I must say we were happy to leave Arzua behind. We had a very pleasant evening there, as we ate outside at one of the cafés in the town's plaza. It was a simple meal for a change, and not the usual 3 course pilgrim's menu. It won't surprise anyone who knows me that I'm the only one who polished off my whole plate and deserved the ice cream bars we had for dessert.
As usual, the plaza was surrounded by benches on which the town's elders sat and observed all the goings on of the many pilgrims....
...and stacks of temporarily discarded backpacks and assorted gear lay around. The stack below belonged to a group of young Canadian guys who were cooking their own meal over a single propane burner, reminding Diane and I of our half year stay in Europe back in 1975, when our budget was really right too.
The reason we were glad to leave Arzua had to do with the location of our hotel right on the Main Street and the fact that there were several bars and cafés below our room and the noise did not stop until well after 2 in the morning. All this on top of my bursitis meant little sleep, at least for me. Diane uses ear plugs,and didn't notice any of this. The hotel we are in at the moment is located right on a highway as well, but on our night tables there is a complimentary package of ear plugs for each of us.
I definitely plan to use them tonight!
The walk today was very pleasant, though the heat tired us out by the time we finally stopped for lunch. We were thankful again for many shaded paths...
...and pastoral countryside, misty at first...
We were very excited early on in the morning to run into Sheree from Australia again. We first met her, together with her mother and her young daughter, on our way out of Pamplona. Though we ran into each other often and always took time to chat and catch up over the next couple of weeks, we had not seen her in the last 2 weeks and did not expect to see her again. The only downside of taking rest days along the way is that you lose contact with people you were just getting to know. So it was a happy reunion...
At our morning coffee stop along the path we walked, it becomes obvious that the numbers of pilgrims are growing as we approach Santiago. What you see below is mostly the washroom lineup - so much easier to walk a little ways down the road and cut into the bush....
At lunch we had a special treat: a group of Spanish men/pilgrims, who must have been part of a choir, broke out into several songs. We recognized one of them as a Spanish language song from our grey hymnal, though I cannot remember the title. Here you see several of the male chorus standing, while others are seated...
Also along today's way, a luscious sea of ferns in the forest...
...a memorial to a pilgrim who died along the way the day before reaching Santiago...
...one of several tunnels helping us to avoid having to cross busy highways...
...and a walk through a forest at the end of today's walk that reminded us of our own beautiful homeland in BC...
We arrived at the hotel O Pino at 1:00, and find ourselves in a very cozy room overlooking the countryside. We cannot see the highway directly below, and it's only a 2 lane highway anyway. The only downside (or maybe not, after last night's experience) is that we are a ways outside of town, so we're sort of stuck here for dinner, etc. But we are quite certain that the business and noise and excitement of the city of Santiago will more than make up for the relative quiet and isolation of our digs for tonight.
Distance today: 20 kms
Time on the road: 4:30
Total distance to date: 776.3
Walking days remaining: 1
Keeping you in our thoughts and prayers and cheering you on !!!!!
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