We got our bikes on a bus into town and found the Hostal we wanted
and it actually had our reservation.
We stashed our pedal-less bikes, dumped our bags and headed into the
old town for snacks. Narrow streets,
cobble stones, most ground floor space is commercial - often a bar
or restaurant
- with apartments on the upper floors.
It was hot though, in the high 20's even at night. There are no air
conditioning facilities. It did not matter,
we were in Spain and our trip was underway.
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The concierge at the Hostal was very helpful. He called the airline
for us to follow-up on our lost
luggage while we headed out to the Guggenheim to check out the
building and the modern art inside it.
You will have to google the Guggenheim museum, they do not allow
cameras inside.
Brent considered it a huge fraud, Brenda kept an open mind. Once you
have spent an couple of
hours here you understand the phrase "there is no there there". Save
your Euros and do the tour on
the internet.
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This gigantic puppy dog is the only interesting bit of art in the
place. I suspect the artists that
have stuff here consider the Guggenheim Foundation to be their puppy
dogs.
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A great city thought and our first taste of Spain - the streets
filled with people just walking in
the evening.
The small bars filled with people have conversations about the
meaning of life - they
take conversation very seriously here.
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There is also some resistance to the Spanish part in the war on Iraq
- the third western country in the
"coalition of the willing" forged by that great internationalist
George W. Bush. This poster suggests
that he may not have convinced everyone.
The caption appears to commemorate the 6 months of occupation of
Iraq by the US with the help of Spain.
I have given up television and newspapers, but still consider
posters to be worthy of reading.
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The next day we loaded our bikes on a bus (the first bus driver was
just a driver, not a luggage handler, so
everyone loaded their own luggage) to Pamplona. A very nice bus,
nice drive, and we arrived in Pamplona in
time to catch another bus to the start of the WAY - el Camino de
Santiago - our 850 km bicycle trip
across northern Spain.
This second bus driver was also a bicycle handler - he had us remove
our front wheels then
he stowed the bikes side by side in the back. There were about 15
bikes on this bus.
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Here is Brenda starting to load up our bikes at the little town of
Roncesvalles, the start of our pilgrimage.
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Here I am at the start of the WAY.
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We started early the next day, along trails through a farmer's field.
The way is marked by these cement posts in places. The blue tile
with the shape of a shell is an icon of the way.
The yellow arrow is everywhere along the way - on walls, on down
spouts, on the sidewalk. There is usually a yellow
arrow every 50 meters of so.
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Looks easy enough ...
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on second thought, this might be a little tougher than we expected.
The first two days were hot - getting into the mid 30's by 2pm. It
was also often
hot at night in the hotels - above 25 all night. Fortunately the air
is very dry
so we were not too uncomfortable.
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Another part of the trip is getting our Credencial del
Peregrino stamped at every little hostal along the way.
At this hostal in Larrasoana, they had large guest books that
pilgrims sign. Some of the pilgrims are very artistic.
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In Pamplona we happened on a parade - perhaps part of the festival
of San Mateo.
The bulls actually run down this street.
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From Pamplona we climbed a long hill through fields along the trail.
We had decided to try roads instead,
but thought this might not be too bad. It was about 500 meters of
vertical to the ridge with these huge
wind turbines. The turbines actually make quite a soothing swishing
sound. Our breath made a very unsoothing
swishing sound as we pushed our bikes up most of this hill.
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The towers are huge - can you see Brenda at the base? Expect to see
some near you in the near future.
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After that awful climb, we decided to stay on the roads for a while
and had our first bicycle problems the next day.
They appear to be building a train right of way - it is pretty big
so is probably one of those fast trains.
The trucks had brought a little of the red clay soil out onto the
road. Our tires appear to be clay magnets, even
though the clay was not very thick on the road. It collected under
our fenders and actually stopped us from moving.
It also gummed up the chains. We spent a half hour cooling off and
cleaning the bikes before continuing along the
trail - which immediately turned steep uphill with lots of rocks. We
maintained our cool.
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We were by this medieval stone bridge while we were scraping the
clay off. Not so bad.
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We arrived in the town of Logrono. Again a festival, again the old
town streets are crowed at 7:30 pm.
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We got the last room at this Hostal and moved right in. Nice place,
nice location, over priced, but we
had survived another day on the WAY.
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We go to most of the pilgrim hostels to get our credentials stamped.
At this one they require people to
take their boots off at the door. Pilgrims find many different ways.
Here they used bunk beds. We had found real hostels, with private
rooms usually with bath, or hotels so far.
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Here the pilgrims sleep on the gym floor, some of cots.
We have been told that many pilgrims pride themselves on how little
they spend and on how bad their accommodations
were along the way.
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Here we are near the top of a 3 kilometre long hill at 6% grade in
30 degree heat.
Those folks getting off the bus are pilgrims as well. They bus has
taken them almost to the top of the hill,
so they can walk over the top then down the other side to the next
stop - San Juan de Ortega.
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We made it to San Juan de Ortega along the trail from near the top -
a very nice downhill trip along a very good trail.
These are our bikes having a little rest.
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These crocus are all along the road, erupting from the rockiest,
driest soils.
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Sure enough, we got tempted by the quality of the trail into Ortega
into continuing on the trail to Burgos. A mountain
bicyclist we met at Ortega told us he had just been on the phone
(everyone has a cell phone, many use them along
the way) that the next part of the trail was excellent.
We have been dragging our bikes up this rocky hill for an hour at
this point. Brenda is looking at this cross at the
top of the hill with a nasty glint in her eye.
The barely visible object hanging from the cross is a broken pair of
hiking boots.
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We triumphed over the trail, made it into Burgos, found a hostal
(bathroom just down the hall, but it was just for us)
and went out. We considered this statue of El Cid as inspiration for
our continued pilgrimage.
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