Last night was not the most restful. We thought we had placed the tent on a level spot but there was more of a slant than we realized as soon as we got in. I let Pam choose her side and she chose the downhill side. I’d have slept fine if Pam didn’t believe in sharing her misery. Added to the slant were the horses with bells that decided to come eat the softest grass in the field; right outside of our door. Surprisingly, the sheep were quiet even while I was counting them.
Just as we were starting to stir around 7, it started to rain. Not a bad rain, but enough that we were obligated to go back to sleep for a while. By 8 the rain had stopped and it looked like it was going to be a cloudy day–perfect for hiking.
It was all downhill to the little village of Sare; about 1300′ down. It was pretty steep and we could tell it was going to be a very humid day. I was already sweating profusely.
Disgusting man paragraph: skip now or don’t say I didn’t warn you. Before we went to bed last night, I took one final pee. It was brown. I was afraid it might be rabdo but I haven’t done anything new. Pam said it might just be an irritated bladder bleeding a bit. It’s the first time I’ve ever hoped for blood in my urine. By morning it was clear again.
When we got into Sare, we lost the trail for the first time, but we just headed to the central plaza. We found a bar that served coffee (but no food). There were plenty of other shops around so we got some food and brought it back–we didn’t want to move because the tourist information center had great free wifi. We spent some time bringing the blog back up to date while eating.
Sare sits in a bowl surrounded by the Pyrenees. It’s a charming village and we would have liked to spend more time in, but since we have only hiked 2 miles and it was already 12:30, we thought we should get moving. Today was an easy walk across the bowl to get to the mountains on the other side. This is where we will start getting to at least 4000′ peaks.
The walk out of Sare involved a fair amount of back road walking. Since the GR10 has been pretty much all trail to this point, I’ll let it slide. A nice French/Japanese couple met us on the road. Neither of them spoke English but we managed to communicate pidgin for a while. She can only walk 2 hours a day and he can handle 3. They were interested in how much we walked a day and where we were headed–12 with lots of breaks, and the Mediterranean.
We needed a break and they pointed us to a a stream where we could soak our feet. We were in heaven for the next 45 minutes. Nothing, I mean nothing, beats a cold stream for hot tired feet. While we were soaking away, an Irish woman stopped by to join us. She’s a teacher and wanted to try hiking for a while until her boyfriend can join her next week. She’s just hiking to St Jean Pied de Port.
With revitalized feet, we continued our walk into Ainhoa (your guess is as good as mine to pronunciation–we received the proper sound but quickly forgot because English and French are so different on pronunciations). When we finally made it to town, we thought we’d find food to eat and a grocery store–no such luck.
After looking around a bit, we settled on a cafe next to a playground with the local kids playing soccer. I tried my hand at ordering in French by pointing at the menu and saying “deux”–I’m becoming tri-lingual. Fortunately for us, the waiter/bar tender spoke English. As we were getting ready to leave, the crowd thinned out and we were able to talk with Igor about traveling. He took the time in his 20s to travel the world. He hiked the Camino, the GR20, spent 4 years in the US (favorite city–New Orleans, mine as well). He was a really cool guy that we could have spent hours talking with. He was fascinated by us selling out and traveling.
After we repacked from filling our water, we headed out of town. We’ve got the biggest climb to date in front of us, so we wanted to knock it down a bit. We’ve got a 2300′ climb first thing in the morning. We decided to take the first level spot we could find. About a mile out of town and 300′ up, we found our spot. We’re going to have an early night so we can get an early start tomorrow. We hope to make St Jean by Thursday evening.
