Day 11 - Ciruena - 16km

My travel guide said there was an interesting little church near Nájera, carved mainly out of rock / a hill. They open at 10, so I decided not to hit the road early this morning and visit this little church instead. Turns out there's nothing to see there - oh there's a church alright, but hardly carved out of anything. Awkward. Four hours of valuable walking time wasted.

So I left for Ciruena (16km) as soon as possible, again with this Polish-Canadian lady, and once again, the heat was intolerable. No trees for miles on end. No shadow. So we went from tree to tree, as it were, hiding from the sun. We could see a tree coming up from a mile away, and decided in advance we were going to halt there. With some trees, it turned out we couldn't get near them, because of a large ditch separating the road from the tree. Or worse, a thorn bush. At some point we crawled under a thorn bush anyway - at this point, getting away from the sun was more important than any lengths of comfort whatsoever.

I'm in Ciruena now. This town doesn't appear to have any city-run refugios, just two private hostels. They are more expensive, but provide more luxury, so I thought to myself - what the heck, why not, just for today. So I paid almost double for a bed tonight. At least breakfast is included. I'm not sure what to think of the other guests though, it seems people who require luxury are way less tolerant and more easily annoyed with oneanother. This is really not the same atmosphere I encountered in refugios so far. Nowhere near the Camino spirit. But it will have to do, for tonight.

Total milage so far: 219 km / 136 mi. So there's about 581 / 361 to go.

PS I uploaded pictures for days 8 thru 11; If you haven't seen them, check them out.