Chapter 10: Running of the Bulls***.

We woke up this morning sore, a little limpy and VERY dried out. We clearly haven’t been taking in enough water, and decided that we would set ourselves goals for water intake. We’re about 50 kms in and we are having so much fun. The soreness and dehydration aside, this trip has barely begun and already it feels like an experience we won’t be able to really explain fully. The website is nice because documenting all of this means we will remember it too.

Our hotel is lovely; a little suite in a central part of Pamplona. There’s a tiny market below us, where they have an outdoor dining area and foot traffic mills about. Very Spanish.

We lost track of Gary yesterday. He stayed at a different albergue in Zubiri and he hasn’t turned up since. He was doing well last we saw him and he had found another Australian man during the trip from Roncesvalles to Zubiri. It seems that people sort of come and go on this trip. Despite the fact that we are all traveling the same road, the vastness and the pace determine who you end up walking with and for how long. That sort of quick start/quick end friendship is refreshing here. No hard feelings for sudden changing of plans and best wishes when you meet people and they split off. Gary invited us to Australia when we saw him last. He does long hikes there and we told him we will look him up next time we need a vacation. He agreed to the same for a Canadian trip. I’m sure it won’t be the last we see of him, but he was happily chugging along and truthfully I miss his tenacity and “easy come, easy go” personality.

As far as the Spanish lifestyle is concerned, we are culture shocked. Nothing in town opens until 10am. It then closes again at 1pm for a siesta and reopens at 4 or 5pm. I’m not sure how commerce flourishes here, but somehow Spain manages to have an economy. We were up at 8 and had a little breakfast before we showered and decided what to do with our day. Breakfast here is primarily pastries and (my personal favorite) dry fruit muesli with yogurt. It doesn’t take us long to power through breakfast, and we repacked and figured out what we needed from town while we waited for the rest of Spain to wake up.

We wanted to stay relatively subdued today. We have to be pretty dialed in on our rest days. It’s hard when the city itself is so gorgeous and so much is going on during the brief window where everything is open. We stayed within a kilometer or so of the hotel and just kind of dodged in and out of a couple little places. Pharmacies are EVERYWHERE and we needed some blister bandages and other little things, so it was nice to have the availability so close.

One thing that has proven indispensable is road candy. Both for energy and my glucose lows, it’s pretty key, and so we found a little candy place that literally just charges by the bag for any kind of candy you could possibly want. Very cool. I got giant gummy strawberries. Becky found gummy toes, or as the Spanish call them “dedos de pie” or “fingers of the foot” (very apt description). A pharmacist told us that.

We toured the square for a while and then headed back to our hotel, where we sat down in the courtyard below and had a tostada, which was incredible. Becky had a coffee and I ordered blindly off the drink menu and ended up with some kind of a milkshake. It was delicious. Everything here is really rich so we are trying to remember to split things, other wise we only ever ending up eating half.

Update at 7pm: We went for dinner tonight and made a whole slew of mistakes. None of them involved the quality of food. Everything was incredible. The issue we had was assuming anything was served in small portions. We finished what we later learned were appetizers only to be served two MASSIVE platters of food. We panicked immediately, knowing we couldn’t eat another bite. It was SO MUCH FOOD. Food to the point that we were embarrassed.

The owner of the restaurant was nice enough to box it up, so we now have lunch tomorrow, but the servings were unbelievable. We have resolved to learn “Menu Spanish” so we don’t make that mistake again.

Last minute, we also got an email from…yep, our favorite Aussie: Gary! He made it to Pamplona and through some detective skills he managed to get Becky’s email and sent us a hello. We were both so excited to hear from him.

We went for a quick beer with Gary. We will be walking together again! Can’t wait! Thanks for tuning in once again and we’re excited to start it all over once again tomorrow!

Much love!