From Estella to Villamayor de Monjardin

After settling down in the church in Estella, Roger and Denise and Tom and I set out to get some dinner and a very cold beer! Nothing tastes as a good as a cool beer to get rid of day´s dust in your throat. We found a lovely outdoor tavern and parked ourselves down for a bit. The city was having a fiesta (we never did determine why other than it had a medieval theme). While we were having our drinks, a marching band made up of local youngsters stopped near us, dressed in costume and began playing. It seemed a fit way to end our day. Our meal was excellent and we headed out to buy provisions for tomorrow´s walk. Unfortunately, due to celebrations, everything closed before we could doing any buying. We didn´t count on Jose Luis though. He had already set out and bought fruit, bread and meat and joined us for a quick beer before we headed up to get a well-deserved night´s sleep. However, the heat of the day permeated our room and it was very hard to get comfortable. While we were happy to have beds, our night was anything but restful. In addition to the heat, our parish room overlooked a plaza where young children had gathered to play in the evening´s cooler air. Evening in Spain means early morning so it wasn´t until about 3:oo am that things quieted down.

My alarm went off at 6:00 but there was no hurry to leave. After yesterday´s very hot walk, we decided to do a much shorter walk today. Our goal was Monjardin, some 9 kilometers away. Although the day was cloudy and cool when we awoke, it didn´t take long for the sun to start heating things up. We headed over to the albergue for coffee and toast before heading out at 8:00 for our walk. We found out that once again we were the last ones too leave. It didn´t take long for our bodies to loosen up and we started making a good pace.
Well-wishers from the village would urge us to have a ¨buen camino.¨ We arrived at our
destination at 11:00. It was great to have our walk over, but the albergue was not open yet. The gentleman in charge was still cleaning up from the night before and was heading back into Estalla to pick up provisions for the day. He would be ready to open at 2:00 but he allowed us to leave our heavy backpacks inside while we waited, where else, at the village bar! We are having a bite to eat before turning in early tomorrow. We hope to start at 5:00 tomorrow morning to beat the heat and to get to our destination some 23 kilometers away.