Camino Day 7 — Obanos to Estella

I told Chris that I would do the more fact filled update so he could gather his thoughts for a reflection, but here we are at bedtime with a 4:00
alarm set. We hope to finish our 20’KM walk while the temps are “only” in the 90’s. It will be over 100 in the late afternoon tomorrow. Hopefully, we’ll be napping or drinking cervezas y Aquarius (the drinks of Camino champions!)

Here are the barebones facts:
We started in Obanos at 5:00 AM
We finished in Estella a little after 2 PM

We had to walk almost 10 km (3 hours) before we found an open bar for coffee. The bar we thought would be open at the 6 km mark was closed when we got there. Reader, I cried just a little. Fortunately, we had Aquarius, some “energy cookies,” and an orange to tide us over.

We caught up with a bunch of other pilgrims at the first open bar and played “leapfrog” with them all day. Having lots of interesting people to talk with helped keep our (my) spirits up when the heat and a little bit of sleep/coffee deprivation almost did me in.

The humidity was lower so we were able to keep cool by soaking our hat, arms and necks in cool water.

We visited 3 churches and only two bars. We went to Mass tonight since we’ll be walking all day tomorrow. We thought we were going to a Pilgrims Mass where the preaching would connect to the pilgrim experience, but instead it was a funeral Mass for a woman named Marisol, a grandmother of 89 years who sounds like a lovely woman (from what I could gather with my poor Spanish ) . Rest in Peace, Marisol.Read more