Advertisement
Published: June 17th 2014
Edit Blog Post
June 10 - Uterga to Cirauqui
As we leave Uterga we make our first detour from the suggested route to see the Eunate church. I love my guide book that suggests the "short" detour is only 2.8 km.
The church is linked to the Knights Templar who long defended the pilgrims on route to Santiago. It has eight sides, an unadorned interior and a freestanding outer porch made of small inlaid stones with delicate twin towers that surrounds the church - it is also said to be a burial site for pilgrims that succumbed to the hardships along the route. The clincher for me to go was that fellow pilgrims said if you walk 3 times around the porch barefoot you may experience some healing energy - I really do not believe in this type of stuff but my feet demanded I give it a shot.
We left Uterga around 8am and arrived at the Eunate church at 9:15. There were many signs leading us to the site - unfortunately none pointed out that the fact that the church was chained and locked and would not open up until 10:30
- some of the stronger believers in our group stayed - against my toes' wishes we did not and forged back onto the way.
The scenery to day was exceptional - as usual. We entered the magnificent old city of Puente la Reina and followed out through the old cobbled streets. Tanya had been craving cherries ever since we saw our first cherry tree. At a fruit store she went in and bought a kilo's worth (the owner ripped her off for 10€) and to add insult to injury the next section of the route was a steep climb of 125m over about 3km - with the extra 1 kilo of cherries sitting in my back pack.
We went up and down a few more hills and entered Maneru deciding to carry on to Cirauqui and stay in a beautiful private run Albergue. We stayed in a 10 bed room and ate our pilgrim's supper in the wine cellar basement of the building. The Albergue was spotless - I did a hand wash before supper and reorged my back pack.
Supper consisted of a garlic soup, salad and the a pasta
in a an olive oil with meatballs - all washed down with a local wine - desert was a lemon egg custard.
The food everywhere is mouth watering - all the ingredients are local, all the meals made from scratch - there is always too much to eat but somehow we plough through it - I am probably gaining weight on this walk.
We sat with two young doctors from Canada and a prosciutto ham marketer from Italy - the Camino is truly a United Nations. The conversations usually consist of recaps of our daily adventures and inevitably lead to the various injuries we are all encountering with feet often the focal point.
We again got to our bunks early to get a good nights sleep for the next stage.
Piss off of the day - the creep who ripped off Tanya - it's not the € it's the act itself - if we were in a car I would have driven back the few km once we realized - I do believe in karma however.
Tip of the day - go with your gut - we
decided to walk the extra few km to Ciaruqui and ended up in the nicest Albergue yet.
Blessing of the day - best cherries I ever had
Funny event of the day - on the top of the toughest climb today was a fairly young pilgrim from France - who looked like he just escaped from the Bastille - he looked tough and had threatening tattoos on his arms and legs - I was too weak to move on so I sat beside him. After I realized he was not going to throw me off the mountain I offered and we ate some cherries while we waited for Tanya. I noticed a small bear on his walking stick and pointed asking him in my perfect French if this was his child's - he said no it was his - I said I liked his "ourson" - he said insulted it was not a bear it was his "doudou" - inside everyone of us is the small child we once were.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.109s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0681s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Playagal
Sal Foran Robusky
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
The food sounds delicious and your hosts sound so warm & welcoming (and your accommodations are getting better - YAY). Thanks for painting such a picture of your walk & glad to hear those bleeping "cherries" in the end were great. And the "doudou" (snuggly) brought us a smile. Good work; keep on truckin'! Sal n' Al xo