In Roncesvalles!

I am in Roncesvalles. Ow, my feet hurt.

But then, look at it this way: I just walked across the Pyrenees mountains.

27km from Saint Jean Pied de Port to Roncesvalles. Most of it uphill - Saint Jean was at about 200m, the highest point we went up to was 1400m. Then downhill about 500m. But spread out over the 27km, though the downhill was all in 4km.

I started out walking with the Koreans, but slowed down considerably and they went on ahead after just about 5km or so. The next 3km or so were a lonely, painful and misty slog by myself, until through some sort of miracle two Brits (a guy and a girl) materialized out of thin air. So we spent the rest of the journey to Roncesvalles together - at about the 12km mark the guy even switched my pack for his, which was very nice of him.

We ate lunch at the halfway point by the Virgin of Orisson statue - canned mackerel in mustard on bread, provided by me, and some chocolate, provided by them. Then we trekked on.

There were many points when I thought I couldn´t go any further, but I continued, perservered and made it. This was easily the hardest thing I´ve ever done in my life - though granted, I don´t have that high of a benchmark for that (until now). Every other tough experience will have to compare to it.

The bottoms of my pants are covered in mud, cow and sheep dung, and gods know what else. It is also amazing how much this trek has done already for helping me deal with OCD - lunch I ate today without having washed my hands at all, after having handled packs that had been on the ground and so on.

I slipped a few times, and landed on the ground three times of that. Banged up my knee, and rolled my ankles twice each I think. Right now my feet hurt a lot. We´ll see how I feel tomorrow.

We´re about to head off to dinner, and then to the Pilgrim´s Mass - as luck would have it, the two Brits are also non-religious heathens like me, so we´ll all feel awkward there together.

Yesterday in the pilgrim hostel, I talked to a bunch of people from all around the world. The main group in my room were the Belgians and Dutch - who had walked all the way from their homes! Wow.

I definitely don´t have the energy for anything like that (not to mention it would be a tad difficult, being on the other side of the ocean and all).

Now time to see what the pilgrim menu is at the dinner. Hopefully it will be decent!

Catch you all later.