Day 5 - Estella to Los Arcos (kind of)

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TODAY.

It's a funny story about coincidence and perhaps even fate; an experience that perhaps has restored my faith in the camino.

It started off with me feeling slightly crummy in the morning. We were woken up at 6am (Ariel told me afterwards) by a group of men out on the street, ringing an obnoxiously loud bell in front of our window and then proceeding to sing in four part harmony. Then they walked off, and repeated the whole thing a hundred meters down the street. I think it may have been our pilgrim wake-up call, but could not recognise 'peregrino' in the lyrics (but I wasn't actually paying that much attention at this point.) It was all rather strange, but also amusing. We were then woken up at around 7:30am (yes, we slept in a little) by Bob Marley coming from the kitchen and dining room, which was actually rather pleasant, as Bob Marley is both Ari and my Sunday-morning-pancake-making music. We danced around a bit, scoffed down some biscuits and zwieback (which was breakfast) and headed off.

My feet started hurting immediately, and it went uphill for the first hour. Then, we reached the famous 'fuente del vino' at the Bodegas Irache. Sadly, Spanish pilgrim wine tastes just as terrible as every other wine. Nonetheless, I tried it. They have a webcam there, strangely enough. I suppose you could google it. After that it continued to go uphill... and then, after about another half hour, we felt raindrops on our face and pulled out the waterproof (but only for an hour) pants and everything else. It also hapened to be freezing this morning.

And then we realise - this isn't rain. Nuh uh. IT WAS SNOW. I am not kidding, it had started snow. The snowflakes were tiny, but it was snow. So we danced around for ten minutes and regretted that it was not snowing more.

Only sure enough, twenty minutes later, we were in a full blown wind and snow storm. Ok, not a real blizzard, but it was getting hard to see and the snowflakes were as big as 5 cent pieces, albeit still melting when in contact with the ground for more than twenty seconds. But within fifteen minutes of it, we were soaked and starting to get a bit cold. Then we managed to reach the village halfway along our route for the day... Only to discover that it wasn't Villamayor de Monjardin (which had a shop, which we needed because we had no food. It was sunday in Estella,) but another village. We'd unknowingly gone an alternative route, and this village was even smaller, had a closed bar, and no shop. We explored around a bit, hobbling most of the way and dripping, until we finally sought refuge in a bus shelter. We couldn't stop for long though, because we were beginning to freeze. We had just set off down this backstreet back tot he camino when we see a young couple, who yell out to us 'Los Arcos?' We reply 'si, si!' and next thing we know, we're hitching a ride into the town, well, village. But it at least has a shop. Muchas muchas gracias, Camino spirits!!!

So that's my little story of coincidence and fate. If we hadn't unknowingly taken that route, or hadn't ventured into that backstreet, or hadn't stopped in that bus shelter, we would have been walking and hobbling to Los Arcos, in the snow, for another 10km after the 12 we had just done, 6 of which were in the really cold and really windy and really snowy mountains.

And now we're in the Albergue Fuente de Casa de Austria (or something like that), which is wonderful. It's like an old spanish house with many corridors and rooms and a wonderful kitchen and living room with a fire and an Austrian hospitalero who has been washing and drying our clothes for us (you don't even get that in a hotel) and plenty of food to see us through the next day and tonight. And a USB port!!! I have photos uploading as we speak.

And that's it for now! My faith in the caminbo has been restored, especially as the blisters I drained and bandaided yesterday have not swollen again and are healing already. Tomorrow I hope they will be fine! I actually ran down the steps here in the albergue just then. What an accomplishment indeed!