Red Wine Heaven

So it does seem that life without an iPod is perfectly possible (it helps to have an MP3 player on your phone though!): this trip is supposed to be about living simply anyway, so we need to start putting theory into practice. Today we are reporting from a back room of a small shop in the even smaller town of Navarette. It is the first place we have stayed in the region of Rioja - we crossed the boundary today - and we are looking forward to a glass of the local vino later.

Talking about wine, we need to bring you up to date with news since our stop on Saturday at Puenta la Reina, and most of it concerns wine. With our meal in the hostel we were served wine in a pint glass, and what´s more, the glass was three quarters full! We certainly had a good night´s sleep after finishing it while watching basketball on the T.V.

Then the next day we managed to time our arrival at the famous Irache wine fountain for mid afternoon. As there is free red wine on tap, it was a much better time to pass than just after breakfast. We had to wait a bit for our wine tasting as, upon entering into the enclosure with the fountain, one of our minders managed to lose a trekking pole through some iron railing into the winery works area below. Being a Sunday, this was completely closed off. We all had to initiate an elaborate fishing exercise to retrieve the pole, by hooking another pole into the loop of the handle and raising it very slowly. By the time the rescue operation was complete, both we, and a small audience which was watching with bated breath, agreed that we had earned a sample of the wine.

The critical tap is the one on the left: the one on the right is for water! We did not expect wine being given away for free to taste as good as it did. Even Gio, who is usually quite abstemious, got stuck in and slurped his fill.


If you go to http://www.irache.com/ you can see the webcam which is focussed on the fountain and you might see some other pilgrims, or locals, indulging.

From the fountain, we continued for another couple of hours to a small albergue run by a Dutch evangelical organisation. A team of 5 lovely Dutch people looked after us, and about 14 other pilgrims, extremely well and cooked us a lovely paella. We have never heard such good English being spoken as was spoken by those Dutch friends. The place seemed to attract English speakers, and among our fellow guests were 4 Americans and an Australian. We also re-encountered Johannes, the German-Swiss chap who we last saw well over a month ago, when we shared a mobile home with him, only about a week into our trip. It is a very small world on the Camino.

Last night, after a week or sharing dormitories we treated ourselves to a $40 private room with ensuite facilities. It was nice to be able to let our fur down without disturbing anyone, and after 2 long days of 30km we thought we´d earned it. We also had reason to celebrate as our GPS clocked up our 1000th kilometre as we walked into the town (Viana). We have actually walked further, as there have been times when the GPS accidentally got shut down, and when batteries have run out.

Late this morning we passed through the big city of Logroño which was nearly as big as Pamplona. We did a couple of hours of sight-seeing and shopping, mainly food and pharmacy, and also purchased a trendy belt for one of our minders who can no longer keep her walking trousers up without one! The camino was routed extremely well and kept us out of the traffic except for the very centre and we went though some lovely parkland areas.

We think that´s most of the news for now,

Lots of love, the Camino Bears xxx