Today was 17 miles, bringing our total to 78 miles over all. Once again, it was a very hilly route going up and down quite a bit, and giving us about 2,500 feet of climbing.

This is been a fascinating Camino for people watching. 5 days into it, we met our second native English speaker, another Irish person. Mostly, the Camino is populated with Spaniards, then French, then Germans. We have also met people from Romania, Hungary, and Italy. Here is a picture of George (with Diane in the foreground) from Budapest, Hungary. He is on his third Camino.

We have enjoyed many of our conversations with these pilgrims, when they can speak either English or Spanish, but struggle with French and are hopeless in any other language. Nonetheless, most have a moderate command of English, making some communication possible and even enjoyable.

Diane would not let me complete this post without showing a picture of the baby horsies.

For probably fifteen hundred feet of one of our descents, the locals invested significantly on the trail. These high-end wooden staircases continued on and on down the mountainside. Apparently, this was to control the erosion from the earlier straight up and down trail that is a long side these wooden staircases.

And, to make sure we knew that we were in Spain, our first view of our destination town (Guernica) was rooftops. Of course we have to arrive from a high elevation and drop down a very steep descent to get to our town. (Guernica is the town in the distance).

We are now in Guernica, a town made famous because of Franco’s atrocities, and Picasso’s paintings about those atrocities. The past sadness is remembered but the city has moved on and is a bustling community these days.