We plan to update our progress of our Camino de Santiago journey here on this page. The plan is to update the map and do some “blog” type posts that could include some pictures.
We started by traveling to Madrid, Spain on Wednesday, October 7th and making our way to the starting point of St. Jean Pied de Port in France. Our official first day on the Camino was Saturday, October 10th.
Day 1: So it begins….We arrived for our Camino into St. Jean Pied de Port (SJPdP) around 5:15pm after about a 2 hour bus ride from Pamplona. The bus simply stopped in front of the town entrance, a old brick archway that could not fit the large bus, and disembarked with about 20 other pilgrims. Apparently none of the pilgrims, including Lori & I, knew the right direction to go, but we all knew that two things needed to happen. We all needed to check into the “pilgrim office” and find a place to sleep. Oh, and we had to do all of this in French. Welcome to France!
Our first stop was the pilgrim office where we gave our information to one of nice volunteers and she promptly stamped our Pilgrim Passport or credencial with a SJPdP emblem. They recommended a close and inexpensive Albuerque, but as we stood in line we were told that they were “completo” or full. A quick run back to the office helped us get situated with another location and we immediately headed over there. This was a dorm type sleeping arrangement and we were assigned our primitive beds and instructed on how things would work. Lights out time, get up time, & get out time. That was about it and from a not so nice French woman that seemed to be upset we were staying at her hostel.
In the morning everyone woke about 7:00am and we started our packing chores. Lori and I chose to skip the breakfast and instead just hit the trail. We had picked up several items the night before so we were okay until lunch.
The maps were good and the trail markings great. We were underway! The unexpected part….the trail was not a walk, the trail was a hike. We went up, and down, up and down, through this village and that village. We knew that our route was going to be difficult, but the elevation gain on paper does not do justice to the elevation gain underfoot. We powered through (2700′ of elevation gain in 3 miles) and arrived to Roncevalles albuerque around 4:00pm.
Day 2: Sleepy from much snoring & sleeping bag rustling. We woke in Roncesvalles a bit broken to find that Lori had been attacked by some type of bug….bed bugs? Yep, a confirmation from the hospitaleros at the albuerque were a disappointing admission that we had the dreaded experience on day 1. Day 1! Ugh. None the less, we were Camino soldiers and did the walk. ………So….what happened to Lori and the bed bugs? More to come soon 🙂
Day 3: Back to Pamplona again to rescue our backpacks…..
Days 4-…….:We apologize for the lack of posting here. Turns out we have some access issues to post on this site from Spain. Please follow Eric or Lori on Facebook or let us know if you’d like to be included in some type of email update instead. Please use the contact page here to let us know. Sorry for the inconvenience!