Had a good night’s sleep.   Our room of 4 had only Joe and me.   In the morning we got our stuff together and had some free toast, jelly, and coffee.  Out on the street, it was a parade of hikers walking by.  We joined in. 

The trail out of town was mostly paved and easy walking for the first km or so.   I chatted with a retired dude from Virginia for a bit until the trail turned rocky and started climbing.   My Virginian’s pace slowed and we split.  Didn’t get his name, or more to the point, I didn’t chat long enough for it to stick.   

Was a fairly easy trek today, just a bit of ups/downs, then over the pass of Erro and 5km downhill to Zubiri.  About a 300m drop.  I didn’t really chat with many peeps today on the trail.   Joe and I were fairly close together during most of it, we would exchange leads occasionally but generally hiked solo.   

We were passing a ton of people today.  Bumped into Dale sitting in the dirt next to a German gal I had chatted with previously.  We caught up for a bit then started hiking together, but our pace was a little aggressive for those folks and we left them behind. 

By the time we reached Zubiri, it was lunch time.  Not many options, we found a small pub with outdoor seating in the road/parking lot.  A chubby retired French dude offered us half of his table.  Other pilgrims filled up the remaining 2 tables and flooded the indoor seating as well.  

Our chubby friend looked and acted like Tom Smykowski from Office Space.  He knew little English and, it seemed, very little Spanish.  However, he really wanted to talk.   Between Joe’s wannabe French, his wannabe English, and my arm waving, we managed to communicate, well, very little.  We did discover he is related to a famous 19th century US philosopher.  To be honest, most of time I was replaying scenes from Office Space in my head with this guy’s mug overlayed on it.  It passed the time. 

Joe and I ordered hamburguesa which was definitely not the American version.   It had a small patty on a giant bun covered with squishy bacon, a fried egg, bunch of lettuce and a tomato.  Tried to eat it by hand, but it sort of fragmented into its component parts and I resorted to knife and fork.  Joe attempted to master the hamburguesa with two hands and big bites.  Various juices oozed all over his plate, table, and I think his shorts.   Tom Sykowski clearly thought that was pretty funny.     

We bid our good buddy Tom goodbye and hiked a short 3km to Urdaniz.   Our stay tonight is a residence which has converted the large downstairs area into a ~12 person hostel.  This is the first place that had PCT vibes to it.   Our host showed us around and only spoke Spanish.  Joe and I did our best to keep up with his rapid fire delivery.   We figured out the important bits and got settled.  

We were assigned a bunk bed in a room for a total of 8.  The owner told us a group was coming in shortly to occupy the other spots.  We took a shower, changed clothes and lounged around for a while.  Most of our bunk mates showed up in the form of 5 (American) women.  The owner starts going through his rapid fire instructions and they clearly get overwhelmed.  In his early instructions he tell them they can wash their clothes in a sink that he points to, then tells them to remove their shoes and store them next to the sink before walking inside.  Somehow that gets interpreted as “take off your shoes and wash your hands.”  One by one, each removes their shoes and washes their hands in the clothes-washing-sink while he looks on in exasperation.   A Spanish speaking guy next to me tells me what’s going on and can’t stop laughing.  

Joe was get a few zzz’s when the cloud of females begin taking over our room.  I stayed in the common area and got to know Nick while typing stuff for this blog.  Joe joined us shortly after being female bombed.   He either wanted to see me or he didn’t want to see them.    

Nick is a British guy I met briefly yesterday.  He hikes by day and works into the evening on his laptop.  Nick has a financial consulting background who also runs a craft brewery and some other business I forgot.  He is one of those folks who is fascinated with business, economics, archeology, (and who knows what else) coupled with an insatiable wanderlust that takes him on hikes all over the place,  Definitely my kind of guy.   

Over dinner we reunite with our Canadian friends from our first night, Carol and Heather. They’ve been doing well.   They both share some route and lodging suggestions since they’ve done the trail before.  Som of our new gals join us for dinner together with Nick and another dude.    Dinner was an awesome salad, roasted chicken and spuds, and an ice cream bar for dessert.   Several bottles of a tasty local wine that the owner calls “grape juice” are passed around.  

We all crowd into bed and folks get to experience a top-snore performance from me.  Frankly, Joe was sharing some decent snores too, but they all agreed I was much worse.  Sorry.