Two tough days of hiking. St Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles is usually called the hardest day of the Camino. Indeed it was. 25 Kilometers with 3,000 foot elevation climb. Thankfully, the weather was fine and the scenery was beautiful. But it was almost as hard as the hardest days of riding the RAGBRAI bike ride across Iowa. Today, we hiked from Roncesvalles to Zubiri. Less distance but harder on my muscles. Much of the day was in the rain and the trail was slick. After yesterday, what goes up must go down. We had some steep ascent early in the day then 1800 feet descent, most in the last 4 miles. Over slick rock with water running down the trail into large puddles and muddy patches. At the end, not only was I sore (I hadn’t practiced descents like that) but with new blisters on the tips of several toes. I am walking around kind of funny now, but so are the majority of the people at the albergue. There is a lot of Basque influence here with many signs in the Basque script. The Albergue is cold, the showers quickly run out of hot water (mine never had any hot water) and the heater in our sleeping room doesn’t work. However, there are about 20 in the room, most are people that I recognize from the trail or at the albergue in Roncesvalles. Everyone got together for some pasta prepared by two Italians in our group for dinner. It was good. Companionship is wonderful. Italians, French, Spaniards, English, Japanese, Tiawanese and a couple of other nationalities that I haven’t identified. Tomorrow, we return to Pamplona and we hope to stay in an Albergue that is situated in part of the sanctuary of a 14th Century cathedral. And hopefully, my muscle kinks are gone.
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