21.5 km – 13.4 miles

6:45am to 12:30pm walking time

1213 feet – 370 meters elevation gain

Some days are just not your days on the Camino. There wasn’t anything in particularly bad for my day today, but just the cumulation of not getting enough sleep night after night after night made the day tougher than it needed to be. It being warm even when you start walking in the dark, to the point where you have sweat dripping down your face by 7am. Also just not having anyone to talk to day after day while walking. Sure, I’ve met people, but other than a couple short bits, I’ve walked each day alone. You see people and get the nice greeting, but then they pass you or you pass them.

I’m standing, not sitting at the main albergue in town because there aren’t many places to sit as it’s tiny and packed full. Sweat is dripping left and right by doing absolutely nothing. Bugs are continuously landing on me. Sitting at a bar would be even hotter and still likely have flies. There’s no reprieve from the heat, because I guess AC would be too much to ask.

I’m definitely in the middle of wine country now. It is beautiful walking through the vineyards alongside the diverse Spanish landscape. The walking today wasn’t particularly hard – but when your body is completely exhausted, even the easy days feel hard. Luckily some clouds blocked the heat of the sun for a lot of the walk and it only got really miserable on the last push into Los Arcos.

I did join up with a fellow American, a Canadian and a guy from Spain for lunch when I arrived. I made a happy mistake of ordering a tortilla bocadillo with Serrano jamon y queso instead of just a bocadillo with jamon y queso. Turns out the egg made the sandwich extra tasty.

Tomorrow will be the longest day yet of 28+ kilometers. Luckily the temperature is supposed to drop quite a bit so hopefully that will help boost my energy for the walk. I’ll arrive at one of the towns I really enjoyed the last time I walked the Frances, Logroño.