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Distance walked: 12.7 miles
Song of the Day: “When the Levee Breaks,” Led Zeppelin

After returning from karaoke the night before, Big Mama went under the knife. (Not literally my knife, but I made sure that the blister wouldn’t be reforming any time soon). When I woke up in the morning, I already knew that my foot was going to feel better. I took my time leaving my private room in Logroño. Sleeping in is so delicious when you are used to over-enthusiastic pilgrims bounding out of bed at 5:30am. I didn’t leave town until about 9:15. Crazy!

Some people that I have spoken to along the road have uttered the phrase, “The Camino provides.” Kind of like, whatever you need will end up finding its way to you. I was walking down the street and realized that I was down to about a half-sheet of Kleenex. I had tried to shop for it the day before, but every time I asked for “Kleenex individual,” I would be pointed to the family-size packs of ten or twenty tissue packages. I could just imagine trying to schlep one of those huge things in my backpack. Don’t Spaniards have to blow their noses on the go? I was getting frustrated because my allergies have been acting up and I didn’t want to be That Snot-Nosed Pilgrim sniffling all day. (I do have my hanky… but that’s for important things like drying my hands in public restrooms and cleaning the avocado and cheese off my Swiss Army knife 😉 ). I walked up to a newsstand and asked the woman behind the counter if she had individual Kleenex packets. She began to say no, but then, thinking better of it, reached into her own purse and pulled out a new packet for me. She refused any payment for it. The Camino provides!

The morning was somewhat gloomy, but the path that led out of Logroño into the surrounding suburbs was beautiful. There were a ton of local people going for walks, and almost every one of them shouted out, “Buen camino!” as I passed. The city path turned into a separate route that wound through a metropark, complete with a pond, playground, a clean public bathrooms. (Yay!)

As I neared Navarette, a slight drizzle began to fall. OK, I thought, I can make it there without having to stop to put my rain gear on. I continued to walk… and then the rain got harder. Sigh. I hauled off my pack, dug out my rain jacket and rain cover so that I could finish the final – seriously- five minute walk into town.

I stopped at a bar for lunch. I don’t know how I manage to find hard rock dive bars on the Camino, but I do. This place was pretty sweet: a spinning record player was embedded under heavy glass under the threshold of the place, and guitars and Metallica posters hung from the walls. Awesome. I ran into Kris and Jasmine there, who had decided that they were going to end their day’s trek in Ventosa. I wasn’t going to attempt to walk any farther than that either: Big Mama was doing well, but The Twins had increased in size and were acting up. Ouch.

I trudged along in the light rain, listening to my hard rock mix. “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin came on, and as if on cue, the rain began to pour down hard.

If it keeps on rainin’, the levee’s going to break
If it keeps on rainin’, the levee’s going to break.
When the levee breaks, I’ll have no place to stay.

Oh crap, I thought. I hope that’s not an omen that the albergue is full.

It wasn’t. I checked into the San Saturnino albergue in Ventosa, which was to this day the nicest place I have seen on the Camino. Clean, warm, extremely friendly, and really beautifully decorated. When I asked if I could rent a blanket, the owner smiled and answered in Spanish, “No, i will give you one.” Wifi, a quaint courtyard, a laundry area, and a kitchen with a coffee machine. Gloriously hot showers with clean floors. They played soft chanting music overhead and lit incense. It was like staying in a really comfy church. (Much better than some other hostels, which can feel more like prisons). Lynn and Garrett had also found their way there, so we ate dinner together at a local restaurant.

I was more than ready for bed when “lights off” came at 10pm.

I did NOT sleep well my first night in Logroño. My friends who were sharing the room with me stayed out past 11pm, our hostel’s curfew. When I heard the front door knock at 11:05 but did not see anyone enter the dorm room, I worried that they had been kicked out or something. (I have no idea how these curfews are enforced, but the record has shown that I tend to get a little paranoid when I’m tired). Then there was the presence of the “emergency” light which actually shone very brightly over my top bunk. I gave myself an hour of restlessness before I got out of bed to dig out an eye mask from my backpack. I slept briefly, then woke up abruptly to the sounds of pitter-pats. It was raining. Shoot. It was raining, and my laundry was hanging outside in the courtyard to dry. I scurried to bring the damp stuff in and, without much of a choice, threw it over my backpack on the floor and climbed back into bed. I struggled to find a good position for my feet: I couldn’t comfortably rest them while sleeping on my back because The Twins – what I now call my heel blisters- would get too much pressure.

By the time I woke up in the morning, my friends had magically appeared in their bunks, but I was exhausted. If there was any question about staying another day in Logroño, this was my answer. I made a plan to meet up with Colin and Lukas later on in the day, found a private room in a pension close to the main square (25 Euro and so worth it), and slept for the rest of the morning.

I love rest days. I walked around a bit, got some Roquefort-cheese-and-nut gelato, finished some journal writing, took another nap. I met up with Colin and Lukas and also ended up seeing Lynn and Garrett, who joined us for an evening of tapas and the sharing of gruesome blister photos. We talked about the different paths that people take on the Camino.

My path on the Camino includes karaoke.

We found a karaoke bar within walking distance of the center of town. We were the only ones there. Lukas was very shy at first about singing, but he soon developed a true enthusiasm for it. I think I may have freaked Lynn and Garrett out a bit when I sang, “Enter Sandman.” (“Wow. That was kind of dark,” Garrett commented when I finished).

There’s nothing like a night of singing to prepare you for a long day’s walk ;).

The view from my room’s balcony

This blood sausage is for Dad 🙂

Distance walked: 12.8 miles
Album of the Day: iPod still remains uncharged

As I sat in the bar of the albergue eating my breakfast toast and coffee, the woman who worked the bar asked me if I had forgotten my scarf. It was not mine, but I recognized it as Kira’s, so I ran back up to the dorm to see if she was still there. I returned the scarf to her, and on the way back downstairs, I saw my towel that I had left to “dry” the night before. Even though it was now soaking wet after the night’s rain, I was so lucky to have come across it before I left. It’s so easy to forget things, and when you’re not carrying much, the loss of an item can be somewhat stressful. Maybe I’m putting too much value on my possessions, but when I’m dying for a shower after a long, sweaty day of walking, a missing towel would not seem like an insignificant loss.

I left Torres del Rio at around 8am. Groups of dark clouds would roll overhead, threaten rain, and then pass on. Last night’s rain was evaporating, making the air humid and still. The wind turbines stood motionless in the distance. This would be the last day walking in Navarra: today the Camino enters the La Rioja region. On the bad side: gone are the hilly, lush green landscapes; the land is becoming flatter and more arrid with each passing day. On the good side: great wine!

Walking into Viana, a large town along the Camino, I noticed sequential rows of low apartment buildings in the distance. Usually the presence of large-scale man-made structures after miles of walking through the countryside can be kind of jarring, but with their beige fronts and brown roofs, these buildings just sort of the blended into the nearby patchwork of growing and fallow fields and vineyards. I wonder if that was done purposely.

I ran into Lukas and Colin in Viana, and we bought sandwich fixings and sat near the cathedral for an early lunch. We are all suffering from grotesque blisters. Our California friends Garrett and Lynn took a photo of what they termed the quintessential pilgrim scene: Lukas and Colin with their homemade baguette sandwiches, and me sans socks and boots, inspecting my bandaged feet.

My right big toe is disgusting. Despite frequent (and hygienic!) lancings and covering with Compeed to prevent further friction, a quarter-sized blister continues to return on the side of my foot, making walking really difficult at times. Some of my other blisters have toughened up a bit, but I have two pretty new ones – symmetrical twins- on the back of either heel. Yay. I have heard about every blister prevention and treatment theory imaginable, most of them contradictory and almost all of them completely useless.

I walked mostly alone all day. I like to meet up with friends at stopping points, but I think I get the most out of walking when I’m by myself. I ran into a Finnish man who had stayed in the same small gite with me over a week ago in St. Jean. I couldn’t remember his name, but he could remember the only words that I know in Finnish: “Hölkyn kölkyn!” (a nonsense form of “Cheers!”), he shouted to me in greeting. I also walked a bit with Olivia, an American from North Carolina whose family is Mexican. We walked for over an hour together, talking mostly in Spanish. Sometimes I get better Spanish practice talking to other pilgrims; Spain Spanish is really fast!

Charlene, Lukas, Colin, Anthony, Kira, and I checked into the same hostel. We met up with our friends Jean and Ann from Seattle and Kris and Jasmine from Germany for coffees/beers and then one last dinner together. Jean and Ann would be leaving for Paris the next day; Anthony, Kira, and Charlene planned to continue walking the next day, while the rest of us decided to stay in Logroño for another night, either because of love for the town (me) or out of need to give the blisters some rest time (also me). We ate in one of the main plazas and watched nearby families read to their kids at cafe tables, dance with them to the music of the accordion players, or teach them to rollerblade in front of the church.

On the walk back (well, at least for me, since I was tired and wanted to go to bed!) we heard the sounds of music coming from a nearby building. I knew what it was and bolted up the adjacent steps to take a look. A flamenco class was going on, and through the window you could see a studio of women in black tanks with red fans in hand twisting and stomping to the music. I love flamenco, and it brought back memories of 2002 when I sat in a bar in Granada, Spain, dripping with sweat and sipping a sangria, and watched my first flamenco performance. I went to bed happy.

Distance walked: 11.5 miles
Album of the Day: no iPod today, but I did sing an awful lot of country music.

We had a delicious breakfast at the hostel in Monjardin, which was run all by volunteers. We all set off on our own paths this morning; if we met up, we’d meet up. Charlene always says, “I’ll see you when,” because it doesn’t make sense to make plans when the road will take you where it does.

I *was* walking rather fast today, only because about three miles outside of Monjardin, a man at a food truck (with awesome fresh-squeezed orange juice!) told us that a huge storm was coming in the afternoon. I did not particularly feel like walking through a thunderstorm, so I kept my breaks to a minimum, stopping only in Los Arcos for a sandwich that I ate along the way.

Clouds loomed in the distance, and the overcast skies made the views less than thrilling. I walked past a British woman who was walking the Camino in the opposite direction. “Can’t you just smell the flowers? How wonderful they smell!” she exclaimed, pointing out a patch of briar roses to me. It’s always interesting to me to hear other travelers’ stories of where they’ve come from and what they’ve learned.

I chugged into Torres del Rio right after 1pm and made my way to La Pata de Oca, a private hostel with a bar and restaurant. After the initial showering, laundering, and napping routine, I sat with my new roommates Sandra from Australia and Anthony and Kira from Ireland. We drank way too much sangria and talked a lot about philosophy and religion. (It tends to happen on a pilgrimage!) It was a good afternoon.

I just spent the last two hours drinking more wine over a pilgrim’s dinner with Sandra and Michael from South Africa and Ana from Finland. I am really liking this slower pace: the shorter distances mean extra time during the day to relax, meet people, and finish my writing. Even though the Camino will take me longer this way, I think that this is the road that I need to take.

The hostel is playing Pavarotti in the courtyard while I finish typing this. The Spanish pilgrims next to me are finishing their wine. Dark clouds are rolling in overhead; I think that the big storm that was promised during the day will arrive tonight. When I am soundly asleep in my bunk, it can rain as hard as it likes!

Distance walked: 6.2 miles
No album of the day, because I didn’t walk long enough to need my afternoon iPod morale boost 😛

I had gotten back to the parochial hostel not quite ten minutes before curfew, but everyone in my dorm room was already asleep. I tiptoed around my bunk, careful not to make any unnecessary noise, then settled into bed around 10:30pm.

The next morning, the gunners were up and at ’em at 5:30. I have started thinking of them as gunners, just like we referred to those ultra-competitive fellow students in dental school, because I seriously believe that they want to get ahead at any cost and don’t really give a damn about anyone else in the room. People were having full-volume conversations in Italian. Someone kindly turned the overhead light on – which was directly above my bunk- at 6:05am, even though we were allowed to stay in the hostel until 8:00 am. Apparently, you can stay until then, but you’re out of luck if you think you’re going to sleep past 6:15. I was quickly getting tired of rude pilgrims.

No matter: I had made the decision that I was going to take it easy today. And I did: a quick 10k to Monjardin. It was a beautiful morning to walk, and no clouds appeared in the sky until late in the day. Lukas, Jasmine, Kris, Colin, and I all ended up converging paths before Monasterio Irache, where the famous wine fountain is located. I had been looking forward to this spot; Colin had actually doubled back on his alternate route in order to make a visit to the fountain.

The fountain was virtually dry. We were so disappointed :(.

I arrived in Monjardin just after 11am. The hostel opened at 1, so Charlene from Australia, Ann and Jean from the US, and I ate a late breakfast at a bar to kill time: chorizo, eggs, and French fries. Delicious. We checked into a hostel at the top of the hill and were treated to a 5-bed room (no bunks!) with a terrace, where we later finished the night by drinking a glass of wine. It was a restful afternoon of writing, napping, and relaxing with friends. It was well-needed.