Monday, May 6, 2013
We begin our journey.....we arrived in Pamplona at 11:30 am,  after a 4 hour train ride from Barcelona.  We then took a  very enjoyable 45 minute taxi ride to Roncesvalles, a very small town at the France/Spain border.  The taxi driver was very helpful in terms of pointing out interesting things along the way, advice on the walk, etc,.

At Roncellesvalles, we were issued our "credentials", which is basically a sort of "passport" for the Camino.  All of the hotels and restaurants along the way have a unique stamp, which they put on your credential when you eat or sleep there.  It makes a great little record of the journey, although we keep forgetting to get ours stamped!  At Roncesvales, you also register for the walk, and are asked to declare a reason for your walk- religious, spiritual, exercise, other.  Apparently, you can only get a compostela, at the completion of the walk,  if you declare spiritual or religious.  The compostela is a sort of graduation certificate for completing the walk. We decide to say spiritual, as we want the compostela, and who knows, perhaps the spirit will move us on this trip!

As we are getting ready to take off walking, some macho Spanish guy asks how long we are planning to walk the 500 miles.  I  tell him, 33 days.  He sort of laughs at us and says that he did in 25 days.  But, I find out that he did it by taking 5 separate walks of 5 days each over a period of several years. I'm sorry, but 5 walks of 5 days is not the same as walking straight thru!  We came to find out that this is the way that many Europeans make the walk.  Makes sense if you have a full time job and can only get so much time off.

We finally took off walking.  I have a great picture of Linda in front of a road sign which says "Santiago de Compostela  790 km".  I will post it as soon as I can figure out how to get these damn photos onto this blog. A technical challenge for another day!

As it was fairly late by time we started, we limited the first day walk to 12 km, or about 7 miles.  It was a beautiful day, about 66 degrees and mostly sunny.   The walk was pleasant, although a reasonable amount of downhill.  Hikers will tell you that downhill is much harder than uphill, particularly on the feet and knees.

"Hemingway slept here...."-  many of the little towns that we pass through have signs proclaiming the time that Ernest Hemingway spent there.  Hemingway is a real hero in the Basque Country of Spain, which was partucularly featured in "The Sun Also Rises".

At 4:30, we arrive in Viskaret, a very small town of less than 100 people.  We check into the "huge" hotel with 6 rooms.  Shortly after checking in, it started to rain, so we quit just in the nick of time!  Initially, we were the only people staying at the place.  Later, two American guys in their early 30's check-jn.  Later that night at dinner, they regale us with their stories of traveling across Europe, chasing women, staying at the dance clubs until 6 am and drinking!  We greatly enjoyed the whole experience, and the total cost of the room, plus dinner, lots of wine, plus breakfast is something like $85.

Tomorrow is a big day- we will be walking over 20 miles to Pamplona.  Will be a hard day, as there will be a lot of ups and downs in the walking.  Although Linda and I have done a fair amount of hiking, in national parks, San Francisco, etc, we have never hiked more than 12-15 mikes in a day.