Aug 31: Churches, churches everywhere

Not surprisingly, there are lots churches along the Camino.  Back in the Middle Ages, the churches were often the first place people stopped when looking for someplace to spend the night.  It's still amazing to me, though, the number of functioning churches here that date back to the 1100's and 1200's.  I've attached just a few photos of the many churches we've seen.

The first photo is of a church in Eunate.  Actually, it's out in the middle of no where, but it was a church that belonged to the Knights Templar, who often protected the pilgrims from robbers or the Moors when they controlled the lower half of Spain.  The church is supposed to be modeled after the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem with the octagonal shape.  It was very simple and plain inside.  It was a great place for a quiet moment and a quick prayer, asking for strength to continue our journey (see previous blog concerning blisters :-).

The second photo is of the inside of the cathedral of Santa Maria in Pamplona.  It was used and supported by the nobility.  Hence, all the gold and artwork and statues.  It was, of course, very large and very impressive.

The third photo is of a church we passed by today on our way out of Puente le Reina.  You can see the sign for the Albergue, which is the name for the hostals along the Camino.  So even today, many of the churches continue to provide food and shelter to pilgrims at a very low price (usually around 5 to 8 Euros, which is about $7-$10).  We will not be partaking in that particular cultural experience, though, because the Albergues are usually set up with multiple bunk beds in a room and shared bathroom facilities.  We have heard from others that it can be challenging to sleep in these conditions, given all of the snoring and other bodily sounds that tend to occur during the night.  And one also needs to stand in line for the bathrooms or showers, which doesn't go over well with either of us.  So we'll stick with admiring the churches from the outside and the periodic visit inside for a quick moment of silence and prayer.

Aug 30: the feet are key

We are finding out the hard way that keeping one's feet "happy" is key to making it through the Camino.  After 4 days of hiking, we know of 3 people already who have had to stop because their feet are so bad.  One of them was a guy we've been walking with the past few days.  All he can do right now is literally hobble around.  He has decided to take a day off from hiking, and he will probably take a bus to the next stop on the Camino, and try walking again the following day.  If he can't walk, then he'll need to take even more time off to heal.

We now have our own regular regiment concerning our feet.  When we arrive at where we are going to stay, usually the first thing we do is take our shoes off to let our feet breath.  Then, after a hot shower, you start to examine your feet and drain any blisters that may have formed that day.  After draining the blisters, then clean with rubbing alcohol and leave them open to breath and hopefully dry out.  Then, just before bed, apply Neosporin, and when you wake in the morning, drain any more blisters that may have filled up during the night.  After draining all blisters a second time, again clean with rubbing alcohol, then wrap up with a really strong tape that won't move at all during the day's hiking.  This is key, because what causes blisters to form in the first place is friction, so it the tape starts to move around, not only will it not protect your blister, but it will probably create a new blister.  Linda has perfected this to the point that the toes that she does wrap up look like little mummies :-)  But hey, it seems to work, so I'm trying to adopt the same methodology.

Also, when we are hiking, if we are taking a break that lasts more than 5 minutes, then we take our shoes off to let our feet cool down.  You can literally feel the heat on your feet from all the walking.  And if we are going to be there for a fair amount of time, and it's not too offensive to the others around us, we'll even talk our socks off.  Also, if it is later in the day and we come across a stream or river that we can dip our feet into, we grab the opportunity to do so.  The water is so cool and feels great on your feet.  Of course, you need to dry your feet off completely before putting your socks and shoes back on to avoid any additional dampness which can lead to friction and cause a blister.  And if you ever feel a hot spot forming on your feet, stop immediately and put tape on it.  I did that today, but it was already too late.  A blister had started to form on my big toe, so I addressed it right there on the trail.  Fortunately, there was another lady going by who was an expert hiker.  She said she has twice gone all the way through on the Applachian Trail.  Anyway, she showed me a way to lace my shoes that help reduce the probability of a blister forming, if you're doing everything else right.  I immediately relaced both of my shoes and did not have any trouble the rest of the way.

Each day, though, is a battle.  Currently I have blisters on 5 toes and one big one on the pad of my foot, and Linda has blisters on 4 toes.  We're hoping our feet start to toughen up soon, so we don't have to continue to deal with tender feet as we are walking across some of the stone paths that make up a lot of the Camino (instead of admiring the handiwork of the Romans who built some of the paths we walk on, I end up cursing them :-)

Sorry if I've offended anyone with this discussion, but it's one of the things that really challenges us, both physically and mentally (at least I didn't include any pictures :-)

Aug 29: Papa Hemingway

Today, we passed through Pamplona on the Camino.  We actually went off the normal path to do a bit of exploring in this historic city.  We never realized how fortified the city was.  There are multiple levels of ramparts and walls to protect against attack, with many of the work dating back to the 1500's and 1600's (and still standing today).  We also visited a church where some of the original parts dated back to the 1300's.  The history throughout a lot of Europe can be just amazing.  And of course, we visited the bull ring and the street where they do the running of the bulls, which was popularized by Ernest Hemingway.  Pamplona was so thankful for how Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" made the city and its bull fighting famous that they dedicated a statue and a street in front of the bull ring to Papa Hemingway.  There were also numerous bars and restaurants that referenced Hemingway.  We even found a bar where they had a statue of Papa standing at the bar (from the entrance it looked pretty real, too).  Seems like the economies of both Pamplona and Key West owe a lot to Hemingway.

Today's walk was also more relaxed than the first two days.  As mentioned, we spent some time touring around Pamplona, and even stopped in the main Plaza to savor some tapas of Iberian ham and patas bravas (which are fried potatoes with a red paprika and mayonnaise sauce), chased down by some Spanish sangria.  While sitting in the square, we ran into some more people whom we had met earlier on the Camino.  They joined us for a little while, but then we had to leave because we still had another 5 kilometers to walk to get to our hotel.  Our routine so far has been to arrive at our hotel around 6 or 6:30pm, and then immediately shower to get all the sweat and dust off.  After a little time resting and relaxing (and stretching to try and get some of the lactic acid out of our muscles), we then head out to dinner around 8 or 9pm.  We get back to our room around 10pm and then usually crash by 10:30pm or 11pm (depending on if we pre-pack our backpacks for the next day or not).  Then its usually up around 7am to eat breakfast and get packed the rest of the way before hitting the road around 9am or so.  The next few days should be similar to today in terms of shorter distance and fewer hills.  We can definitely use it after how taxing the first two days were.

Aug 28: the people you meet on El Camino

It's amazing the variety of people you can meet on the Camino, and how friendly everyone is.  So far, we have met people from Australia, Germany, Mexico, Denmark, Italy, The Netherlands and Mexico.  And from the U.S., we have met people from New York, California, Virginia, New Hampshire and Washington state.  Everyone is very outgoing and helpful.  If someone is resting along the side of the trail, people oftentimes ask if you are okay or if you need anything.  And when people get into town, there are others there offerring suggestions on where to stay and where to eat.  Last night at our hotel, we tried to call the place where we were staying the following night, but couldn't get our phone to work.  So Linda went to talk to the receptionist, and she volunteered to call and confirm the reservation for us.  And once she had, she called our room to let us know everything was taken care of.  With all of the issues going on around the world, it's great to be in an environment where people are friendly, and really look out for and care about each other.

Today's hike was another long one (roughly 17 miles).  Doing these kind of distances back to back is challenging.  The muscles are all sore, and some of the blisters don't have time to quite heal before the next day's hiking began.  When we finished our descent today, we arrived at a village called Zubiri.  Thankfully, there was a small river running beside the Camino, so we took off our shoes and soaked our feet in the water for 15 minutes.  Some other travelers actually swam in the river to cool off.  It was a well needed break and gave us the energy to tackle the last 4 miles.  The picture below is of a bridge from the Middle Ages at Zubiri that crosses over the river that we soaked our feet in.

Aug 27: 15 miles down, 465 to go

Our guide book said that today's hike (our first on the trip) was going to be "an indoctrination by fire", and they weren't kidding.  In total, we hiked 15 miles.  However, the first 12 included a climb of 4,000 feet, some of it very steep.  And then the final 3 miles included a drop of 1,500 feet.  The day started out cloudy, but in spite of that, we were soon sweating as we made our ascent.  The guide book advises people to keep up on their water intake, and again, they were spot on, as we each probably drank over 72 ounces each during the hike and we were still thirsty at the end.  The picture below is looking back towards St. Jean halfway up into the Pyrenees.  Notice that we are actually in the clouds.  As we continued to climb, we got above the clouds and had some great views of other parts of the Pyrenees mountain range.

Then, as I mentioned, we began our descent, which was on a gravelly path, requiring us to stay very focused on the ground in front of us to avoid any falls (the town we were going to actually has a hospital that specializes in leg issues due to the number of hikers who have mishaps on this segment of El Camino).  Going downhill also put some strain on our knees and our thighs.  We stopped at one point to drink some water, and my legs were shaking as I was standing there.  When we finally reached the bottom of the hill and the village of Roncesvalles (where we would be staying), we were overjoyed.  We left St. Jean at 9:50am and arrived at Roncesvalles at 5:50pm, so it took us 8 hours to cover the 15 miles in today's hike.

The hotel we are staying in is very nice.  It is a Parador, which means it was an old church that was converted into a hotel, and is owned and run by the Spanish government.  I'm sure we'll sleep well tonight, given the workout we had today.  However, we need to get an earlier start tomorrow, as we will be hiking over 16 miles with a 1,200 foot descent.  Hopefully by tomorrow morning, our thighs will have forgiven us for what we did to them today.

Our first scallop shell!

Linda received this shell charm as a gift from a dear friend who knew its significance. The scallop shell is the symbol of the Camino - more on that later. The people who travel the Camino are called pilgrims (peregrinos). Hikers wear the shells and the path is marked by the image. This charm brings our destination closer...beginning to feel like pilgrims!

Arrival at St. Jean and buying touristy things

Below is a photo of us outside the El Camino check in office in St. Jean, France and a scallop sheĺl marking the path that all pilgramages are supposed to follow.  Saint James is the reason the El Camino all started in the first place (El Camino de Santiago = The Way of Saint James in spanish).  Spain is where James went when all of the Apostles split up to go spread the word about Jesus and his teachings.  When James died, his disciples supposedly brought his body to Northwestern Spain, where he had done most of his teaching, to be buried.  Nothing much was made of it until the late 800's, when a tomb was discovered and a Bishop declared that it was the tomb of Saint James.  Since that time, people have been making pilgramages to the city of Santiago de Compestella to pay homage to Saint James, whose relics are in a huge church in the middle of that city.  

Nowadays, a little over 200,000 people walk some portion of the El Camino every year.  There are actually many different paths leading to Santiago de Compestella.  The path that we will be taking is called the French Way, as it starts in St. Jean Pied de Port, near Biaritz, France.  The French Way is the most common and popular route, and is the route that Martin Sheen uses in the movie The Way (which is how we got introduced to and were inspired to go on the Camino de Santiago).  It will be 33 days of hiking covering roughly 480 miles, which translates to 14.5 miles per day.  Each day will vary, though, with the shortest day being roughly 12 miles and the longest day 19 miles.

One of the reasons we are taking this trip is because everyone is supposed to be so friendly ànd helpful along the journey, and we found that to be true on the first day.  At the airport, we found 2 other people who were also going to St.Jean and they agreed to split the cab ride (which would have cost us $135 if we paid for the whole thing ourselves).  The woman, who was from New Hampshire, had done the trip before, so once we arrived at St. Jean, she was able to take us straight to the  check in location.  We've also met people from New York, Washington state, Australia and Austria, so it appears it will be the fun, cultural experience we were looking forward to.

First Blog: preparing for the trip

Above is a map of Spain with tiny red dots across the northern part, indicating where we will be stopping along our 33 day hike.  We fly out of Cincinnati August 25, but we don't start hiking until August 27.

We have been getting some training in, but not as much as we probably should.  Today we did our longest training hike so far: 10.8 miles with our full backpack, and we're both pretty sore.  Tomorrow we'll get up early to hike some more, attempting to simulate a little bit what it will be like on El Camino, but we'll probably only get in around 6 to 8 miles Saturday because we have other appointments in the afternoon.  It feels a little bit like training for a marathon, where you don't have to do the full distance as you prepare, but you need to do enough to give yourself the confidence you can make it (at least that's what I keep telling myself :-).

Also of note: this is my first time ever "blogging".  Those of you who know me know I'm not a "techie", so please be patient as I attempt to share our trip.