Stage 7: Estella to Los Arcos

13.4 miles, 7 hours, 50°-84°. Before this all turns into a blur of exhaustion I've got to record some of it. Every day seems like a year. I left Estella later than usual because I waited for the post office to open to get some postcard stamps and to mail a box of stuff from my pack ahead to Santiago. I've pared it down even more but am still sending the big backpack ahead for a couple more days and walking with a daypack because now the mid-back has gone on strike. Just when hips and knees had fully signed on. I think it's the daypack I've been using. So today (I'm writing this Wednesday) I went to a sporting goods store dedicated to the needs of those walking the Camino and got a Deuter German made daypack designed for women that seems to fit my body better. Here's hoping. I want to get to the point where I can just enjoy the walk without some screaming distraction of bodily discomfort.
Hopefully I'll remember the walk to Los Arcos when I look at the pictures...all I remember now are the hallucinatory last few miles on gravel through open wheat fields in 84° with no shade. When I got into town I called a taxi to the truck stop hotel I had a reservation at a mile and a half out of town off the freeway. Met some lovely Norwegian folks in the dining room. Slept like a log.Read more