What a killer start into my Camino. First I had a headache from the wine Floris, a fellow pilgrim from the Netherlands, and I drank that night.
With 45 minutes delay, and two ibuprofen later I started my first day. Did not have breakfast and all stores were closed, but supposedly there was a foodtruck on the way.
The hike started out very steep right away. After two hours I felt for the first time that breakfast might not have been such a bad idea. So I had a cereal bar that I brought from home.
After that it just felt that the climb was getting worse and worse. I met Anna, born in Poland but living in the US, and since we were both struggling we walked, we’ll paused took a couple of steps and paused again, together.
We never thought we did, but we finally made it to Orisson we met back up with the US pilgrims from the first day. Some stayed at Orisson, or at least grabbed some lunch, Anna decided to walk the last km of her trip to day, and Sam just had a sandwich and paused for an hour, and was ready to leave, so I joined them. Still no food…
It stayed a very tough hike, and at points Sam and I were ready to give up. But we were in the middle of nowhere, past the point of no return.
We passed the place where the Food Truck should have been and ran out of water. The next 5 km were the hardest yet. We began thinking we had passed the fountain, when finally it appeared in front of us. I did not know water could taste that good!
With new hope and energy we joins a Spanish group of hikers and passed the border to spin together.
The group said from here it was just pequeño up and a then only down. My Spanish is really bad, but that was not a little. At this point we just went 10m at the time cussing out the Pyrenees. And the it happen, we reached the top!!!!!
The way down was still exhausting. But we now knew we were going to make it. Unable to take another step we got to Roncesvalles.
The Albergues was supposed to be very large so I was told I did not have to book ahead…. Well guess what, no more beds anywhere.
A pilgrim from Argentina was in the same situation, so we booked a room 14km out. Trying to get a taxi, we met the group of Spanish hikers from before. They offered to drive us, and after a short dinner, yes I actually got food in the end, even though part of the fish was still raw.
So we staid in the nice little town of Viscarret-Guerendiáin, and got to rest the hurting body.