We had a nice stay in Logrono, but Joe wants to wake up and get to work.   6am.  It is a cold drizzle this morning.  I am a bit grumpy.   My bed over the last couple days was soooo comfortable.  It had this nice curtain you could pull for privacy, a charger, light, good WiFi.  The shower didn’t suck.  And now we are leaving.  

So the first item on the agenda is to get lost in the city with all the other Camino people.  We criss-crossed several squares trying to figure out where the trail was.  At least 4 different locals tried to help various groups out.  Joe and I mostly just followed the crowed.  Eventually an old guy emerged who was taking a morning walk and he showed a Spanish speaker ahead of me where to go.  They walked together and a bunch of us followed.  

It was drizzling, of course.  I was pacing myself behind put-together-asian-girl.   I started to pass her, but she picked up her pace and I wound up following her umbrella for the first 10km until she caught her friends and fell (way) behind.  

Today, it rained, then it stopped, then it rained,then it stopped For good in the afternoon.  Not a good day for the outdoors.

Speaking of bad days, there is a ruin outside of Logrono that used to be a hospital for pilgrims in the Middle Ages.  I wonder what folks in the Middle Ages would think about my high-tech gear. I mean, just the thick horse hair blanket these folks carried likely weighed more than my 22lb pack.  

I suppose I have no reason to bitch about the weather or my aches and pains.   Patients arriving here would show the Dr their toe blisters and they’d probably just chop those off.  Then put a bunch of leeches on their leg and maybe drain some blood just to be sure. 

Lots of vineyard in this area.  Check out the soil.  Clay and rocks.  This is a tough area to farm.  

As we approached Najera, we saw our first junk yard !  

We ran into a wierd stone structure that I thought might be a smoke house.  Looking inside, though, was a stone bench seat that ran along the interior wall.  I guess it is a resting area for Camino people?  Saw several after this along the trail.  Joe calls them stone pineapples. 

We checked into our hostel at Najera.  The Albergue might be lacking in amenities, but it had plenty of character.  

We had a pilgrim meal served by an amazing gal who managed a dozen tables.   She would pop by at certain intervals and if you could not tell her what you wanted quickly enough, she would just walk off to the next table.  Somewhere during the meal I shouted “Vino” to her retreating back and 2 minutes later a bottle of wine was dropped on our table without comment.  My kind of service. 

On the way back, I was checking out the sandstone walls towering over the village.  If you look at the picture below, you can see windows and, I assume, rooms, cut into the walls.  That got me excited.  Soft stone, people, and centuries.  I took off wondering, trying to get as close to the mountain as possible.  

 

I was rewarded with the Monasterio de Santa Marie

5 euro gets you in.  They stamped my Compostela for free.  The more modern section has some impressive stone work and a cool courtyard.  

 

Napoleon turned up to rape and pillage the place.  After the city was thoroughly liberated, his soldiers took over the monastery.  They chopped off some heads and shot up the walls before they left.  

Off the courtyard there is a huge church that almost appears to grow out of the mountain.  It is hard to determine what is natural, what was carved out, and what was built up.  Further back are tombs of some important bosses with their families.  Then through another doorway was a shrine carved in the mountain.  Neat place.  

I wondered the city for a couple of hours, on an important mission.  I need Tapatio.  All this pilgrim food is great, but I need some spice.   I checked 6 places in town.  Closest I could find was Siracha which I am now carrying.  Bought some ramen noodles for our dinner.  

Doing a little laundry and updating the blog.   Joe is chilling next to me.  It is currently raining outside and I am not in it.   This is a good day!  

Last night’s stay in Viana was a good time.  My bunk mate was Andre and we had a long chat before bed.   Andre is a software engineer who has entered his midlife crisis.   There has been consolidation in his industry with some of his best work being bought and, probably corrupted, by new management.   I felt his pain.  Sucks to pour your heart into applications only to see them treated as transient to be ignored or discarded when the new owners change direction.   

Had breakfast with a German gal named Edith.  She speaks German, French, Spanish, and English fluently, as far as I can tell.   It is neat to watch her switch between all 4 during breakfast.   I started calling her The Translator.   I told her we had a plant named Edith that I will henceforth associate with her.  She was a little confused, then, when she understood, just thought I was a strange.

Today is a short 10km walk.  The sucky part was that the trail took a turn through some low lying fields which are soaked from rain.  A very muddy walk for 1km or so.  Until this point, I have not seen a long stretch of mud like this.  The maintainers have done a fantastic job insuring the trail has good drainage and a solid gravel surface.   Didn’t get a picture. 

There is the wooden bridge over the highway that I stopped to admire.   If you zoom in on the rails you can see the joinery on the rails these boys cut when they assembled it.  Each one is custom and each fits together perfectly.

Entering Logrono, the river was running strong.  

I bumped into Andre admiring this sign next to my hostel at 10am.  Apparently these two serious looking guys discovered / isolated the element Wolfram (Tungsten) back in the 1700’s.  I had listened the Werewolves of London song a few minutes earlier, so there you go. 

Andre is all happy cuz he has an Airbnb tonight which includes all the luxuries we take for granted.   Specifically, he seemed keen to have unlimited toilet access where he can read his newspaper undisturbed.   It sounded wonderful. 

Today I learned that arriving early in town does not mean I get any rest.  The hostel door was closed, closed, closed.  Meaning, I tried knocking, pressing buttons, leaving and returning, etc for like 2 hours.   Instead, of dropping my pack and wondering the city in comfort, I humped this thing around till 1:00.  

I checked out a little flea market that was getting setup.  Some neat old stuff here.  

Saw a big church with some interesting sculpture work.  Check out the lady above the door standing on a pile of babies.  I mean, there are babies to the left and right, she’s slinging one around with her left hand.  Looks like a couple more are going to fall on her from the ceiling above.  

I found the more modern side of the city and walked some wide boulevards filled with well dressed, fresh smelling people.   It started drizzling again, I was hungry, so I ducked into a super fancy cafe and tried to sit in an isolated spot.   

The gals working the tables tried to ignore me for as long as possible.  Eventually they gave up, took my point-at-the-menu order.  5 minutes later I was served a huge plate of under cooked bacon-like stuff and 2 fried eggs, cooked just the way I hate them, all runny.  I scarfed all that down and was promptly given the bill.  The patrons seem relieved to see me go.

Joe turned up at 12 and I hung out with him until the Albergue opened.  We got cleaned up and met a group of gals who we first encountered in Urdaniz.  3 of them are nurses and the other a pharma rep.  Had topas, wine, and a lot of laughs.   I still don’t know any of their names, haha

 

 

Woke up early this morning, packed my shit, had a little breakfast.   Joe is slack packing today, sending his pack ahead so he doesn’t stress his leg.  I need to get a early start so I have plenty of time to beg for a bed.  

Word got out in the hostel that Joe is a physician and 2 different girls were asking me if I knew who the Dr was.  I pointed at Joe when he came down for breakfast.   I finished my coffee watching poor Joe picking at foot blisters.   Told him later I was not responsible for the physician rumor, I have learned to never mention it.  

Took a selfie with this dude before I left

Stormy

The route today looked mostly like this

Met a bunch of new faces today.   Mostly Australians.   

The highlight was a French dude named Bao (Vietnamese descent) and his new buddy Roberto from Italy.  They met on the trail a few days ago and are hanging out together.  These two could be lifted from any long distance hike on the planet.  Roberto had a giant baguette sticking out of his pack like a lightening rod, while his Bao was humping the ham and cheese.

I told them about my lodging plight.   By now, I had messaged like 8 different places and nobody had responded.   Bao said they couldn’t find a spot two days ago, so they laid their ground sheets down in a park and cowboy camped.   In the morning, they realized it was a popular dog park and had set up on piles of dog poo.  They had to scrape it off their sheets before packing.  We all had a good laugh, true hiker trash. Bao emailed me a pdf from a dedicated Camino hiker who has noted good spots to camp if a hostel bed cannot be found.   I am pretty sure I will be reading this sometime in the future.  

My new dog shit covered friends wanted to stop in Sansol to work on their baguette.  It was starting to rain harder and I didn’t want to stop.  Around 12 it falling hard in surges, finally settling into a consistent soaking downpour.  I had my rain jacket on over a long shirt with hiking shorts.  The best part was my hat.   It stayed firm in the wind and kept the the rain out of my eyes and off my back.  As long as I kept moving, I was very comfortable.  Damp, but comfortable. 

Joe called me and said he was 3km behind, so he’d get into town at a decent time.   I popped into 2 different Albergues after Sansol to see if beds were available.  Both said yes….which means they don’t bother checking their WhatsApp messages.   I kind of had it in my head I wanted to be a boss and hit my goal of Logrono so I kept going.   

I hit the town of Viana at 3 with the intent of carrying on.  Resting for a moment under a sheltered plaza, I chatted with an Australian (always Australians today) having a smoke.  He told me him and a friend had been trying for hours to find a place in Logrono with no luck.  It is Saturday and some kind of European holiday is being celebrated.   Finally I relented, took their advice, and got a bed in the same Albergue they were in.  

It was a 30km day.  Honestly, I felt really good today, the extra 10k would have been a layup.   However, the specter of sleeping in a wet tent on top of dog poop pushed me into stopping.  A man has his limits.  

Our host handed us our breakfast bags last night.  Tearing into it this morning I found a juice box, ham sandwich, banana, and a token for a cappuccino from the machine.  Scarfed all that down while Joe was getting ready.   He is definitely hurting today.  

Church bells started their annoying 15 minute ringing thing promptly at 7:00.  I had a chance to chat a bit with our host about that topic.  He said it used to ring like that all night long.  Folks in the neighborhood complained about it for years until the current compromise was reached.  

Joe wants to be alone in his pain today, so I took off alone.  It will be raining on/off today with high in the 60’s F.   The topogrophy is noticeably changing.  Mostly low rolling hills and a lot more grape vines and larger files of wheat, oats, barely, and hay.  

I became fascinated by this building looming out of the mist in the middle of nowhere.  For some reason imagined it to be a super secret biotech research facility.  In reality, it is probably just some kind of packing house.  The thing I don’t get is that giant 30’ tall by 50’ wide opening to the hillside.   It looks like a loading dock, but there is no vehicle I could imagine that could reach the floor of the thing. 

I was hiking along passing folks all morning.  Walked up on my favorite grumpy Dutch lady, Tia.  I popped out the ear buds and slowed my pace for a bit to chat.  First thing she said was that I did not snore loudly last night.   She did complain Joe’s volume.  

Tia has had an interesting life.  She was born in Holland, then moved to California at 5 years of age.  She grew up there and was 2 years into her degree at Davis when her Mom moved back to Holland due to a divorce.  She followed, never completing her degree.  She felt like it put her on the back foot in credential obsessed Holland.

We talked about how Dutch public housing works, apparently she and her husband have rented all their lives as part of a public/private association that purchases apartment buildings, renovates them, then makes them available to its members under a strict rent control.  What you pay and whether you even qualify is dependent on your income, number of kids, expenses, type of work, and a million other factors.  She was clearly some kind of social worker which gave her some extra benefits in this scenario.  She raised a family, is intelligent, productive, happy, and feels secure….so there are clearly merits to the system.  I’ll have to read up on this someday. 

It was time to pick up the pace, so at a pause in the conversation, I gave her a “Buen Camino” and left behind my lovable little opinionated Dutch lady.  Next up was a little town conforming to the pattern seen in most towns in this region.  An old mill by the river, ancient water drainage, and a church.  Always a church.  

Next on the menu was a small city Estella.  I bumped into Joe here, munching away on his breakfast sandwich.  We hiked for a bit together through town.  I was starving, but really didn’t want to stop at some cafe.  Instead I separated from Joe at a gas station on the edge of town and bought a tuna sandwich, pringles, and a bag of chips.  OMG it was soooo good.  I ate it outside in the doorway sheltered from the rain like a homeless tramp.  The people gassing up their cars looked at me with a mixture of disdain and pity.  

Walking through the suburbs of the town, I saw these two old lanky guys pointing and waving at a tourist map posted on a wall.  Stopped to see what the ruckus was all about and met Bill and Brian from Southern England.  These guys never stop talking and virtually everything they say is funny. 

Brian (I think) has hiked the Camino before and is introducing his good friend Bill (I think) to it.  Or it might be Bill is introducing Brian to it.  Hard to keep those two straight.  Anyway, we walked together for a bit talking about prince Andrew’s dalliances, Henry being pussy whipped, and Trump’s appalling lack of protocol with the King.  God these guys were hilarious.  

The best part was that we walked up on a famous stop where the Monks supply 100 liters of wine every day for Pilgrims. They have a webcam setup so you can watch the party on the internet.  The tap is on the wall next to the Abbey.  Brian (or Bill?) was going on about last time he was here, there was an Australian who couldn’t believe his luck.  The guy had already been there for hours drinking from the tap, phoning his friends, and dancing for the webcam.   

Honestly, the wine wasn’t that bad.  I slurped up a bunch while the boys took a couple photos for me.  

Saw this dog doing his zoomies in the field.  Sorry for the poor camera work. 

Zooming

Arrived at Villa de Monjardin a little behind Joe.  We got checked in and stuffed in a top floor room of 10+ hikers.  Dominic was there next to us and I met a tall German dude named Andres who is pretty cool.  Andre said we had met briefly in the Pyrenees, but I honestly didn’t recall.  So many faces.  

Our biggest problem at this point is that we’ve no where to stay tomorrow.   We didn’t know how Joe would do in the coming days given his injury, so had not planned a destination.  Now it haunts us.  Joe finally got a message back from an Albergue in Samsol (20km ahead), they’ve one bed available which obviously should go to him.  I figure worse case I’ll do a 40 to Logrono then we hook up the next day.