All is well Estella to Los Arcos

I don´t think that Hemmingway ever had as much trouble sending dispatches back from the front line. The search for computers has been an ongoing problem. Photos will be delivered soon once I find one that can connect with my SanDisk

I have largely been walking alone. The body is holding out extremely well for an "ancient"  such as myself. My shoulders are the  only place that I feel even the slightest bit of pain and that is from a backpack that is digging ferociously into my shoulders. I have a water container known as a "CamelBak," which enables me  to sip water through a plastic tubing. Trouble is, the water tastes like plastic. These are champagne problems, I know. We are just lucky to have access to water at all.

I have walked from Estella to Los Arcos. The first eight kilometers is uphill through beautiful wooded areas and then a gradual descent into a dry arid plain for the remainder of the day´s journey. The last kilometer seems to go on for at least five.

Just outside of Estella  is a  fountain that belongs  to the vineyards of Irache. It dispenses free wine and water to  "fortify" travellers such as myself. Arriving at 10.00 in the morning is probably too early for this sort of fortifying. Anyway, I missed the turning so the experience of free wine will have to live on in my memory from five years ago.

I keep bumping into the same people along the way: we stop to chat and compare notes and then tend to move on. I have dinner with a woman from Vancouver Island who likes to complete everyone´s sentences - very irritating - and a retired Swedish man. Before I can stop him, he picks up our tab - a very spontaneous act of generosity on his part. On arrival at the Refugio, I am given the option of a larger dormitory that accommodates twenty persons or one that sleeps only eight for a few Euros more. I decide on the more expensive option - what luxury.

Showers seem to be working very well on my Camino to date and I seem to always have a plentiful supply of hot water. If I arrive early enough  in the day, I will do a hand washing of clothes and hope that they dry by morning. If they don´t dry then I just bundle them up into an old washing bag and hope that I can dry them at the next refuge. Some people attach wet laundry to the back of their backpacks and allow it to dry during their day's journey.

Zariquiegui to Puente La Reina and on to Estella

I am feeling more and more vibrant both physically and emotionally. Back in  Roncesvalles, I felt that I was in the Valley of Despair. I realise that I had felt similarly vulnerable the five years before. That is how the physical can so easily affect the emotional. Of course, it also works the other way. The emotional can so easily affect the physical.

At Alto del Perdon

I will be adding more photos to each blog from time to time. However, not all computers along the way have the necessary hardware to include pictures, especially in the smaller communities along the way. I also seem to be losing descriptive passages. I imagine the latter is a component of my own incompetency on matters computer related. Gradually all will come together as it is intended. This is the Camino, after all. I still find myself getting frustrated by issues that, in the big picture, are not all that important. Just let it go.

The day´s walk to Estella has been a good combination of walking alone and walking with others. I walked with a Navy Seal, no such thing as a retired species of seal. As I get more and more involved in my healing work helping people reach their physical optimum, I have sometimes toyed with the ridiculous idea of doing a navy seal training. Jumping out of a helicopter from thirty feet is far distant from anything that I would feel comfortable in doing. Training of such physical intensity is something that I will leave to another life. And from his description of the emotional, I will leave that to the life after that.

In a conversation with someone from Texas, he started the beginning of an interesting comment when he spoke of overly living in the past. I couldn´t wait to to hear any further elaboration of his understanding. What were his regrets and where had he failed? On the Camino, conversations tend to deepen with each successive sharing. He had worked for the United States Navy as a psychologist and had lost his wife five years previously. He spoke with some obvious pain about his loss and yet felt that she was still present with him. He had planned to come on the Camino the year previous but had himself developed cancer. So, this time last year he had been receiving chemotherapy.

More when I can find a better functioning computer.

Puente La Reina

Puente La Reina

Iglesia De Santiago

Estella

Me being led the way by my very big shadow!

Pamplona for the day

I will spend an extra day in Pamplona so that I can get more of a feel for the place and to let my muscles relax after several days of exertion. I had arrived on the May-Day holiday and there is an exciting vibrancy to the town. The restaurants are full and the streets seem to be overflowing to capacity. I also want to catch up on this blog. I can walk around and visit the cathedral, which is but 400 yards from my Refugio accommodation. It´s a seminary now turned into accommodation for people on this Camino. The following day the streets seem no less overflowing. I sense that it does not take any specific holiday to be cause for celebrating life. That´s the way it should be. Europeans, in general, seem better at celebrating on a daily basis. This is a lesson to take this back into our own lives. Celebrate as if this is our last day.

Streets of Pamplona



Practicing self-restraint - posing outside a pastry shop but not sampling

Late afternoon, I decide to walk on and in three hours manage the steep ascent to the small community of Zariquiegui. I had been asked several days before by a 24-year old Irish woman whether I felt lonely walking on my own. This may be difficult for some young people to understand: I love both being on my own and also love walking with others. Walking alone provides an opportunity to look inwards and walking with others provides an  opportunity to share experiences.

To Pamplona

Setting off today there is a slight rain, enough to need plastic covering for both myself and my backpack. I am asked whether I would like to join a walking group including a young English couple, an Irish woman, a woman from Michigan, Richard from Seattle and Fr. Bart, a robed Dominican priest living most of his life in California and now on sabbatical in Salamanca. Yes, I will walk with them, providing, I ask, that our accompanying priest do something to hold off the water. He promises that, irrespective of the volume of downpour, that it will be holy water. It´s a veritable Canterbury Tales. One of the group has suggested the title for a murder mystery could be "Murder on the Camino." Yes, it's a good title but, please humour me, it wasn´t the priest who did it. That would be too corny.

Today is mostly on the flat and the thunderstorms do not materialise. There is a medium light rain all the way into Pamplona. It´s deliciously refreshing. I am staying again at the municipal Refugio which was once a seminary. Our group decides to celebrate our arrival in Pamplona with a few beers followed by dinner. I still find time to apply my stretches and am feeling increasingly stronger. Some of the others are not in such good condition so I am able to help them with a few applied shiatsu therapy techniques.

The priest goes into churches en route and I use my own expertise to help others in their journey. Busmen´s holiday for both of us, but that´s alright.

Poncho covering me and backpack......not me and chocolate croissants

Fr. Bart

Walking Day 2 Roncesvalles to Zubiri

Today´s another day and I feel strong and capable. Any negative thoughts from the day before have disappeared. I will set off and have breakfast in Burguette. This is where Ernest Hemingway wrote "The sun also rises." This is also the town where I originally met Pepe five years ago: he was such an engaging person with everyone he met along the way to Santiago. Will I meet people like him along the way? "Estoy estar chupao."

The day´s journey is still long with some considerable hills, but not nearly as difficult as the crossing of the Pyrenees. However, there is a long descent into the town of Zubiri and this is a strain on knees that are still not in their best condition.

I will not stay this night in the municipal Refugio but will opt instead for one that is semi-private. It´s still dormitory accommodation but it is better located: a stone building close to an old bridge crossing a fast-flowing river, overlooking a garden and very little distance from my route for tomorrow. An added bonus is that there are smaller dormitories; this one accommodates only nine. I book for dinner for a later sitting. Food after a strenuous day of outdoor adventure tastes exceptionally good. Mixed salad, a pureed soup of green vegetables and another meal of steamed cod is perfect. I have been placed at a table on my own because the other groups seem to be all friends - the advantage being that I am given a whole bottle of red wine. I will try not to consume all of it.

I do find the time to stretch muscles, especially hip flexors and hamstrings, and I feel immediately better for this. Tomorrow thunderstorms are forecast throughout the day for the walk into Pamplona. I will not entertain thoughts as to how to cope with this. I will take one day at a time and see what happens.

On the way out of Burguette

From the stone bridge of Zubiri

Roncesvalles

I am recovering somewhat from the rigours of crossing the Pyrenees. A meal of mixed salad with baked fish and a pastry for dessert along with a plentiful supply of red wine has restored my sense of sanity. My last visit to Roncesvalles five year ago was a similar experience: Descending  kilometer after kilometer into the valley below, being overtaken by others of seemingly greater stamina, I was in a state of extreme pessimism that I could keep up the pace required to reach Santiago in a month of walking. There´s a mass of people here, keeping very much to themselves, who it seems are physically and emotionally stronger. No real support here. Perhaps after a night´s sleep I´ll have mustered my own inner resources and be ready to continue my journey. Actually, a thought that crosses my mind as I drift into sleep:  everyone else around me is shocked into silence and I have mistakenly interpreted this as unfriendliness. I know that I should be stretching in order to combat the inevitable muscular stiffness I will feel, but I don´t feel like doing anything. Sleep can bring me some repair. Meanwhile, the views over the Pyrenees have been stunningly beautiful. The rest will be easier..........won´t it?

The descent

Ramparts of the monastery in Roncesvalles

Actually, it´s quite charming

Don´t remind me

In an internet cafe in Pamplona trying to download photos. Internet cafes are dying because everyone has computers at home. Couple that with a total lack of interest on the part of an employee makes me reluctantly agree with Vancouver businessman, Jim Patterson: "He who is not fired with enthusiasm should be fired with enthusiasm." Therefore, photos will be downloaded sometime soon.

3 days in

Learning curve: trying to remember how to continue my blog using a Spanish keyboard. I still have to learn how to post photographs. I am sure I´ll manage, but the physical component of the journey has overridden my ability to think clearly. Besides, the Spanish Spell-Check marks this complete English text in red underlines. That´s exactly how my papers came back to me in High School.

A quick synopsis: arrived in Biarritz on Ryan Air. The first challenge was to use my debit card at the airport to buy Euros. It´s a small airport but there is only one ATM machine and it´s not working. I have a reservation for hotel accommodation in Bayonne, which is 7.5 kilometers away. I don´t feel like walking, even if it were possible before the hotel closes for the night. At the Airport information office, a sympathetic staff member gives me the one Euro bus fare. They say that the Camino provides what you need and when you need it. Learning to trust that is the most difficult  part.

My hotel for the night

My walk started at St. Jean Pied de Port the following morning, and I have decided I want to manage the whole journey across the Pyrenees into Spain in one day. That is 26 kilometers provided I don´t get lost. In theory, that walk will take a minimum of seven hours although last time, five years ago, it took me eleven hours because of my bad knee.

Starting in St. Jean Pied de Port

Kingdom for a horse?

The ascent starts immediately outside the town of St. Jean and it seems even more grueling physically than the last time. However, the seventeen-year-old in me, for some really odd reason, is alive and well. I seem to have discovered God because at each step of the way I notice I am using the Vocative case: "Oh, God." Ten hours later I arrive in Roncesvalles on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees and my accommodation for the night. I am too stunned to make a coherent sentence. How am I going to manage similar walks for the next thirty-odd days? Like five years ago, I wonder whether I might be better off lying on a beach in Ibiza for the month.

Ascending the Pyrenees

A little bit of snow

Descending into Roncesvalles in Spain