August 14 & 15, 2018

I am reflecting on yesterday and today’s Camino installment while sitting at Café Gazilaz – in a tiny community square, across from the church in Obanos, Spain, drinking a hard earned, much appreciated, muy frío cerveza!!

Yesterday we had an under two hour walk into Pamplona. My body is holding up amazingly well with no blisters and minimal aches and Dixie has a little, non problematic blister that Compeed seems to be addressing just fine. Yet we were both quite sore days two and three, gingerly stepping when commencing locomotion and feeling some aches and pains into the night. So the shorter day further added to our current adaptation to the endless walking.

We entered Pamplona through an ancient Roman archway and immediately felt surrounded by history. Plus, I reread “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway last week and it was transporting to visit some of his and his character’s old haunts. We enjoyed the day around town and I was thoroughly moved by my tour of the Catedral.

Early to bed is the norm and today we actually made it out the door early, too – which was a good thing since we had very little cover from what was soon to be an 87 degree sun. We had some extremely steep climbs and treacherous descents over loose and varied size boulders, passing a large field of sunflowers with smiley faces etched into many of them! We stopped for breakfast in Zariquiegui and also slipped into Inglesia de St Andres, a 13th century Romanesque church. Another highlight today was the Alto del Perdón with its windmills and a large art installation of pilgrims of past days. It was our highest elevation of this day and so our views were astounding!!!

Most of our remaining Camino friends of the last few days went another four plus kilometers into Puenta La Reina while we chose the sleepy little town of Obanos. Well, it seemed sleepy, but Wednesday must be seniors card night because the happy voices of countless locals are filling the air as I end this post.

Unless they are celebrating the National holiday of the Assumption of Mary in a rather unorthodox way…