Pamplona to Puente la Reina

We left Pamplona at 8 am this morning. It was a terrific early morning walk through Pamplona.  As we approached the outskirts of town, we were amazed to see lots and lots of hikers, walking zombie like on the Camino.  It looked like a scene from some horror movie!

After a few miles it began to lightly rain, very similar to yesterday.   We climbed to nearly 2600 feet to the top of a mountain, in a nice steady, long climb.  At the top of this mountain there are a bunch of metal statues of pilgrims. I have some good photos of thos which we will post when I figure out how to do it!  if you have sen the movie "the way" you will rcognize this area from one of the scenes.

Unfortunately, the downhill portion was very steep, and damn near killed my feet.  More on that later....

The people on the Camino are a true United Nations of hikers! Today, we meet many people from Spain, Holland, France, Germany, Ireland and incredibly, Australia!  We ended up walking with 3 delightful, retired couples from the gold coast of Australia for probably 5 hours, including lunch.  I'm sure we will see them again in the next few days. The Australians were also part of an organized tour, so their backpacks were carried to the next time via coach.

The Australians convinced us to join them on a side walking trip to visit a church from the 11th century.  It added several miles to our day, bring the day's total to about 17 miles.  Unfortunately, the church was closed when we got there, so we were only able to see the outside.

I had previously mentioned that Linda had the potential start of several blisters yesterday. She decided to wear her sandals today, and came through fairly well, although she continues to have a couple of "hotspots".  I unfortunately did not fair so well, and have a bad ass, puss filled blister in my left foot.  After much discussion of what to do, we go to the local pharmacy and buy some special blister tape called Luko tape.  Based on the advice from the pharmasist, we decide to pierce the blister with a needle.  We will hope this works out tomorrow.  Our good friend Borja from Spain walked the Camino a few years ago and encountered a similar problem.  Unfortunately, he ended up with an infection and had to stop walking based on Doctor's orders.  We will hope this doesn't happen to us...

Tomorrow will be a somewhat shorter day, about 13-14 miles as we hike to Estrella.  Say a prayer to the foot God tonight that we will survive!