Saturday, July 27, 2019 Zumaia to Izarbide

This is is Josh, the hospitalero at the alburgue in Zumaia.

Josh is the best. He lives in New England. He walked the Camino Del Norte and enjoyed it so much that for the last five years he has been a volunteer hospitalero at various alburgues in the Basque Country.

Either I am losing some weight or I am doing a darn good job sucking in my gut for these pictures.

It was misting as we left the alburgue in Zumaia this morning. This is a view of Zumaia as we are climbing up a ridge to get out of town.

This is a view of the countryside once we got to the top of the ridge.

This is a view of the road along the ridge that we are going to walk along for a few kilometers. The CDN involves a lot of road walking. My feet are very sore at the end of the day when I do a lot of road walking.

This is a scarecrow. I know that the yellow vests are popular with protesters in France but I did not know they were popular with scarecrows in Spain. Do you think it is some sort of scarecrow protest?

This is Oscar.

Oscar just finished his studies at the National University of Mexico in Mexico City. He majored in art history with a specialty in the muralists of Mexico. Oscar is also a poet and carries four heavy poetry books in his backpack. Keeping your pack lite is one of the keys to a successful Camino. I told Oscar he should leave his poetry books on the bookshelf at the next alburgue. He took great offense to this suggestion and said that he would rather cut out his heart and leave it at the next alburgue than leave his poetry books. All I can say is that there are all kinds of people on the Camino

The rooms at the alburgue in Zumaia have two single beds. I was standing in line behind Oscar as we were checking into the alburgue yesterday so the hospitalero put us in the same room. When we got up this morning we decided to walk together to Izarbide.

This is about halfway to Izarbide.

It isn’t raining but it is misting enough that I decided to wear my poncho. If I take it off and put it in my pack the rain will start bucketing down.

This is an honor system hard cider stand.

We were walking through an orchard and noticed that the enterprising orchard owner put out some bottles of hard cider in that white bucket and provided a corkscrew. You put your money in the collection box and pull out the cork on one of the cider bottles. You have to drink it there as the orchard owner wants you to put the empty bottle in the empty bottle box. Finally, the orchard owner apparently has bees to pollenate the apple trees. He has made various balms and lotions out of the honey from his bees and these are displayed for sale in the box that you see in the lower right hand corner of the picture. I have heard that the Basque hard cider has a very high alcohol content. I decided that it would be prudent for me to take a pass on hard cider this morning.

This is the Church of The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Itziar.

I stopped here to get a stamp in my Pilgrim credential and light a candle 🕯 and say a prayer 🙏 for Anna and all the other people on my prayer list.

We stopped for lunch in Deba. This is the main plaza in Deba where we had our lunch.

This is a picture of me as we are leaving Deba and walking west along the coast road.

This is a beautiful view of the entrance to the harbor at Mutrikuko.

That is not good as we are supposed to be up on the top of the hill at the Alburgue Izarbide not down at the bottom of the hill in Mutrikuko.

As we were leaving Deba for the final 4 kilometer hike up the hill to Alburgue Izarbide we started walking with these two guys, Jan from the Netherlands and Junior from the Philippines. As we were yakking away we missed our turn and wound up in Mutrikuko. Jan and Junior decided to start the 4 kilometer walk up the hill to the alburgue even though it was pouring rain. Oscar and I decided to duck into a bar and have a beer while we waited for the rain to stop. While we were in the bar the bartender told Oscar that the bus to Deba was coming by in a half hour and that we should take this bus to the top of the hill. I thought this was a great idea even though I am still traumatized by the Bilbao Bus Station Incident. We drank our beer 🍺 and went out to the bus stop and waited for the bus with three little old ladies.

This is me and Oscar at the bus stop.

Oscar started chatting up the three little old ladies and they told him that the bus doesn’t stop at the top of the hill, it is an express bus to Deba. I started to cry and the old ladies felt so sorry for us that when the bus pulled up to the bus stop the old ladies ganged up on the bus driver and browbeat him into agreeing to take us up to the top of the hill and drop us off. That 4 kilometer bus ride from downtown Mutrikuko up to the top of the hill was pure Camino Magic.

After we got off the bus at the top of the hill we walked for about half a kilometer to the Alburgue Izarbide.

Beautiful views from the alburgue.

They had pigs at the alburgue.

Some of you seemed to be upset with Abe’s unflattering description of Lake Springfield in yesterday’s blog post. I described Lake Springfield to these two porkers and they both said that Abe was right. No self respecting pig would wallow in Lake Springfield.

We had a wonderful group dinner tonight at the alburgue. Everything was served family style. I was charging my phone so no pictures. The first course was a mixed salad. The second course was roasted chicken, real chicken🐓, not pigeon masquerading as chicken, with new potatoes. And the third course was flan. It goes without saying that we had a couple of bottles of red wine with our meal.

That’s all for this evening.

Good night from the Alburgue Izardibe on the Camino Del Norte.