Thursday, July 12, 2012

Day 8: Navarrete to Logrono (July 9)

Though our walk was short today, we started early in order to finish early and be prepared for tomorrow, which is long and will require an early start to beat the heat (the sun is most intense from 3-6 pm). Only a short distance outside Navarrete, we crossed paths with a Santiago pilgrim who was understandably confused that we were walking in the opposite direction. Over the course of the morning it was interesting and encouraging to pass by many more pilgrims - though they were all walking in the opposite direction as us, it's really cool to know that there are others having experiences similar to our own.

In observing these other pilgrims, it was interesting to see that some seemed to be carrying much more than us (sleeping bags, bed rolls, stuffed backpacks that presumably contained more clothes than we chose to bring, one guy had a ukulele in a drawstring bag on his chest, another guy had a full blown guitar on his back on top of a backpack!, another had an accordion strung across his chest - perhaps these musicians are the evening entertainment at their hostels ), and other pilgrims certainly had less (only a camelback bag that holds water, a tiny drawstring backpack that looked nearly empty). While we have spent time discarding superfluous items from our own bags in order to reduce weight, overall it seems that we have hit a sort of middle ground in terms of the things we schlep with us each day. Our biggest source of weight is definitely water, particular because we pass through a limited number of towns and not all of the towns we do pass through have water pumps where we can refill...this is a big difference between our Camino Ignaciano and the Camino Santiago: Santiago passes by many more places where water can be refilled, therefore pilgrims don't have to lug as much with them throughout the day. Another big thing we noticed among these other pilgrims was the wide range of footwear they sported...some had boots like ours, others had tennis shoes of some variety, and still others wore sandals with socks for added protection. Inspired by the sandal concept, we decided to give it a try for our walk today with our relatively enclosed and supportive sandals on with socks. This made our feet so much lighter and pace rather quicker....perhaps we've discovered an important camino secret here.

Our walk to Logono was primarily along a paved path that wound among trees and meandered through a big, beautiful park where there were picnic and barbecue areas, a snack stand, lots of green space, and much path space for walking, running, and biking. We made it to the outskirts of Logrono in about 2 hours and then walked through much of the city before reaching our hotel. Today we traveled about 14 km. Once we were checked in, showered, and done with laundry, we stopped at the cafe across the street for a coffee and then wound our way back through the city to take it all in.

We had a few things on our to do list for the afternoon, including a purchase of deodorant and ibuprofen, finding the Jesuit church in order to get our credential stamped, and purchasing a European adapter instead of the bulky converter/adapter combo we had brought along. The first two items were pretty easy to check off the list at a grocery store and pharmacy; the Jesuit church was a bit of a walk but easy enough to find; and we browsed several shops in pursuit of an adapter. We were lucky to arrive at the Jesuit church just minutes before the noon daily mass started, and since we couldn't find anyone to stamp the credentials, we opted to attend mass. Following the mass we tracked down the priest to stamp our credentials - he was a lovely bumbling fellow, and after much searching for his automatic stamper (which he never found), he let us select which rubber stamp we wanted in our credentials. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped for a lunch of calamari, bocadillos, and coke light; we also found a delicious Venetian ice cream shop where Ruth had trufa and strachiatella and Greg had nata and chocolate.

After our afternoon rest back at the hotel, we were able to find a hardware store that sold an adapter, and we had one more round of ice cream for dinner; this time Ruth had strachiatella and mint chip, and Greg had lemon and strawberry. Delicious!

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