September 25th, 2013

So we started off this morning from Navarrete, sticks blazing, ready to burn up the 23 km to our next destination of Azofra.  All was going well until we were on the other side of the town of Najera, about 5.8 km from Azofra.  Short story short, there was a fork in the road and we took the wrong prong.  We walked up a steep red dirt road for abut 40 minutes until the road ended at the top of the mountain outside the isolated house of a sympthetic Spaniard who told us what we by now knew - that this wasn´t the road to Santiago!  So we made our way back down the mountain and it was close to 7 pm when we finally came dragging into Azofra, exhausting and covered in sweat mixed with the red dirt of the region of La Rioja.  We continued dragging through the town, passing our fellow pilgrims who, clean and settled in, were eating dinner in the cafes.  They cheered us on and were happy that these two lone stragglers had finally made it.  When we reached the town´s 60-bed municipal mega-albergue all the beds were taken so we were taken down the block to the over-flow building where we shared a room with two Spanish retired firemen.  They spoke no English but with my sketchy Spanish we were able to carry on a conversation.  They were from a small town on the southern coast of Spain, near Africa and close to the town of Marbella.  They were cousins, born in the same house in the same bed sixteen days apart.  They told me they did everything together and now that they were 60 years old they were doing doing the Camino as an expression of their faith.  ONe of them warned me that he was a really bad snorrer and he wasn´t kidding.  It was like sleeping next to a John Deere riding mower all night long!  They were really nice.  The main campus of the albergue was really pretty with a courtyard with a fountain shaped like a pineapple, café tables and, of course, dirty boots lines up outside the door.  Pilgriims never wear our boots inside the albergues.  There were also the standard clothelines strung around the courtyard with hung with pilgrim laundry.  Inside the reception área of the albergue there was a big dining hal with long tables, a well-stocked kitchen, and a 1-euro washiing machine!  (You know I headed for that bad boy!).  There were lots of young people (in their 20´s & 30´s.  The younger folks tend to go to the municipal albergues because they are cheaper, 6 to 8 euros per bed.  This one cost 7 euros each)  and many of them had bought food and were fixing comunal meals.  It reminded me of a college campus, lots of kids eating together in the dining hall or our in the courtyard, talking, laughing, overcoming the language barrier.  I did have one issue with the albergue:  the bathrooms in our building were not my ideal.  There were enough of them, but none of the showers or pottys had real doors.  They had these short sort of salóon swinging doors that didn´t lock. ( And they were co-ed).  No one peeked, of course.  I´ve never yet come across a pilgrim who lacked respect.  We´re all in the same boat, right?  Or, as my aunt Mary used to say, Ïn this hive we´re all alive, let´s keep it sweet as honey.¨ The drain was blocked in the shower stall that Tom used so he stood in several inches of wáter and then the wáter flowed out under the saloón door and onto the bathroom floor.  But that´s why we wear flip-flops int the bathrooms, right?  By the time we got clean and washed and hung our laundry it was 8:30 but we walked back into town for our 10-euro pilgrim meal.  I´ve sworn off pasta - for now, and Tom´s sworn off wine - for now, so we both had the (tunaless!) salad for starters, followed by the house specialty, a chicken leg cooked in beer (yummy)with french fries.  I dipped the fries in the chicken juice - better tan kétchup!  For dessert we both had the vanilla pudding.  At the albergue we ran into a couple of our bunkmates from Zubiri, the two sunny South African sisters, Linky and Innish.  It seems that when you again run into a fellow pilgrim with whom you´ve connected you feel so glad, like you´re seeing an old friend.  I could exegize a bit more on this subject, but my computer time is again up, so I´ll just wish you all a wonderful and happy day!  Love, Patti 8)