Camino del Norte |La Arena to Santoña | Days 8-9

The days have been gorgeous but the mountains all around us are daunting. Every day I have to mentally gear up for the hills.

A German pilgrim said it best, “I love to climb mountains. But when I go up, I want to go down. I don’t want to go up and down multiple times in a day.” The climbs are no joke. And I agree with her. I’m fine to climb one mountain (or huge hill), but we climb 2, 3, 4, and even more in a day, every day.

The funny part is I knew this is what it was going to be like. I don’t know why I’m surprised. I just keep going back to the fact that we’re from the flat lands of Ohio. However, we’re not the only ones feeling this pain.

The views are amazing! I knew they would be great. My legs are sore but they will look fabulous by Santiago (as fabulous as they will ever look for a girl with cellulite issues). If we meet in person, please ask me to flex my calf muscles, it will make me smile.

The villages are great. There is something very special about Spanish villages. I love days like yesterday and today where we wandered through several of them in a day.

The bigger cities that we stay in make it harder to meet pilgrims. We’ve only stayed in one albergue with a communal dinner. Part of that is us, we’ve been leaning more toward private rooms. But part of that is the Camino and the limitations of who will accept our reservation and luggage service.

We have not seen one pilgrim menu. A pilgrim menu is something we would have daily on the Camino Frances. Even finding stamps for our credential is difficult. This is quite surprising to us. We were in a church yesterday and they didn’t even have a stamp. That was shocking. It’s a different Camino but we knew it would be so it’s ok. But these are my observations for today.