Camino de Santiago
Hola! We walked a good twenty miles to get to this spot yesterday… a famous sign everyone takes their picture in front of.
790 kilometers (about 480 miles) is misleading. That’s how far it is to drive. Not how long it takes to walk, climb mountains, see the sites, nor find the best pastries (which i have walked miles for).
We walked through the spooky forest where a witches coven was supposed to be in 1525. Yeah, five were burned at the stake. This Basque name translates to “White witches forest”.
Here is the town of Burguette where we slept last night. We visited a church yesterday, and waited until 7PM for the only restaurant (out of 4 we tried) to open. It was a cold wait from 6 to 7PM, but it did keep our beers cold.
Many pilgrims are getting an early start!
View out our window in Burguette.
Proof of an early start. LeBron would want these long legged pilgrims on his team.
Breakfast was wonderful in the town of Espinal. An old man in a jeep greeted us saying “Welcome to Espinal! Where you from?” We chatted for a minute and realized he was promoting the “2nd” cafe in town, not the first one you came to. We took his advice and ended up at the Patxikuzuria Cafe, a very Basque name (more on the Basques, later for you history nerds) My kind of cafe. The old man’s niece ran the place, and she gave us a free piece of Santiago Cake - like a sponge cake. yummy. Steve ate three “free” pieces”) The food was excellent!
I had to get a picture of these two outside the cafe, Benito and Maria. He is on “trail in line skates” and she is on a unicycle!
OMG! Throughout the 12 mile hike, you would hear Maria laughing, and I finally introduced myself so I could talk in broken Spanish to them. Maria came up to me and kissed me on both cheeks! (I love this place)They are going to Pamplona on our same Camino… on skates and unicycle but it’s muy loco if you ask me! I told Benito he was “Muy nut macho” and Maria laughed so hard, I had to laugh along with her! Drew tried to say “very impressive” by saying “que impresante” but Maria corrected him to “muy impresionante”. What Drew actually said was “How very Printer”.
Found Jesus outside of Bikaretta, and I asked for a picture. We think it is a cheese cloth he is wearing. That makes sense because Jesus once said “Blessed are the Cheese Makers”. I think, right?
Got hot and we came out of the woods (Still with 6 miles to go) and found this food/drink truck. Met and talked with people from Germany, Ukraine, Belfast, Canada, and a few US folks.
Honestly, if the “world” could do the Camino, and meet the people we met, it would soooo much nicer!
This part of the trail was called the dragons teeth. At least thats what Miranda from Australia says it is called. (BTW she invited us all to stay with her in 5 bedroom house in Melbourne, though to be honest, she did say it after 2 bottles of wine)
We came to small town of Zubiri , our destination for the day. About 13 miles of up and down. First thing we did was laundry in the sink out back, and we took advantage of the clothes lines on our balcony. Yep, thats the Main Street of Zubiri you see, with our drawers swaying in the breeze.
Zubiri is best known for its 13th century bridge which is so cool.
Tired pilgrims come to the river to cool their feet and just hang out.
For History lovers: The Basques are a very proud and nice people, spanning the border of France and Spain. I think if you asked someone in St jean Pied de Port, France, their nationality, they would say “Basque, and oh i live in France.” The Basque area extends all the way to Pamplona (which they call Iruna). The books tell me that the Basques originally came from North Africa, and no other language in the world is similar to it. Their language has many k’s, x’s, and z’s in it. Like the name of the cafe above, and Our taxi diver from Pamplona was named Txemi. Our server was Ibon (John) What this history nerd liked most, was the story of Magellan, who reportedly was the first to sail around the world. His sailing ship was built from trees in the forests we walked through the last two days… in Basque land, as they were great shipbuilders. However, you may not know that Magellan died on the trip in the Philippines (Named after King Philip of Spain, get it?). Anyway, Magellan is dead, and his first mate Elcano finished the journey and arrives back in Spain. Yep, you guessed it, Elcano was a Basque.
I love this stuff!