emilyonearth

We woke again this morning to the sounds of rustling bags as people started their days long before sunrise. The centrally controlled lights were then turned on at 6:00am, and we took that as our cue to get moving.

By 6:45 we were out the door and on our way, headed first through some bush and then later past farm land before ending up following the trail through mostly forested area. This first part of the trail was overall pretty flat, which was appreciated after yesterday, but unfortunately was not to last! After an hour or so we reached a small town called Espinal, where we had breakfast before our first climb of the day.

It wasn’t too bad though, nothing like yesterday, and it was actually quite a pleasant walk, especially when in the areas shaded by trees. What was more of a challenge was heading back downhill, and losing some of the altitude we had gained yesterday, as it was hard work on our poor knees! The journey was broken up by the odd wee town, and at one point a wee trail-side library, which was pretty cute! For a while we kept passing and being passed by a lady driving a bakery van who was doing bread deliveries around the little towns. We took a bit of a break in one of these towns before our final uphill section before the descent into Zubiri.

Heading downhill into Zubiri was hard. Probably harder than any section of yesterday’s walk. It was steep and rocky and terribly uneven, and I feel very lucky that all of my ankles and knees are still intact, because it wouldn’t have taken much for that to not have been the outcome!! We heard stories of people who have walked it previously in the rain, which sounded terrible, so I guess we were lucky it was a nice day?

Arriving in Zubiri, we crossed the bridge and found our albergue just along the main road. We did our laundry, had sandwiches and beer for lunch, and had some downtime during the afternoon. For tea we didn’t feel like going out, but had pretty limited options at the small store in town, so we had a banana and a yoghurt each, and mum also had a kiwifruit. Tomorrow we’re walking to Pamplona, so will hopefully have some more interesting options to choose from!