Day 8 - Cirauqui to Estella - 16km

I am in Estella again. I feel like this is Jörg’s and my town. There are other special places along the camino like where we first kissed, etc. but here we lived for 2 weeks as hospitaleros so I can feel his strong presence. I have decided to take my day off now. It is now 8 days of hiking so time for a day off, and this is the perfect place to do that. In fact, I am staying in a hotel right now with Christina. She had booked a hotel which happened to have an adjoining room so I am sharing it with her. What luxury, using real towels and just spreading my crap everywhere is wonderful. Tomorrow I am going to stay in the parish albergue where we were volunteers.

We had set off just before 8am. The day was a pretty steady pace. I think I discovered today I don’t like hills. In the past, I didn’t mind going uphill, but I hated going downhill. Now that my knees don’t hurt going downhill, I can start to hate uphill. The funny thing is, of course, since the Pyrenees, everything we encounter is like an ant hill in comparison, but it feels like Mount Everest to me. It will get easier I am sure.

We stopped in Lorca (in about 6km) for a breakfast break. I had my daily Coke Zero and I had a packed lunch from the albergue. We were then off again. Our next break was 4km again. This time we stopped in Villatuerta at a bar, which was clearly only locals, so you can tell they didn’t appreciate our company. We just had a coke and rest. It was meant to be a short break, but we got to talking and lost track of time. It was already past noon and we thought we would be in Estella by noon.

We arrived at the hotel around 2. We showered, rested and then headed out to get a drink as we were planning to meet Kangmi (from South Korea) at 6:30 for dinner. We decided to stop by my parish albergue to see if there was a mass at San Miguel Church (Jörg and I went everyday when hospitaleros). She said no. We then wandered over to the church to see if we could at least go in and they said it was closed and then the organizer came and talked to us to say there was a concert tonight. She said there were still tickets. So we decided that was perfect.

We went for a quick bite to eat and met up with Kangmi to go to the concert. It was awesome. It was only three instruments and one singer. The only instrument I could identify was the trumpet, the others were very unique. One was guitar like and the other was a type of horn I guess. It lasted just over an hour and was such a special treat. There were going to be 7 concerts this week at different venues. They are based on the 7 deadly sins and today was Pride/Vanity. The theme was perfume so throughout the concert (for each song), some ladies would wave over our head some cloth pieces that were soaked in different perfumes. Most of the time you would just smell them, but now and again, you would feel a drop. It was quite unique. At the end, when were leaving, we met up with the organizer again and she was excited to see us. Gave us all hugs and said “we hug here in Spain”.

The three of us then went out for a drink after and met up with Cornelia from Germany. It was a nice evening chatting. I am still surprised when I see all the locals out so late. On the walk back to our hotel around 10pm there were children playing in the square.

It was Christina’s birthday today and it was great to spend the special day with her. She will be off tomorrow so we will miss each other’s company, but I am sure we will meet up again somewhere along the way.

Now time for bed. Check out isn’t until 11am so I am going to enjoy a slow morning.

TTYLRead more