Charlie: Well we’ve seen everything. The first day had beautiful sunny weather and blue skies. The walk from Roncesvalles was amazing. White snow capped peaks all around, verdant mountain meadows, babbling brooks, sheep, horses, cows. As pretty as anything we have hiked through.

We were going generally downhill but with lots of ups and downs. We went 8 miles and felt okay. Stayed at Viskarret.

On getting up we saw it was drizzling. It drizzled on and off the whole second day. Some periods of sun but mostly cloudy. Still beautiful country though, farm country, mostly fields for grazing. We passed a 100 yard square evergreen tree stand. They must have had a big wind recently because there were a lot of down branches on all the trees. We stopped a little past Larrasoana.

We got up on day three and it was snowing! We had snow for a while and then off and on cloudy and rainy. On the last pass into Pamplona we had snow again. Still beautiful country, very green and pastoral.

It was cold going into Pamplona, in the high 30s. And it was rainy and cold when we went out to eat.

Saturday morning, today as I write, we woke up to snow. Looking out the hotel window it was pretty thick and piling up. Snow stopped about 10 and is a little warmer now.

Charlie: That’s what they call us pilgrims in Spanish. People seem happy to see us. Lots of people we pass in the small towns say "Buen Camino" to us and we say it to the pilgrims who pass us. We would say it to the pilgrims we pass also but so far we haven’t passed anyone. We are the slow ones.

Before we started I was a little worried about standing out and people not wanting us around but the Camino is part of the culture here and everyone seems to be into it. The pilgrims help out the economy too so that helps.

We were excited to see other pilgrims at the bus station leaving for Roncesvalles. Then on the trail we see a lot of pilgrims of course. It is still early but there are a fair number but not a mob.

We get passed a lot as I said. We have been starting out pretty late. After a while we start getting passed by the pilgrims who started out early from a town 10km before.

We are not staying in the alburgues, pilgrim hostels, so we don’t hang out with as many pilgrims as we would if we did but there is a comraderie among pilgrims and we are getting to know people as we go.

On the third night we ate dinner at an inn where they had a communal meal for pilgrims. There were about 15 of us and we sat at a long table and heard people’s stories. The dinner was quite good. You had three choices each for a starter, a main dish and a dessert all for 12 euros.

We talked to two 19 year old boys from Grand Rapids who were taking a gap year before college and traveling. Several other young people were taking time off to travel. There was a Brit about our age who had done the Camino before but in November.

About 60 percent are young people and about 20 percent are 60 and over.

We have met an amazing number of Canadians, like 7 or 8, from coast to coast and in between. We met a guy, about 50, in our hotel the second night. He was a bookkeeper for a non profit from Vancouver. He had started in St Jean and had a very hard first day going over the mountains. I’m glad we started in Roncesvalles. We saw him again on the trail and he was at the pilgrims dinner the third night. Wynette saw him again today on the street in Pamplona.

Yesterday we talked to a young woman who was writing a masters thesis in literature about her walk on the Camino.

Charlie: Cirauqui is a pretty hill top town where we stayed. We stayed in the albergue but in a private room. They had two private rooms and 28 dormitory beds.

The place is very pretty and artistic with colorful painting, artwork and lots of quirky and interesting little touches all over (see photos above and below). It was fun to stay there.

The owner was chatting with us after the communal pilgrim dinner she provided, which was very good. She had owned the place for 10 years and was getting tired of it. She wanted to sell but the economy in Spain is very bad and selling would be hard.

She also said that the Camino had changed in those 10 years. She said that before almost everyone was there for spiritual reasons, that they wanted to rethink things and change the direction of their lives.

Now, she thought a lot of people were on the Camino just for a good time or a vacation and not to change their lives.

It is hard to know exactly what to make of this. People are always thinking that things are not as good as they used to be and not like the good old days. But I suppose she could be right and things have changed. Maybe it was mostly religious people who knew about it before. Heck, everybody and his brother are doing it now, even Charlie and Wynette! Who’d of thought it?

Actually I had been thinking of the walk as a way to reevaluate my life now that I am almost 65. And I thought maybe even someone 65 could change the direction of their life.

Clearly on a long walk you have a lot of time to think things over and think about changes.

I guess the big question that everyone faces is "What should I do with my life?" both in terms of the next few days and the next few years. Actually that is pretty much the only question if you consider both the short and the long term.

So I guess that is why I am walking the Camino.

Charlie: We have talked to several people about the economy in Spain. They are all pretty unhappy about how things are going. It has been going down steadily for five years. Angela Merkel in particular is quite unpopular. It is sad to see how many people have been affected by the long downturn. Lots of blame to go around but I think we can all agree that the banks are evil.

Wynette: Above photo is of brother and sister who own shoe store in Estella. I bought shoes from them. Don’t they have sweet faces? They gave me such good service. I had fun speaking to them in Spanish and they had fun practicing their English with me. They are struggling to keep their business open and talked about some things Charlie mentioned above. And they said "oh well, we have a saying: after it rains the sun will come out", or something like that. They are trying not to let it get them down.

Wynette is still having foot problems so we are showing down a bit. We went five miles today and plan for six miles the next two days. It gets worse as we go farther so this means she can walk mostly without pain. We’ll keep you posted.

Charlie: This is the third memorial cross we have seen so far. None of them gave the cause of death. This guy was 68 so presumably a heart attack. This was the first one with a photo.

Wynette: In books we read by people who have walked the Camino, occasionally they would mention that they started out in the morning before the coffee places opened so they had to walk to the next town before having any coffee. When I read that I said "no way I’ll ever do that." But, yep, that’s what happened to us the last two mornings. The weather turned quite warm so we have been starting out around 7, hoping to miss the worst of the heat by doing most of the walking in the morning. But the towns we stayed in were small and the bars weren’t open by then. (You’ve probably figured out that bars are the main places to get the wonderful café con leche. The bars are more like cafes. They do sell liquor but also many other things and people of all ages,  including kids, go into them.) So yesterday we had to walk 4 miles before we had any coffee and today we walked about 3.5 miles before coffee. It might be in my mind, but I have felt much less energy when I’ve had to start out without. Above is bar in tiny town of Azofra where we had delicious coffee this morning. There were lots of early-rising pilgrims there.  Check out all the packs on the bench.

The two women in pink are women we met on the camino day before yesterday.  We’ve passed each other a few times. They are Canadians who immigrated there from Denmark in the mid 60s. They are a little older than us. They said they "looked at their birth certificates" and decided if they didn’t walk the Camino now they never would.

PS. The weather actually turned quite cold again today.

Charlie: we have been impressed at the high quality of the signs on the Camino. It seems like whenever you are wondering whether you are still on the Camino a sign shows up to tell you that you are, unless, of course, if you are not actually on the Camino and have lost your way, which had happened to us only once and only for 30 meters or so. There was no sign where we looked.

This has given rise to the popular "Camino quantum sign theory." This theory claims that there is actually only one Camino sign that is everywhere along the Camino at the same time in a state of quantum superposition and when a pilgrim begins to wonder whether they are still on the Camino, an "act of observational wondering," the wave function collapses and the sign appears exactly where the pilgrim is looking for it. We have seen this happen dozens of times.

Not all pilgrims accept this theory however. Some support a "Many Caminos" theory which claims that each pilgrim has his own Camino where the signs are exactly where he looks for them. You can see examples of this in guide books that talk about "your Camino" or "walking your own Camino".

The sign quality had gone from stellar in Navarra to merely very good in La Rioja but they have added km posts every km which are nice. You can see them in our pictures and videos. Navarra used these pretty blue and yellow tiles with the Camino shell on them.

The most common sign is the painted yellow arrow which appears on sign poles, on the pavement, on roadside guard rails, etc. They are very reassuring.

In fact, you could walk the Camino with no map or guide book at all and just follow the signs. I like to read the guides though. I am constantly switching between the Brierly guide, Google maps, and the My Track app to see how far we have gone. When we are close to a town I get the walking directions from Google maps, mostly for the distance to go. You can update it with two taps and count down the km.

Wynette: We are in Frómista. We can see a beautiful Romanesque church, the Church of San Martin, from our hotel window.

Charlie: One of the great things about the Camino is all the services set up for pilgrims. One of these is the albergues. These are the places with lots of bunk beds in large rooms. You get a mattress, the lower bunks go first, and usually a pillow and a blanket if you need one. Like summer camp except a lot more snoring, which increases with age it seems.

We planned from the beginning to stay mostly in hotels and pensions and only in a few albergues. That is what we have done. We have stayed in albergues two times out of 35 nights.

That decision is problematical though. The albergues are part of the culture of the Camino. They are where you meet lots of other pilgrims. Also everyone gets up and gets going early, you have to be out by 8, so it gets you more into the rhythm of the Camino.

You also gain a lot of flexibility since they have albergues in every little place, places where there is no hotel.

The cost is a lack of personal space and a place to relax. They can also be pretty cold. They don’t seem to have heat.

I can see the tradeoffs and I am glad we are doing it the way we are. Everyone walks their own Camino and meeting a lot of other pilgrims was not my reason for walking. I have talked elsewhere about things I was looking for. We still talk to a lot of people but we don’t have the (not so) late night bull sessions with people like you do, say, in a college dorm. But for me, been there, done that. And I am mostly an introvert and like my alone time. Other people would make other decisions.

Another consideration is cost. The albergues are really cheap, €5-10 each. We have been averaging about €40 a night in hotels (20 each). Also most albergues have kitchen facilities so you can go to the store with some other pilgrims and cook up a communal meal pretty cheaply. You could easily walk the Camino for €25 a day and €15 a day of you were really careful. (Food from the grocery store is very inexpensive.)

Overall I would say anyone young or extroverted should definitely stay in albergues. Other people should weigh the factors and decide what is best for them. If you enjoy camping you should also stay in albergues because it is a lot the same but easier since you get a mattress and a roof. I would say that you should also stay in albergues if you enjoy flying coach on long international overnight flights but that might reveal my prejudices so I won’t say that.

One thing we have noticed is that almost everyone we meet is staying in albergues. This includes the people we meet in the hotels and people our age. Usually they just stay in hotels once in a while, like once a week. And others are staying there because the albergues are full or they arrived too late.

Charlie: We are slowly getting used to using kilometers but usually convert things to miles. Even the British and the Aussies know about kilometers so we are really alone with the miles. And talking to some Germans it took me a while to tell them the altitude of Albuquerque in millikilometers.

Kilometers are nice because they are smaller and it seems like you are walking farther. Celsius degrees are a little too big and the temperature signs have to have a decimal place.

But I have realized on the trip that the elephant in the room is time. How did the whole world get bamboozled into the wacky way we make time? Quick, how many days between April 28 and June 7? If it is 9:40 (or 21:40 it is no easier) and you set your alarm for 7:15 how long do you get to sleep? Not higher math but significant mental effort. Harder than the time between star date 45812.6 and 45814.3 but, of course, you need to figure out what the heck the star date units were. Did Star Trek ever address that?

Charlie

Charlie: Even in farmacias they tell you where to get the foot care products.

Sometimes there is ambiguity.

Some people walk the evil "Mal Camino"

and the Grateful Dead will live forever.