Day 7: Los Arcos to Logrono

Los Arcos to Logrono

Numbers: 17.6 miles per garmin; per Fitbit: 46,586 steps (includes extra distance by Deb to market..see end of blog); 147 floors

Dave's voice

Another mostly lucky day. We woke at about five to hear tremendous, thundering, Noah and the Ark-type rainfall on our skylight and on the ground outside. We were so lucky yesterday to only be in it awhile. Other guests at our hotel had tried to wait it out in Estella and wound up in the rain all day. Ugh. We only got about an hour and a half on our heads and the expected consequences for footing the rest of the day. Not bad.

This morning sounds a lot worse and the hotel lady says it’s supposed to rain for six more days. Six! With this in mind – and each of us thinking how this entire disaster was the other person’s brilliant idea, we start out from Los Arcos and…the rain stops. Not completely and not all the time, but it’s more like a few light sprinkles throughout the morning. The sky doesn't look good, but we’re pretty much dry.

Until lunch when the thunder starts. And the lightning. And the big, fat raindrops everywhere. Unhappily for us, this is one of our longer days and we’re going to get wet. Even so, it’s only bad for a little while and the real nuisance is slippery footing, which of course, means going more cautiously and thus taking more time.

Being cautious is, of course, for suckers and any red-blooded American ignores the remote - very, very remote - possibility of slipping in the mud and falling on his, uh, backpack. Hit like a bag of doorknobs but - here's the upside - at least Dave looks like he's been through some sort of wilderness ordeal, what with being covered in mud and all.

Is it The Camino or just poor hygiene?

Until then, the highlight of the day had been our brief stop in Sansol for coffee and muffins (total cost 3.5€!). The shopkeeper was obviously glad to have company and rattled along in high-speed Spanish long after Scout said she had no idea what he was saying. Nice man, though; he even offered us free bananas. The bananas had passed their expiration by a couple three days, but hey, it's Europe. We're finishing our coffee and pretending to listen when three other pilgrims came up to the shop, mostly to stand under the awning and be out of the rain for a moment. The shopkeeper - a little like Babu if you're a Seinfeld fan - invites them inside, but they talk among themselves in German for a moment, then move away. Our new friend asks what country those three were from and, when we said "Germany" he grabbed himself by the neck with both hands with a grimace and laugh. Count on the Germans to keep Europe in stitches.

Dave in subject store expired bananas and affable owner

Did I mention lunch? In the small towns we’re passing through, it is wise to patronize the first purveyor of any type of food because it may be the only one in town. We stop at a "bar," which can mean an actual alcohol type bar or a place that sells snacks and has a couple of bottles of wine on the shelf. Today’s was unusual for a couple of reasons: first, it was a non-smoking facility, virtually unheard of in Spain; second, when I showed the server my usual expression of hopeless ignorance, she pointed at a sandwich-looking item and said "Want me to describe this?" I said yes and she promptly put the item in the microwave for me sans description. Uh, okay. Turns out it was ham and eggs on a baguette. I might have even bought it anyway, who knows. Tasted okay. The third thing was the program on TV in a corner of the room, something to do with sheep raising: then and now. Old footage in black and white of…sheep. Sheep walking around, sheep in pens, shepherds looking insanely happy to be on camera. (Okay, a lot of us ham it up for the camera.) There was no narration with the old footage. Instead, there was music: a nice instrumental version of "Autumn in New York." Maybe a veiled reference to all those Manhattanites packed in the subways or something and, of course, there’s the question: What music goes well with sheep raising. We never figured it out.

We’re following a guidebook schedule of how far to walk each day and have made hotel reservations in advance because it’s the busy season so we’ve chosen not to stop and spend an extra day in exciting Pamplona or Logrono, etc. It might seem as if we’ve locked ourselves into each day’s agenda, but, as interesting as it is to see a five hundred year old church with an equally old statute/painting of Santa Maria, it is progressively less interesting to see one of the above in each of a hundred or so successive towns. We do look – briefly – but we’re more into the physical and mental aspects of the journey and less into the sightseeing. By mental aspects, we mean pretending to understand directions in a foreign language that we absolutely do not understand or ordering food when we don’t know what it is and drinking lots of wine. It’s working well so far: only lost some of the time, no stomach upsets, and no delirium tremens.

Deb's Voice

So, even though Dave didn't hurt himself in the fall, and I knew it was just a matter of luck that he took the tumble and not moi, I offered to do tonight's mega amount of laundry (including both his jacket and pants) and offered to go buy us some food at a supermercado a block away that we had passed on the way to our hotel. (Did I mention it was raining? Poor Dave had no jacket since his was drying). I ventured out and the subject market was closed. Was this one of those things where stores close from 1-5 and later reopen? Hmmmm......the door said it was open from 9 am to 9 pm. I was perplexed. Just then, three people (mom/dad and 16 year old daughter) saw me and asked if they could help. The daughter spoke English and told me that all the stores were closed because it was some religious holiday. But, if I was willing to walk a little, the Chino (I.e. Chinese) market was open and the "owner is very nice," and "lots of people shop there." I told them how in the U.S. that it's the same thing on Christmas Day with most stores/restaurants closed except Chinese restaurants. They all laughed. They dropped me at the store and I bought our dinner: a bag of chips, a bag of cookies, three pieces of fruit, a bottle of wine, and coke light. And, yes, the shop owner was very nice, just as they said. Added bonus: the mom/dad in the story own vineyards on our way to Najera tomorrow, so we may run into them again. Ok, what he actually said was, "the wine business is very good because drunken Americanos are walking The Camino this year."

Another big day tomorrow: 18.5 miles..better get to bed.

A few more pictures (not many taken due to weather)

Unique Camino sign on one of our sunny days

Shadow photo on a sunny day

As Dave says, one of many interesting and old churches

Dave filing water in town square fuente

Flowers everywhere

Another church

Always a bar as we walk into town

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