Zuribi to Arres to Pamplona to Puenta la Reina....

MAN it sucks when there´s no internet! What a couple of days...and already they start to run together, so it´s gonna be kind of tough for me to go back and detail it all. The only constant is PAIN.

Anyway. Yesterday. Zuribi´s hostel was okay...not great. Good thing: it´s a converted school, and you have to go outside the sleeping rooms to get to bathrooms and showers, so the door doesn´t lock at 10 like usual, and you can come and go all night long. Bad thing: the door doesn´t lock at 10 like usual, so EVERYONE can come and go all night long. But I slept okay.

We rolled out at about 7:20 am, and the goal was to get one town before Pamplona. Because the Feast of St. Fermin is still going on, the refugios in Pamplona are closed and you can´t stay there. So you have to stop one town short or one town past. We decided to stay with the monks at Trinidad de los Arres. It was a relatively easy day...we were there by about 12:30, and they didn´t open until 2, so we went hunting a pelegrino menu for lunch. The walk was mostly on narrow footpaths cut into STEEP hillsides. One wrong step and you´re tumbling down a LONG, LONG WAY. But it never seems very treacherous...it´s easy to stay on the path. It was drizzly all day...my first experience with my ill-preparedness for rain. Dad´s coat worked well...skipped the poncho; everything in the pack was able to get wet. Walked alone for a long time...for a while, was afraid I´d gone the wrong way. At one point, I came through a little town (ps - when I say town, I mean small conglomeration of houses you walk through in three minutes tops), and heard violin music. Bad violin music. Some guys in a very old building across from a church had set up a canopy and had laid out tea, coffee, and breakfast items, and a kid about 16 years old was playing the violin for ambiance while you sat and drank your tea! I stopped in to rest...they spoke a little English and I tried to answer in Spanish as best I could. It started to rain...I hit the church atrium and wrote a while...when it was back to drizzle I continued. It was beautiful the rest of the day, but kinda cold, which I did not expect....

Yesterday´s surprise was that there was NOTHING else to eat the whole day. Every town we stopped in had nothing open. Apparently nothing occurs on the weekends in Spain. I had a half a sandwich from the day before, some trail mix, and two nectarines, so I was set, but some others weren´t, and were ravenous by the time they got to Trinidad...which was a....

FRIGGIN´ HILTON IN A MONASTERY. These guys had it all. Except a grasp of English. ANY grasp of English. They charged us 6€, I think, and the guy who checked us in was a real joker. Since I only catch about 15% of what anyone says to me in Spanish, I got a laugh or two, and everyone else was blank. Anyway...he had an assistant that was kind of like his Igor...a stooped old man who was very eager to help but couldn´t communicate except in Spanish. They led us through the chapel (GORGEOUS) and through an outdoor garden to get to the stone steps leading to the part of the monastery that had our rooms. A couple different rooms for bunks (everywhere has had bunk beds so far...Karl says you always have to choose the bottom bunk because if someone below you farts, it goes upwards...ha ha...that statement is even funnier when said in broken English by a Belgian), kitchen, WASHING MACHINE!!!!, sitting area, vending machine TO INCLUDE HEINEKENS...it was awesome. I POUNCED on the washing machine, much to the envy of my friends. Didn´t think it through and put my pajamas in before I knew if there was a dryer. Didn´t realize there WAS a dryer till 8pm. Put things in the dryer and an hour later found out the dryer was a little shy on heat. So today, 24 hours later, things are still drying....

Anyway. Met a couple German boys. They´re wonderful. Felix and Florian. Florian should move to the United States and make a million dollars as a Kasey Kahne lookalike. (No joke, i have pictures to prove it.) Felix is my mother hen. Even brought me an ice pack for my knee. We sat outside under an overhang to get out of the rain and chatted for hours with Idaho and...

NINE HUNDRED OTHER AMERICANS. Well, only 8, but Americans are like elephants, it doesn´t matter how many of us there are, you´ll know it because you´ll HEAR us a mile away. These are Catholic Campus Ministry folks from colleges across the States. One was from Hyattsville. Ha ha. Another, from CO, lost his passport on the PLANE between London and Madrid and got shuffled back and forth in customs for TWO DAYS, a la Tom Hanks in The Terminal. He had a great story when he finally got there to Trinidad.

We hit a market and bought baguettes and salami and very questionable cheese to make sandwiches for the next day. I found Babybels, the Germans bought two six packs of beer, and I took it upon myself to introduce Florian to Oreos. (He´s now addicted.) Sat up and talked until Igor came and told us it was time for bed. Lots of ¨snorking¨ last night, as Karl calls it.

This morning I lost both Karl and Christa...my first day without them. Christa, bless her heart, gave me one of her Nordic walking sticks. So I have a stick. And Felix gave me a new shell, suitable for my exquisite credential frame job I have in mind. =) I set out with the Germans at 7am, hoping to catch the running of the bulls at 8...

WHICH WE MISSED BY LIKE 3 MINUTES. I´m friggin´ heartbroken. We were three blocks away when we heard two cannon shots. Knew that must be it. Couldn´t get there in time because I´m totally lame in my right knee...wrapped or not. (Felix made me drink magnesium last night AND this morning...hit the Tylenol PM last night...no help.) By the time we got close to the street, people were heading in the other direction.

Now. Americans think we know how to party. But I don´t think even Mardi Gras is happening at 8am on a Sunday morning like the folks in Pamplona do it. It was unbelievable. It was EIGHT AM and it felt like 5pm because EVERYONE was drunk. People were camping out in parks...tents, blow-up matresses, sleeping where they fell...people were roaring drunk...pissing against walls (three guys in 20 yards)...packing the bars...open bottles of vodka, broken beer bottles everywhere, loud, bawdy, obnoxious...everyone had like four inches of the bottoms of their pants dirty with I don´t want to know WHAT...it was unbelievable. Everyone was in white with red bandanas around their necks and red sashes around their waists. There were openings in the streets where they put big wooden posts to make a sort of chute...corral...don´t know what. One on each side of the street. I don´t know if the bulls ran through the chutes or if people were in the chutes and the bulls ran between them...? Dunno. What I DO know is that people who got gored, trampled, wounded however by the bulls were JUST getting first aid as we arrived on the scene. (Like any good American, i got pictures of that.) One guy was being carried out on a stretcher a few minutes later, with a very bloody and bandaged fellow walking after. Everyone was packing the streets...civil workers were trying to sweep and spray away blood and beer and wreckage...they were taking down the chutes...people were packing into bars to watch the running that had JUST happened on TV. To see it on TV is breathtaking...but I´m DEVASTATED that I couldn´t see the real thing. My consolation is that another pilgrim found us in the streets and said she was right there and never saw the bulls because of all the people....

Pamplona was insane. We got away from the crowds and sat and had tea and tried to plan the day. We´d done 5 km into Pamplona and had 24 to go if we wanted to reach Puneta la Reina (the Queen´s Bridge). Because my knee was so bad, I was doubtful, but I´m really afraid I won´t make Santiago, so I´m letting my bravado cloud my judgment, which is either brave or stupid, and probably the latter.

We set out from Pamplona. With two women and two little girls with shells and packs...one was seven. She was cute as hell. We left them behind and headed into the hills.

Scary part for today: stopped at a close albergue outside Pamplona because my new diet caught up to me and I was in a bad way...across the street, two old women were leaning out of their balconies and it turns out they were the owners of the albergue. I pleaded my case as best I could and one disappeared and the other said something that I took to mean ¨you can use ours¨ so I headed closer to the house. And their two chained German sheperds went NUTS. Full-on attack mode. They were both chained, but I´ve never been the target of a guard dog´s rage, when he´s barking as hard as he can, showing every white tooth in his mouth with every bark, and when the other one appeard on the other side of me from around the corner of the building and went berserk as well, all I could do was stand there, frozen, staring at them, and thinking how sharp and perfect and white their teeth were...and it scared the living Christ out of me, and when the lady finally appeared and took me back across the street to the albergue and I got into the bathroom, I broke down and cried and couldn´t stop. Sheesh.

Florian had a paper that shows elevation of each day´s route. Today included Alto de Perdón...and it looked like a teepee. CRAP. The uphill started out gradual as we left the city. At one point, rain was threatening, so we stopped and took about ten minutes to gear up and put on ponchos and raincoats and wrap up our packs. When we finished, the rain had stopped and never started again. Ha ha, God. We walked on dirt footpaths that wound between wheat fields...it was like the opening scene of Gladiator. I tried to run my hands across them like Russell Crowe does...they´re stiff. Every now and then, the wheat fields would be broken up by sunflower fields. With random castles and keeps and churches on hills. It´s BREATHTAKING.

But so was the hill as it got steeper. The German boys left me far behind (which is good...it´s an unspoken Camino rule...you don´t ask people to wait for you...you don´t infringe upon the pace of someone else´s Camino in order to serve the pace of your own...they go or you go and maybe you meet up and maybe you don´t). As I neared the top of the hill at a snail´s pace, I looked down and saw the cars leaving Pamplona heading into a tunnel THROUGH the hill and got REALLY bitter. But about five minutes later, I crested the hill and saw the iron memorial to the pilgrims there. Google ¨Alto de Perdón¨ and hit Images...I still haven´t figured out how to download pictures, but you have to see this memorial.

Suddenly I was crying (again, ha ha). 1) My knee hurt. 2) I had been thinking about the picture of this memorial that I´d seen on Facebook and I didn´t know where on the Camino it was. I was afraid I´d miss it on the train or something, and suddenly, there it was...and it was SO MOVING...they look like they´re suffering through such hardship but still pressing on...kind of like the memorial to the Donner Party in Truckee. It was unbelievable. We´re up here on this cold, windswept hilltop with these huge windmills on one side of us (Don Quixote, anyone?) and this memorial on the other, and in front of us is this view of the valley below that was just amazing and 3) REALLY REALLY FAR. AND REALLY STEEP DOWN. AND REFER TO 1). Bawling. I was a mess. Ha ha. The German boys were still there and we had a sitdown with a sandwich. The Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah Valley have NOTHING on this view. And suddenly I knew why the Camino doesn´t take the tunnel.

The Camino demands that you pay for its beauty. In sweat, in tears, in sore muscles, in blisters, in agonized feet and legs and hips...YOU PAY. But it is WORTH it. Every picture I take is to bring a particle of this beauty to someone else who isn´t here to see it, but the pictures will never do justice to what I´ve seen here. It´s like the bulls...you can see it on television, but to have seen it in the flesh would have been more dramatic to an indescribable degree...like the difference between this panorama from Alto de Perdón and the photographs of it.

And right in front of us was a billboard showing what we were looking at. And Puenta la Reina wasn´t the first town we could see. Or the next. OR THE NEXT. We had another 16 km to go. And opportunities to stop. I was just wondering how the hell I was going to get off that mountain with this knee I have. But there was nothing else to do but start down (and cry, which I did more of). The Germans passed me in about 15 minutes, and eventually Idaho caught up with me and stayed with me for the next three hours, bless his heart.

Found the Germans again, made it through a few more towns...nothing else noteworthy to describe except the pain, which is indescribable. Sometimes it goes away for 10 minutes at a time, equally inexplicable, and comes back, but even when it´s gone, it´s only replaced by sore feet (did I mention the blisters have appeared? And that I can´t get moleskin to stick? And that Felix has these gelpads that are AWESOME?) and sore muscles and sore hips and sore shoulders.

I´ve purged the pack. About 5 pounds worth. Dunno whether to send it home, to Santiago, or to Wendy (who, if you´re reading this, please send your address to merlintoes@hotmail.com ASAP!!). But it has to go and I don´t want to throw it out.

So here we are in Puenta la Reina, as of 5:30pm (10 hour day, KILLER). I wrote postcards while I sat in the bar and watched the bullfights (and then tried NOT to watch the bullfights, as they´re heartbreaking and the bull always gets killed in the end, and made me long for good ol´ American rodeo...more tears...what an emotional day this was). Note: San Miguel beer is pretty good and hits HARD.

Notes on the refugio here...basement of a hotel...SHOWERS TO DIE FOR. Massage settings that come from spouts in the wall along your body. Have had a hot shower in every place I´ve stayed so far. Also washer and dryer here. 6€. Right at the top of where the path comes out. Have not seen the Queen´s Bridge yet, but in no hurry to leave tomorrow. 19km or so to Estrella. I plan to take my time, like I did today. Wait around for a post office to open, maybe.... Felix´s leg is hurting, so I might walk alone tomorrow, for the first time. Lost Karl and Christa and no sign of Idaho. Walking alone should be interesting...and necessary.

It´s been hard, and like I said, today was ridiculously emotional. But I expected that. Maybe even wanted it. I think this is a good thing. I encourage anyone looking for a challenge to try it out. Someone today said you lose about 10kg on the Camino, and if you ask me, this beats the HELL out of spending the summer in a gym (though today I would´ve given my eyeteeth for a poolside margarita).

Okay, I´ve been writing for an hour now, and you´re all caught up, I think, and I have only 7 minutes left. I´ve also crashed the last two computers I tried to access MySpace from, so if you´re trying to write me there, I haven´t gotten it. Also, Mom, I don´t think my email is forwarding...nothing is coming from my Verizon address. Could you check if you have time?

Last story, a funny one. We had this German I call Al. He looks like Donk from Crocodile Dundee...like an Australian rugby captain, like an SS officer. He´s enormous. We think he´s the devil. Can hardly understand him, but you always know he´s up to something. And he eats his french fries with honey. I made a face, and (his English is really bad) he looks at me and holds one out. ¨I am sure you never die,¨ he said. I took that to mean ¨It won´t kill you¨ and popped it in my mouth.

It was awful. =)