Day 9 - Najera to Santo Domingo

Today was a pretty decent walk. Someone taped my feet to try to help with the pain from the pounding. I took pain medicine this morning and five hours later. Altogether, I wasn't comfortable, but I want wincing like yesterday either. The day was shorter, though, at close to 14 miles, so maybe nothing actually helped except less pounding! My next option is inserts for my shoes. We're not sure that they'll work, so we didn't want to make the investment yet.

We felt really good about our pace today. Our breaks were enough, and we made it to our destination before the rain. We weren't so lucky yesterday! 

Some of you may want to know what we see while we walk, and we're attaching some pictures of that from the last two days. Of course, inside of the towns is very old buildings, but between towns are wildflowers alongside of vineyards or other growing fields. We also see towns far in the distance, but sometimes we're wrong about which town we're going to next because we can't judge these distances yet. Today we saw a kilometer marking at every kilometer, which was sometimes good but not usually. We also saw LOTS of Camino path in front of us. There are cultural things, too, like the bull on the hill.

Of all the people we started the Camino with on May 31, we think we're leading the pack. Some have taken rest days, some have been injured, and some have finished the leg of the journey they set out to do this year. It's common to take a bus somewhere along the way, especially on the long days, but we haven't been on anything with wheels since our taxi to Saint Jean, France. We think of ourselves as "slow and steady." One guy we've seen lots of days tells us to pay more attention to the steady than the slow. I think we're impressing some of the young ones who are hoping to do the whole thing!

Coming up soon is a section of the Camino called the Meseta. It will be flat and hot, they say. The past two days have been cooler and cloudy, so my Norwegian skin has appreciated less sun. We think we have at least one more cloudy day sorry a chance of rain at some point in the day, so we're glad to have our jackets.

Keith distracts me when I'm in pain by asking how many days until our cruise. Today, it's 29 days! We're contemplating walking all the way to the Atlantic Ocean after we get to Santiago, but we can't make that decision until a few days before. If we do it, we will literally walk from one side of Spain to the other, and those added days are apparently beautiful. It's as long shot, so we'll see.

Since everything is closed on Sundays in Spain, we plan to get some food from a grocery store before it closes today. We've got a medium length day tomorrow.