The most popular route starts in the mountains of Southern France, goes through Pamplona, and all the way to Santiago de Compostela. Mike got us a little blue guide book for pilgrims, which detailed the route and gave such useful information as which towns we would pass on our way, the distances between them, their population, places to stay, eat, and churches to see. We also had our Credencial del Pergrino, a little passport type thing whose main purpose was to identify us as official Peregrinos and therefore eligible to stay in the refugios, or albergues, along the route. Its secondary purpose is one of record. It folds out accordion-style, each page divided up into eight little boxes. It is for firmos and sellos, dates and stamps. All along the camino, in the sleeping places, the eating places, worship places and tourist info places... each one has its own little individual rubber stamp. As a pilgrim, you present this little credencial and get your little stamp, recording your daily progress towards St James in colorful little ink imprints. It makes a pretty neat little souvenir to take home with you, as well as a record of your walk.
The albergues are basically little guesthouses, traditionally run by friends of the camino, people wanting to give aide and support to those making the pilgrimage. They are run by the city, or the church, hotels, and by locals and come in all different styles at all different prices. Municipal albergues usually ran at three euros a night for basic, dormitory style accommodation, usually, but not always with a kitchen. Other places offered beds in rooms of various sizes from five euros up 10 or 12 euros. These places were as varied in comfort as the people who ran them varied in personality. If you wanted to fork out even more cash, private rooms could be had for 20 euros in small towns, and 30 or 40 in bigger ones. Of course, in even larger towns, like Burgos, Logrono and a few others, you could just stay in a hotel, unaffiliated with the camino altogether. We also had camping gear along as another option. And as we became more camino savvy, we would later learn which places were more popular with the walkers, and that these places really did fill up fast, often by early afternoon, which at the start of our journey, we didn't quite believe.
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| Our friend Richard, having a smoke high up in the window of his dorm room. Camino |
That said, our journey began in Pamplona a little too late to make any kind of early deadline, so that first day we didn't even worry about it. We had already seen the first markers in the city center, and all that was left to do was shoulder up our packs, grab some food for the trail and start walking. By the time we had slept off the previous night, showered, packed, said goodbye to the others and gotten on the path and outside the main city (and away from the festival madness finally), it was probably about 3 in the afternoon.
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| The great walk begins! Camino |
That first day, we would pass through Cizur Menor just 4.5k outside of Pamplona. That not being a very long distance, and the days being long, we had decided we would go on the additional 12k to Uterga before calling it a night. We would be crossing the foot of the Pyreenes Mountains that lay outside Pamplona, but after that it would be all downhill, and 12k isn't so far to walk.
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| Not round that mountain- over. Camino |
So we walked, along the road at first, but it didn't take long for the trail to lead off across the fields, through little valleys and up through the hills. Ahead of us we watched the mountain ridge, its white wind turbine spine slowly getting bigger and bigger.
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| From Camino |
We kept turning back to see Pamplona behind in the distance, already seeming a long way off after just a few hours of walking. The ascent to the mountain was steep, the footpath packed dirt and a little slippery. I remember the wind... it was ridiculously windy, and by now, being late afternoon, it was not hot at all. When we reached the summit the wind was strong enough to almost blow me over. There is a monument there, built for pilgrims. We took pictures and ducked back on the trail, out of the wind, Pamplona now out of sight.
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| From Camino |
Away from the wind now, and walking into the sunset, the descent was even steeper and rockier than the climb up had been. We knew that many people chose to do the camino on bike, and that part of the path would have been murder on a bike. Rocks didn't keep it from being beautiful and the steepness just made it more so. After three days in close, festival-filthy Pamplona, all the fresh air and open space were amazing. We stopped for sandwiches at picnic areas along the way, filling up our water bottle at fountains in the tiny little townships we walked through. And by tiny I mean maybe there were 30 people living there. Maybe. Bitty townships were not listed in our guide, probably because places like this had no place for visitors to sleep, no restaurants to feed them, and no stores to buy food from. Quaint. We were stared at by the few people we passed, staring in turn at the farmers driving tractors down our trail, or plowing their fields in valleys far below.
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| From Camino |
By the time we finally made Uterga, it must have been around 7:00 or so. Uterga is a tiny town, with a population of just 690 people. There isn't much there besides the albergue- not even a grocery store, or even an open restaurant that we could see. Outside, it was moving on to evening, the light becoming golden, the air cooler. Inside the albergue, it was warm with the heat of activity, people eating, drinking, laughing. The television was up and the barista was swamped with orders. We, with packs on our backs and faces sheened with the walk's sweat, were obviously looking for a room. Before we could even ask, we heard a word that got real familiar on the camino... "completo". Complete, as in, keep walking.
Led to believe that albergues were pretty much charity operations run by devout and friendly folk dedicated to the aid and assistance of walkers such as ourselves, we asked if we could just camp on the grounds, no worries. But apparently that was not going to fly either. She did take two seconds to give us our very first sello, but that was it. She was busy being devout to her paying pilgrims who had remembered to arrive there early.
We consulted our little blue book, and since the next town was just 1.5k further on, and yet another lay just 2k beyond that, we weren't too worried. It wasn't quite dark yet, and 3k was only about a 40 minute walk. If worse came to worse, Puente la Reina, an additional 2.5k beyond that, supposedly had over 200 beds, so there was always that. It was another 7k to a bed after that, so it was pretty much the end of the line unless we wanted to walk all night or just sleep in a field. I really wanted a shower, so we headed for the towns. But as it turned out, the next two towns were just as tiny, and probably had gone completo hours before we got there.
At around ten that night we rolled up in Puenta la Reina, and my hat was pretty much hung on finding something here. The first place we came to was of course full. It was dark, it was a small town too, only 683 people. I don't know where all the beds were hiding. The thing about our blue book was that it lacked town maps. Many of the little towns we would be in weren't even mentioned in our Lonely Planet, so no maps there either. Arriving mapless at ten at night in a place where even the main grocery store opens for maybe half an hour after lunch is not the best way to find your way around.
The lady at the full albergue, however, was very friendly, and said the municipal was just up the road, about a five minute walk, easy to find. And it was. But guess what. They also were out of beds! I had a second to despair before the guy told us we could pitch a tent out back, on the albergue's nice grassy grounds, and use the kitchen and the shower as well. We were saved, hooray! So that is what we did. Make camp, shower, and pasta dinners before collapsing nice and clean and fed in our cozy little tent in our cozy little sleeping bags. Day 1 on the camino started late and ended well, and we had logged 21.5 on our first day. That is almost like walking from Austin to Pflugerville, but you have to go over a mountain too. Don't forget the mountain.
Day 1 route.
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