emilyonearth

We discussed just doing a short day to Estella today, which would have been the second half of yesterday’s half-stage. It wasn’t even 9:00am by the time we arrived there though, so we bought an apple for breakfast and carried on our way. As we were on the track a little past Estella, a man drove past asking us how far we were walking today and recommending we stop at his food truck. He seemed very excited about the whole thing and he passed us a menu through the window before driving off.

A couple of kilometres past Estella we passed the Camino wine fountain. It comes out the back wall of the Bodegas Irache winery and has one tap for wine and one for water. Mum emptied her drink bottle to have a container to pour a little wine into, and she said it wasn’t too terrible, but I didn’t like it much. She then refilled from the water tap, and we continued on our way.

Today was a great day for fauna, by the way. The day started off snail- heavy, and I thought they were going to win over the slugs, but then the slugs emerged in their masses. They just can’t be beaten! We also saw some beetles, butterflies, goats, and a snake that appeared to have been run over, so was as flat as a pancake. I’m quite glad about that actually, I’m not sure I would have liked it alive.

The day was mostly flat or uphill, which my knees greatly appreciated. Toward the end of today’s distance we passed through a wee town called Azqueta, and who was there at the end of the town but the food truck guy, calling out at everyone passing to not forget about the food truck that was now just 1km ahead. We did stop – mum had a ham sandwich and I had spicy potatoes – but we had to climb a big hill before we made it there, which was a bit of a mission! As we sat and had lunch a wee dog took a nap under our table. He was even snoring at one point!

It was only a short distance from there to our albergue for the night. We’ve met some lovely people here. Mum freaked everyone out with her blistered toenails and the American/El Salvadoran lady gave her some disinfectant, and the French man offered antiseptic, horror stories of his past blisters, and advice. We took up the albergue offer of €12 for communal dinner and another €4 for breakfast, as there’s not much else in this town in the way of food, and it’s a nice chance to meet people and chat to someone else for a change!!