Days 17-19 - Pamplona > Villar de Mazarife

Arrived in Pamplona on Monday. I stayed in a different refugio than I did last year, this one prioritized German-speaking guests and referred everyone else to the general municipal hostel. Not me though as I speak German well enough to have a decent conversation with the managers and other guests. My backpack turned out to be way too heavy with me carrying around all that excess food: 13 kilograms. So I sent some stuff home to lose the extra weight.

Took the train to León on Tuesday. The bus service required me to change buses twice and to stay the night in Burgos - so I decided against it and take a direct train instead. Wow, such luxurious trains here, even more so than the high-speed trains in France. Talk about legroom. I arrived in León around half past 5 in the afternoon, leaving me with some time left to walk to the next village, but the heavy rain told me no. I had hoped to be able to move on to the next town, as I never experienced León to be very welcoming of pilgrims, but alas. My train continued on to Santiago - It's kind of weird realizing I'm getting off early to walk the rest of the way, some 185 miles or 300 km. I ended up at the same hostel I slept in last year, managed by a team of nuns who don't appear to ever clean anything. But they gave me a free meal, so I won't complain.

Today I finally took off. It rained quietly thoughout the day (no cats and dogs anywhere), but I managed to wear three thin ponchos in such a way they kept me, my backback, my arms and my walking stick dry. Looked like a color mountain though :)
I covered a little under 15 miles and arrived in Villar de Mazarife (in the autonomous region of Castilla y León). The refugio I'm staying at has a really nice atmosphere, probably because it serves as the local pub as well. Every single wall and bed in this place is used as a guestbook: They're all covered in graffiti and messages left by other guests. It took me over an hour to read everything that was jotted down in my room. I'm sharing this room with a Dutch lady, a cool Dutch-speaking German guy and a grumpy girl who refuses to talk to anyone and whom we know nothing about. When I got here, the sun came out and smiled at me, allowing me to enjoy some well-deserved relaxation on the grass with other pilgrims. We all made dinner together - so I finally used up the spaghetti and tomato sauce I'd been carrying around for days :)

In spite of my good spirits my body isn't exactly keeping up. My lips are sunburned (or sunburnt if you prefer European English :p) even though I put on a high-factor sunscreen. I've got this bad cough, which keeps the other pilgrims awake too. And to make matters worse, the cuticle on my right big toe is totally tense, up to the point where it's infected.

Friends of mine got married today - Best wishes from Spain! Sorry I couldn't be there!

Note: I added more pitures to several earlier reports, and had to remove some of the older ones in the process. If you missed any, don't worry, I'll try to get as many as possible into my paper photo album.