We made it and survived the first day!!!

It was a long, more than 24 hour journey from the time Emma dropped us at the airport until the time we checked in at St Jean Pied de Port, but we made it! The train ride from Bayonne (near the airport) to St Jean was incredible. It was the little engine that could (a single car!) that chugged up the Pyrenees to the start of our trek. There was a river on one side and mountains all around. All is green and flowering and it was really exciting to be getting to our starting point.

We woke up this morning for breakfast at 7am (after a very sound sleep!), and took our first steps on the camino at 7:25am. We had 27km to travel and we weren´t sure we would make it at more than one point. It was only a 1200m climb, but a very long and winding one, and after 6 1/2 hours we made it to our destination at Roncevalles.

The view was incredible! We started out under cloudy skies, and suddenly at one point, around 11am it got very sunny. It took a few minutes to realize why, but when we looked behind us we could see we had climbed above the cloud level. We did take a few photos (thanks to the point and shoot camera Emma helped me sneak into my backpack - thank you dear partner in crime!), but I´ll probably have to wait until I´m home to post the pictures. We were really happy when the camino trailed off into a wooded area on the mountain - a great relief from the sun at just the moment we needed it. We checked into the refugio, which is much more comfortable and clean that we were expecting, and have already sat down for a glass of vino tino (red wine) at a bar that happend to have a computer - what luck!

If today was the only day we did on the hike we would be satisfied : we had breakfast with a man from Spain, a man from Sweden, and a woman from Hugary. We walked a few hundred meters with a man from Ottawa and his friend from Australia, and we have bunkbeds beside a woman from Hamilton and her nefew from New Brunswick! We saw sheep in green pastures, beautiful (wild?), brown horses with blonde manes on one of the mountain peaks and walked above the clouds - what more could we ask for?!

We did 27km today- 23 of which were uphill, and we feel fantastic! My hip flexors are a bit tired, but our feet are in great shape and out backpacks are causing no strain at all on our shoulders. The downhill part was almost the most difficult part of the day - we were exhausted by that point and our feet really started jamming/rubbing in our boots ( I even took a small break to put on some moleskin as a preventive measure --thanks Deb!). All is well on the camino and we are thinking of all of you back home who cheered us on and helped us get here - thanks for all the support!

More updates as soon as possible. Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow - as far as our bodies will take us I guess!

Love from the camino!
Hasta pronto.