Nájera – Santo Domingo de la Calzada
20 kms (total: 268 kms).
4 hours and 50 minutes (+ 1h40 of breakfast and photo breaks).
Favorites: the feeling that my body loves this adventure and my mind finally finds time to wander off; breakfast in a cute village; arriving early at destination and find a beautiful hostel to rest at; welcoming smiles; lunch at Spanish time with delicious sangria; the funny story about Santo Domingo, the saint after whom the town is called.
Downs: didn’t sleep that well with 89 other persons in the room, some of them snoring close by ahahah; the impression that everyone leaves on a schedule before dawn, not in order to beat the heat of the middle of the day but to beat their fellow pilgrim to the next destination; first blister broke out but nothing a good massage with oils and cream won’t cure for some time.
Stayed at the Albergue Municipal in Nájera (on donation).
Met Christian (x2) and Serge (FR) and Annette (D). Finally met up again with Michael (from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, whom we hadn’t heard from in a while).
« Buen Camino, » for sure. 🙂
Les Petits Pas de Juls 
While backpacking the HST, we ran into a few interesting people. First, keep in mind that the trail is 72 or 73 miles long, depending on wether you include Moraine Lake in your itinerary or not (and in our case, we did, and it was a small but beautiful lake totally surrounded by the tall pine trees, like its own wall going around the lakeshore in full circle – check out the photos, if you’d like), and we were doing it for full 9 days so that we were COMPLETELY immersed in it. No rush to summit Mt. Whitney. We took our time. Now, picture those fast UL backpackers. Actually, I met one ultra marathoner there. He said he was running to the end of the entire trail (Mt. Whitney summit) AND back in 36 hours. Why 36 hours? He replied that he only had 36 hours worth of food. LOL And then we met two fast UL backpackers. One was backpacking the entire trail AND back to where he started in 5 days (yup, round trip in 5 days). The other one was doing it one way in 4 days. Once again, we did it in 9 days. Well, we had a short/layover day at Hitchcock Lakes, which we purposely intended because we knew no one stayed there. Literally, not single JMT’er whom I know of camp at such a beautiful lakes. And no one was there when we camped there. It was such pure joy. I understand people want to go fast. And I once was a very very fast day hiker. I still hold one of the fastest Mt. Whitney summit times (in spite of bad weather on my climb – rain, snow, fog for the last 2 miles). But now I find more beauty when I take time to take photos. Of course, you can take snaps with your smartphone so quickly, which I did before, but now with my full frame DSLR camera, I can’t do that any more. Nor do I want to. I really believe that going slow is the best way to fully enjoy it.
Completely agree! Taking it slow is the best way to enjoy it, at least for me too. Why rush? To go back to your regular life, no thank you! ahaha
The views you show on your posts are so spectacular, there’s no way one can enjoy them fully by rushing through. I’m glad you came back to your DSLR, that little machine forces us to take it slow, just in case we forget…
Absolutely. If you have time to look at the recent winter hike photos (with the sunset), I took my Canon and the tripod and all. Besides the fact that the snow was 2-3 feet deep, it was not easy to gain over 4,000 feet elevation in snowshoes!!!!! And I was carrying all the weight! LOL That’s how slow I was going… LOL LOL LOL It was the first time when I couldn’t reach the summit of Mt. Baldy. Then, I’d rather take the photos that I feel good about, and stuck around in the mountain till the sun completely set, which meant it was a long way down in the dark… LOL LOL LOL But I got the photos that I feel extremely happy about. That’s what mattered to me. 🙂
I’ll happily see those pictures again…
Watch out for those blisters! Do you have any moleskin to put on other « hot spots »? I bet the sangria was delicious. Did the snoring remind you of John? I love your stories!
The blister is ok after the massages, it’s almost gone 😉
The sangria sure helps recover from the day, but it’s more pleasure than real need ahaha…
John sure would have snoring friends here, ear plugs kind of do the trick, don’t worry.
More stories or thoughts later on 😊😊
89 in a room – worse than boarding school 😂
😂😂😂