16th of August after six hours of sleep I woke up at 3:30 am and needed to climb down the ladder from the bunk bed to go to the toilet. It was at the end of the long corridor passing by all the bunk beds of other pilgrims. I wanted to use the door handle carefully to not make any noise. But someone before me hadn’t closed the door properly and by pushing down the handle the door snapped into the frame and caused a loud bang.
Back in bed I tried to find sleep again, but even through my ear plugs the different sounds of snoring drew my attention. There are so many variations of human sleeping sounds, which start from the whistling type to the bubbling one or the explosive exhaling one to the chainsaw massacre which brings walls to shiver. Lying there in bed following this chaos symphony you start questioning yourself, if evolution let only survive the snoring type of humans because they were able to chase away dangerous animals while they were sleeping. Being caught in my own Darwinists theories I found myself waking up at six o’clock when the lights were turned on and Gregorian chants came out of the loudspeakers from the ceiling.
Several pilgrims had already packed earlier and left before breakfast to be ahead of the heat. We thought we were already ahead of our usual time schedule, but an hour goes quickly with all the packing and saddling our metal horses. We arrived as the last ones at breakfast, but still managed to get a hold of Lisa and Flori to exchange contacts.
A goodbye to the Dutch volunteers of the hospice and we rolled out of the arched gate of the impressive buildings of Roncesvalles into a clear blue fresh morning. Something was different from the first moment. We were not alone anymore and along the way we saw again and again pilgrims walking into the sunrise, always a friendly “Buen Camino” on their lips.
In the guide book the landscape was described as one of the most beautiful parts of the Camino with forests, hills, valleys and little villages along the way. We had still a bit to climb on a pass where more and more bikers and motorbikers enjoyed the morning for a fun tour. Once we reached the top we had a wonderful long downhill ride which made me sing. It was a bit of the feeling of “Born to be wild” but just not on “Harleys” but on “Riese-Müller”-bikes.
At Zubiri we joined the river Arga where a double arched bridge was supposed to free you from rabies. Rabies is called “Tollwut” in German and I guess we were not going that wild and crazy with our bikes. The River Arga would lead us all the way to Pamplona. Just in the suburbs of Pamplona suddenly someone waved from a bus stop at Robert. It was Yvonne from Utrecht who had kept on biking the day before because they had made it much faster to Roncesvalles as they had expected. They even saw us on the terrace biking by the hospice in Roncesvalles, but we hadn’t seen them. Now by coincidence we meet again right at the roadside while they were waiting for a bus, because they had found only in the suburbs a hostel as they had felt like Mary and Joseph trying to find a place to sleep late at night. We exchanged contacts and kept going towards Pamplona. All the pilgrims pass over the bridge of Magdalena to enter the city fortifications through a gate from the North East. It was a touching moment to suddenly be back in a big city with so much history. We still had to visit the cathedral museum today as it would be closed on Sunday. It was quite exhausting in the heat and soon the streets were empty as all the people were taking their siestas.
There is a completely different rhythm of every day life in Spain. After sunset the streets get alive again and it was fun to watch young and old enjoying the cool evening breeze at the Plaza del Castillo where we had dinner. Unfortunately we were too tired to join the night life.
