Day thirteen, 13 May 2015
Vianna to Navarrette started @ 5.00am till 1.30pm~8.5hours~ 22,5 kilometres

This was a horribly hard day! I had not slept very well at all. Stupid Inga, shone a light in my face to see if I was awake, at ten o clock in the evening! Do you mind? Some horribly selfish people, when Libby and I were sleeping, coming in switching on the light, re packing their bags, and talking on the top of their voices! It is hard to display tolerance and acceptance, rather than trying to kill those horribly interfering, irritating and incredibly selfish pilgrims! Often they are feeling superior, telling me HOW a “good” and “proper” pilgrim should or should not behave, act or walk! Incredible, this “one up~manship” of pilgrims! There are the “purists”, one MUST not have a watch, telephone or any electric gadgets! One MUST do a certain amount of kilometres a day, all these MUSTS, SHOULDS or SHOULD NOTS make me want to vomit! Walk your pilgrimage your way, and let me walk mine! Anyway this day was a terrible hard one. Although Libby and I started early, the walk itself was not at all pretty. This of course is a judgement, but we have been walking through some incredibly beautiful country side, so it is a trifle hard to walk along a highway, into an industrial area and through a big city! I will not do this again, big cities will be bused through from now on. It is boring and the asphalt is hard on one’s knees, hip joints and lower backs. It is although totally uninspiring and non spiritual, so there, my new rule is that I won’t do this again. As you can see I am NOT a purist, and I don’t care about that either.

At one stage Libby and I were sitting in the shade, resting on our packs and giggling madly, kind of historical really. This man walks by with an enormous smirk on his face, ” ah, Santiago, muy legos!!” Very funny as if we didn’t know that it was far!
The distance was very long, I thought twenty two and a half kilometres but apparently my map does NOT calculate the going UP the hills, so we probably did over twenty four kilometres! Anyway it was the most amount of distance I have done so far and poor Libby with her minced meat feet was stumbling along. When we finally came to the next small town, Navarrette, I suggested that we could may be stay a bit more up market, preferable a room with a private bath, so Libby could nurture her poor feet and I could give my poor back a rest. Most room were fourth euros but we had to walk even further. We came to a three star hotel with a gorgeous big room, private big bath room and air conditioning (which only worked for the first day anyway!) for sixty euros! We looked at each other, and took the room!

Hot showers were had, baths were taken, and after several hours we actually felt human again! Funnily enough, our next door new our was Judy from Adelaide! Hurray great Australian minds think alike! The room was indeed gorgeous and check out the next day at twelve o clock, so we decided to have a long, long sleep and have a leisurely breakfast before walking the eight kilometres to the next town. It was such a good plan!

Today’s lesson; keep old shoes rather than throw them away as the sales lady suggested
Today’s gift; Delicious breakfast in a very trendy cafe in Logrono