Camino Pilgrim

I am so happy that I have earplugs with me. Seriously. I slept 8 hours straight without any distractions. Didn’t even hear when everyone around me woke up and went out hiking. The alarm clock was the first to wake me at 6am. I guess the others woke up already at 5. I took my time with packing, breakfast and getting dressed. The plan for today was to start with daylight.

At 7am I was pretty much the last one in the whole building still in sleeping quarters. Out of hundreds of hikers, half had already left and the other half were putting on shoes downstairs to hit the tracks with the sunrise.

I started off the day with a casual powerwalk through the forest. Even though it was chilly outside, I still considered starting in a T-shirt to be the best option. It will get warmer while moving. I had quite the pace today since in the first hour I was already past around twenty hikers that started before me. Some of them just went for breakfast in a local place in the next village. It was quite interesting to see a business that opens up super early in the morning just to serve pilgrims food before sunrise.

I decided then that the topic of the day for me was to keep up an even pace and do no break until I reached Zubiri.

After I reached the village in the picture where I passed the group I was walking with the day before. A little after that, I met another familiar face from Australia and chatted a little. Brianagh is a young lady on a journey to discover Europe over 4 months. Her tour goes pretty much everywhere, so for Camino there is a very limited timeframe. For example, she will be in a few weeks in Serbia volunteering in the kitchen of a refugee camp. How cool is that?

Anywho, since I was in my powerwalk mode, I soon blew past everyone else again and put on earphones to listen to piano music of modern classics. The road ahead had a lot of uphill and downhill, but being totally zoned out by music, everything just felt like flying past me. Hikers around seemed to get slower and slower. Just the ones in sneakers like me were hard to pass.

That was until I reached the rocky downhill leading to Zubiri. The drop was really intense on the feet. Everything below myfeet was just shards of mountain rock with its teeth looking up. Walking on them really made my heels hurt. Once I reached Zubiri, I visited the local store and got a watermelon and some bread to enjoy an early lunch.

Since Zubiri is a little bit off the Camino trail, I decided to shortcut back on the course along the highway. It was a really strange feeling to walk in traffic. So far, I have always been away from cars and people in their normal daily lives.

Luckily there was a shortcut available through a mining zone and on the other side, I met up with Brianagh again. What are the odds, right?

Since both of us were headed to the same albergue, we joined forces and steadily walked past some tiny villages on the mountainside until we reached the Larrasona. This village is so tiny that it has pretty much just one street. On the one end, you have the municipal alberge and on the other end, the local store and restaurant.

The prices in the store were quite high, but with every purchase you get a glass of wine as a bonus. Great offer, right? Plus, the owner knew how to say “cheers” in Estonian.

The rest of the day was just about washing clothes, working and finishing my watermelon.

Can’t wait for tomorrow to see the city of Pamplona along the way. I have high hopes. Also, we have a small group of hikers from around the world forming. We are all doing around 25km a day. It would be fun to have a familiar group of people hanging out in all the same places as you are, but let’s see how it goes.

Anything can happen on the Camino.