A Day on the Struggle Bus

The day after a rest day is always a rough one.  Yesterday was fantastic: I slept late (8am), paid bills, caught up on email, walked around a bit, watched the USA-Germany World Cup match, and enjoyed a couple of bottles of fantastic Rioja with dinner.  

The majority of the group elected to enjoy the hotel breakfast this morning even though it meant getting a later start.  Thus, the majority of the group rolled out between 7:30 and 8.  Drake and I were nursing our wounds this morning so we sallied forth at a very late 8:15 with three of the also injured girls in tow.

We were moving pretty slow, but the walk out of Logrono takes you through several beautiful parks and along a lake and nature preserve before winding through vineyards for a while so we didn't really mind.  Thus it took us nearly 3 hours to walk the 8 miles to Navarrete.  By that time we had sped up a bit, and we ran in to a couple of students, Liz and Katie, so we walked with them for a while.  We took a brief break in Ventosa around 12:30 and started the last 6.5 miles to Najera.

That last 6.5 proved to be rather tough.  It was getting pretty warm (in the upper 80s) I was running low on water, and my left foot with the blister was really starting to hurt.  Drake seemed to be having trouble with his knee too because we took several short breaks.  We made it to Najera around 3, found the kids, and got our beds for the night.  We have a two person room for 20 euros each; not terrible.

Other than my blister, I feel pretty good, and considering we just did nearly 19 miles, I'm pretty content.  It's all part of the Camino experience, right?

Tomorrow is a relatively easy 12 miles.  It will be good to have a bit shorter day.  Oh, while I'm thinking about it, the kids seemed to really appreciate my testimony and responded well to it.  And I'm grateful to all of you who commented or who dropped a note of encouragement after my last post.  It meant a lot to me to hear from you.  Thanks for hanging in there with me on this journey.