One quick item to start: I have discovered that my iPhone will not send/receive text messages while I am abroad. With cellular disabled, and since my phone is locked due to some warrantee silliness, I can't figure out how to make stuff work.
IF YOU WISH TO CONTACT ME DIRECTLY, TEXTING WILL NOT WORK: please either send by email (mudder91@yahoo.com), or by Facebook, or by LinkedIn, or send text-messages to Jana (she gets stuff real-time). If you need Jana's contact info, send an email to mudder91@yahoo.com, and we will get it to you.
This morning started with a group breakfast at the hostel (hard-boiled eggs, toast and jam, yogurt, coffee), getting us off to a good start. We left the hostel at 7:45 this morning. We knew it was going to be a big day - we had to get to Los Arcos by 4PM for check-in, and this was our longest walk to date, with some significant elevation changes in the first half.
Most of today was along farming roads with some cities and forested areas interspersed.
One big highlight was stopping at the Bodegas Irache (Irache winery). They have two fountains out of the wall for pilgrims. One for water, and the other for wine. So... for the walk today, I did not have a baguette in my 2nd holster - I had an empty bottle in anticipation of wine (and at this point, 20% of a bottle of wine).
After a big uphill trek, we reached the last town before Los Arcos, Villamayor de Monjardin, where we had a hearty lunch before the last looooong stretch before next services (about 7.5 miles through farmland). We raced the last segment, going from 25min miles pre-lunch to 20min miles post-lunch (times for active walking and excluding breaks) to beat the 4PM close of check-in. We arrived at 3:50. To sum up, we were on the trail for a shade more than 8 hours and covered 16 miles (Jana's pedometer hit 40,000 steps for the first time).
Overall, 521m ascent; 509m descent.
At the end of the day, we were ready for it to be the end of the day. We went to the one restaurant that was open (no other restaurant was open, and the grocery store was on siesta), and ordered a pizza and two bowls of pasta. Tomorrow we have an option to go 11 miles to Viana, or 17 miles to the much larger city of Legroño (nothing in-between). We chose Viana, the shorter option as a partial recovery day...
Due to building more familiarity with the birds of the region, and a lot of variety in the landscapes today, coupled with an extremely long birding walk, today was very productive. We identified 37 different species, of which 6 were new to us . The coolest bird, which I caught a brief glimpse of (but was not able to photograph) was the very colorful European Bee-Eater (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bee-eater). A large group of them were in the bushes surrounding us and were chirping up a storm (exciting our Merlin app) - but outside one brief glimpse of one bird shooting from bush-to-bush, they were all very well hidden.
Before today's photos, I have an addendum for yesterday. I figured if I had to make a video to share some sound, it might as well have some vid to it. But I have been struggling on how to get videos from my phone to my computer and then to the blog. I couldn't figure it out last night, but I think I now have a very roundabout way that might do it - we'll see if it works (I won't know until after it publishes).
The first of these is a corn bunting. They are the dominant bird around the fields here, and have a very distinctive almost cicada-like trill. Listen for the trill at the very beginning of the video.
Now for today, OTTP!
Heading out through town, we ran into this water-fountain inspired by a horror movie (press the nose and water comes out the spout in the mouth):
A Crested Lark on a rooftop:
Crossing the road leaving town, and entering farmland:
A pastoral scene with an old church:
Non-bird nature photo. GOATS! on patrol on the trail controlling the vegetation.
Passing along a farm:
A Cirl Bunting:
Passing into the next town (Estella), we stopped by this fountain with a good inscription (buen pan, excelente agua, y vino, carne y pescado llena de toda felicidad: Good bread, excellent water, and wine, meat and fish fill all happiness)
Walking through Estella, with our morning shadows still pretty long:
Some architecture in this section of Estella:
It looks like *someone* didn't read the sign:
A flock of Common Starlings racing around this bell-tower as we exited Estella (two are visible on the left):
A few times a day, churches and other establishments on the Camino Path will stamp our Camino Passports to officially validate our progress:
The Bodegas Irache, which has two taps, complementary for those walking the Camino trail, one for wine (on the left) and for water (on the right). Filling our bottles:
An explanation, and the church next door:
A peak between trees, through the vineyard and the mountains behind:
A European Goldfinch with a seed, mostly in silhouette:
The field to our right, with the mountains again in the background:
Much of today was long fields on a gravel path:
Jana through a small forested section :
A European Robin chirping at the moon:
Partially obscured is a Western Bonelli's Warbler (just up and left from center of photo). One of our new birds today:
Along the road approaching Villamayor de Monjardin, with a fortress on the hill to our right. Fortunately, we did not have to climb *all* of the way to the castle:
Lunch in town before the long walk to Los Arcos:
Much of the next 7.5 miles looked like this:
But there was still plenty to see.
A miss on a close-up with a Corn Bunting:
Non-bird nature photo: A Painted Lady Butterfly:
An olive orchard:
A thistle with bees:
Tadpoles:
An enticing poppy:
Belardia wildflowers:
A Large Psammodromus lizard (not that the lizard is large - it's part of the name:
More wildflowers:
The day started with GOATS, and the day ended with GOATS! and chickens and geese.
The church at the city center, next to our room for the evening:
Enjoyed “walking” with y’all on this day! Big smiles, Jana!
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