Day 5/6

It’s been tough to post these past few days. They have been full. Yesterday, we moved from Roncesvalles to a cute little town called Burguete. I chose not to do part of that leg of the walk, because my knees are so bad and it was steep downhill. I met Deb in Roncesvalles and walked to Burguete, which might be the cutest little town I’ve ever seen. 


Most of the houses/buildings all look the same. They take a great deal of pride in their appearance, which results in a uniform look.

We got there fairly early in the day and I had booked us at a cute little hotel/hostel where we had two beds and our own bathroom. We were in heaven with that level of privacy after the night before where we slept in a room with six people, several of whom snored. We took showers and headed out to explore the town. We learned that the town had a historical connection to witchcraft in the early centuries. 

We were trying to figure out what happened to our California friends we made the day before, but it was difficult to make contact due to infrequent access to WiFi. Eventually when they hit Roncesvalles, they texted and we talked them into walking to Burguete to meet up with us.

We had the pilgrims dinner together. It was huge. We thought our dessert choices were funny, though. We were offered either yogurt or an orange and we all chose the orange with the intent of saving it for the next day’s walk. Everyone but me ordered an additional orange cake for dessert and it was heavenly! I tried Deb’s.

After dinner we went to organize for the next day and get sleep.

We woke up at five AM to get started for the day. BY SIX, we were off and ready to walk. Because of sketchy internet we weren’t able to make contact with the California ladies so we went ahead on our own. It was a beautiful and magical morning. 

We stopped at the first town for coffee and breakfast. It was unspeakably delicious. I am not ashamed to say that I had four cups of coffee while we waited for our friends to catch up.
Just as we were getting tired of waiting, Debbie and Kira showed up, so we waited for them to get breakfast and all headed out again together. The first half of the day was amazing. We had so much fun walking and stopping to look at all of the interesting things.






One of the funniest things we saw all day was a cow walking right in line with all of us on the camino path!

Then, the day took a turn. Kira started having serious pain in her feet. We stopped a few times for her to rest, but it didn’t seem to do the trick so they decided to stay behind. 

The terrain became extremely difficult to manage with uphill and downhill stretches of big jagged river rock.it was one of those “this is never going to end” experiences. It was painfully hard on my knees and I was struggling so much at times that I started crying. I hadn’t felt pain like that since before my back surgery. 

Eventually, a million years later, (in Patricia time) we arrived at Zubiri. I was moving at the speed of a grandma with a walker at that point. All I could think about was getting Advil in me! 

Also, I was sunburned. I needed food and wine and a bed, in that order. Longest day ever!