We are getting better! (In some things at least..). This morning, I was literally the first person at breakfast and Johanna had everything packed up when she arrived 10 minutes later. We weren’t the first ones to leave but still left around 8 which is pretty good.
For many kilometers we were completely alone as we left Gernika and climbed a steep mountain while the sun rose with us, desolving the last bits of morning fog hanging over the village.
We walked an extra kilometre when we decided to take the normal Camino despite a big sign that warned about forest work and then turned around when we heard the chain saws and took the recommended d-tour. The path was extremely muddy, steep and slippery but we were still ahead of everyone else. It also got increasingly hot and we were glad to leave the steepest part behind us during the cooler morning hours.
When we finally arrived at the top of today’s stage it was only 12:30 but we had our lunch break anyway, thinking we had only 4 more km to go to our day’s destination Lezama. Little by little, our fellow pilgrims arrived and we had lunch with our American friends. One of them was having great troubles with a broken tooth and I organized a dentist’s appointment in Bilbao for him before we moved on.
The whole point of getting up at 6 had been getting early to the Lezama albergue with only 20 beds. When we got to Larrabetzu, the village before Lezama, however, we found out that the albergue we were going to go to opens in June..
We decided to stay in Larrabetzu. Then we decided to go on to Zamudio, another 7 km further. Then we decided to stay in Larrabetzu again. Then we sat down to drink something because we couldn’t decide what to do. Then we decided to go all the way straight to Bilbao because this would solve different problems in the next days’ stages. Then we didn’t know if it was such a good idea because it would have been 31 very steep km to Bilbao. Then we thought a little more about all our possibilities and planned different stages for the next 4 days. Then we decided to stay in Zamudio. Then we decided to fuck it all and go to Bilbao anyway. Then we started walking. Then we were half way there and thought of turning around and going back. Then we kept on walking. Then we got closer to Zamudio and decided that we were definitely not getting to Bilbao today. Then we decided to sleep in Zamudio because it was much too late to go to Bilbao by then. Then we found out that the albergue was actually outside the village, further from the Camino. Then we turned around and went to the next train station and got a train to Bilbao… No further comments here.
Doing the 10 min train ride which saved us the last 8 km of the day, made us almost more tired than walking but we were in Bilbao at 5:30 and it started raining and we found a very authentic pilgrims albergue where we would spend the night.
We took a shower and went to a gluten free restaurant. A beer after 22 km of walking and 7 hours since lunch made us pretty happy immediately and the food was very good too.
We had to hurry to get to the albergue before the curfew hour but we were completely sure now that we had taken the right decision in coming here. This mini cheat of 8 km will save us an entire day which we normally would have had to save by skipping an entire stage.
P.S.: the km in the entry titles are the ones we have actually walked.
