've both got them.  We've been averaging over 40,000 steps a day.  We hit 10,000 today by 7:00.  Are you impressed?

Early this morning, the sign said we'd passed 100 kilometers.

Tina, in wine country, smiling, before my morning coffee.

We got coffee in the town of Estella.  As we sat at a sidewalk table, a bunch of our friends from the Camino showed up and did the same.  We finished up and crossed the river to get back on the Camino and ran into three more people that we were having wine with last night.  That's what it's like.

The places we walked through were stunning.  The wonderful thing about Europe is how people could live in a place for a few thousand years and not cover it with suburbs.  People live in the towns and the countryside is largely unchanged.

Does this picture even begin to convey the stunning views as you walk through the countryside?

At one point, I blurted out that all the place was missing was yellow bricks!

We decided to pick up litter as our way of being good pilgrims, so we got a plastic bag from another one of the peregrinos, Gregor from Berlin.  Somebody ahead of us must have had a head cold because it seemed that we picked up a few dozen wet kleenexes.  It was gross.  We stopped in the town of Azqueta so I could dump the trash, wash my hands repeatedly and have a cold Coke.

I don't drink soda in real life, but in the heat of the Camino, something cold, sweet and fizzy really hits the spot!

After Azqueta, this day's route has a whole lot of nothing.  Fortunately for us, it was breezy and partly cloudy stopping the day from heating up until the afternoon.  Walking was a joy, and the views were amazing.

There's a famous pop up stand on this route run by some guy named Eduardo.  It's a god send.  In the middle of no where, there are covered tables, cold drinks, and rock & roll.  Of course we stopped.

This is what an oasis looks like.

The last 6.5 kilometers went by quickly.  We were in a zone, but the closer we got to the destination, the lighter the winds became, the hotter things got.  By the time we arrived in Los Arcos, we were spent.

We decided to let the Camino decide where we were going to stay, so we didn't make a reservation at an albergue.  We walked to our first choice, and it was closed for two days for personal reasons.  I thought the Camino always provided!  We walked to our second choice and got a room for two with a semi private bathroom and a patio.  Damn!

When I took my shower, I realized that this bathroom was the largest private space that I'd been in since we started five days ago.  Giving up privilege and patterns is a big part of this.

After showering, we walked back to the center of town and ate lunch in the cafe where Jost calls out to grumpy Tom in the movie "The Way".  It's the place where the waiter explains to Martin Sheen the difference between Pinxtos and Tapas.  The food was great and after lunch, we were joined for wine by our friend, Phil Martin, from Ireland and Karin (Karma) from Sweden.  It was great, but all of us were just bushed from the day's hike.

Where we had lunch.  You can see Phil sitting at our table if you look closely.

On the way back from lunch, I took some photos of the town's 16th Century church.  It was incredible.  Judge for yourself.

This shrinking town has a population of 1,200.  The Camino keeps it alive as far as I can see.

The church even has a cloister.

Tomorrow, we're walking to Logroño, the provincial capital of the wine region Rioja.  Thursday nights are half priced tapas on a certain well known street, so all of the folks we've been walking with have made a date.  We'll let you know how it turns out!