Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Friday May 13 Uterga to Cirauqui

Puente La Reina














We took our time getting ready as the dormitory was very quiet until after 6am which is pretty unusual at this time of year. We walked to Muruzabal and then to Obanos and on to Puente la Reina where we stopped for at 10:00am for breakfast. I´m sure the climb out of Puente la Reina was steeper than the last time we walked it.

Along the road leading into Cirauqui (which is one of the most picture postcared perfect scenes ever), an elderly couple in their old van drove up behind us, stopped and honked the
horn at us and then started gesticulating towards the trunk of the car. Dayton assured him that,although we might have looked like we needed a ride, we were still good. Patiently he showed us that the trunk of his vehicle was full of freshly picked cherries and he filled us up with handfuls and shirtfulls of them. Wonderful.

We got into Cirauqui at about 11:30 and feasted on some bread, chorizo (Dayton) and cheese sold to us by the slowest moving most expressionless soulless shop owner, and waited for our alberque to open. When our hostess, Inoa, learned that we were about to be volunteer hospitaleros she was generous with advice, everything from scheduling sign-ins and lockup times to shopping and menus and ways to save money - definitely go vegetarian.

The 7pm mass was like the Readers Digest or Coles notes version, quick and easy. The congregation at Mass was mostly the middle-aged female population of this Spanish village and some pilgrims. At communion we lined up across the altar and Dayton said he was very confused trying to find me in the line up - apparently he couldn´t recognize me because I was the one half a head taller than anyone else. Ha!

Dinner was in the renovated wine caves below the alberque. Soup was a rather bland insipid spinach soup and the pasta was accompanied by what all the meat eaters said were the best meatballs ever ever.



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