Mary and Sam On The Way --- To New Zealand!!: Day #13. Najera

Modern day Pilgrim. Sam's pack weighs 22lbs but looks ginormous here.

This little puppy was going table to table at a cafe begging quietly and patiently for scraps. How can you turn down that cute little face? Reminds me of Bailey Bo as a pup.

Today we walked 10.8 miles. When you walk with an engineer it's never just 11 miles or 12 miles. It's alway fractions. We Nurses like to round up to whole numbers with a touch extra for good measure...which patients appreciate when it comes to IV pain medications.

Last night we had a fun pilgrim dinner with our roomies, David & Helen (Scots), Michelle (Canada --we see her alot), Arnie (Chicago), Senike (Dutch). As we met people in the afternoon I just invited them to join us at this cafe. We really liked the scots and I'll probable spend another page talking about them. David gave us some definite " ah ha" moments about the Camino. More on that later.

After dinner, half of us wandered over to a bar that had a live band of 3 guitar player and a drummer ( he was actually drumming his barstool but he had a good beat). It was all in Spanish. It made me miss my guitar!

Today: We left at 7:30 and arrived at 1:00 pm. It was a really nice walk. We met Alex (a local Spaniard) who asked to walk with us to practice his English. He was very handsome and about 50 years old. He's starting a website on the Camino and wanted our opinions on what USA and Canada people want on this website. So we chatted about his experiences in New York City and we told him what we would like on a website. It made the road shorter.

We had reserved a hotel to get some much needed rest here in the center of town. We had dinner alone tonight. When you stay in hotels you really don't have the pilgrim camaraderie that binds you together. Hotels are a nice break but the hostels are the happening scene on the Camino.

This is what most if the trail looks like--rocky.