Happily, the Pyrénées are behind us!

The lights came on at 6 am in the Albergue… but by 5am people were already up scurrying around. The Albergue, an old Monastery, was extremely clean, with a wonderful vaulted ceiling on the third floor which is where we slept, side by side in 2 single beds, but sleeping in a room with 50 strangers and using one bathroom, although it’s part of the experience and we’re glad we did it… is just not our thing. So, day 2, today, we were lucky to get the last room at Pension USOA… the owner is adorable, the room cost 38€ and we have our own bathroom! So happy! They seem to keep the best room for last, so far, in this regard, we’ve lucked out!

Especially after the day we just had…. yes, the second day is said to be easier and it definitely is, however it’s still demanding… we walked up but mostly down… we walked on some nice stone paths in the middle of the woods, which I found were quite random yet appreciated… and some not so nice stone paths… sharp jagged stones, hard on the feet and straight downhill … I’m not sure of the elevation but we did walk over 4,000 feet UPHill yesterday… and no, I did not mistakenly add a 0 … although I wish I had! Today, I think we walked down sharp loose rocks for nearly a Km straight down…. It was tough !! Our feet are sore… our bodies are sore, but at least everyone on the street feels the same!

We met other hikers today, Phil and Rebecca from Maine and Michael from Chicago, great people…. Funny story, by kilometre 6 we were all saying. “this isn’t so bad, maybe we’ll continue past Zubiri” boy were we kidding ourselves…. ps the people that were “definitely” passing through Zubiri, we just saw them walking around the village. As much as the idea of continuing on a bit further sounds practical, it’s just not possible, at least not for most of us.

One more note on our experience so far, everything works on the honour system here. You need a room, here’s the key, you need your laundry done… they’ll do it. They don’t ask for anything, you almost have to hunt them down to pay them!

Again, we’re in a small village so unfortunately we can’t post any pictures… the internet is just not strong enough. Hopefully it will be stronger in Pamplona at which time I’ll come back to post them! Until then picture small villages, kilometres apart, with terracotta roofs… 2 ladies with sore legs and feet Walking for miles in 40 degree weather. I guess we didn’t need that down jacket after all!