Stage 3: Zubiri – Pamplona – Camino for Closers

Stage 3 – the day I got an All-Spanish Burger

Start: 6:20, 5 ºC, rain

End: 11:30

Distance: 20.4/66 Km

Zubiri was not exactly my next holiday destination. Off to Pamplona, which promises to be a proper Basque city. Also, bulls.

Follow your Camino itinerary with this one weird trick

One of the best things about my camino was going offline for most of the day.

Google maps’ GPS works without internet connection. I would prepare the itinerary, step by step, the day before, as part of my “packing”.

And of course, the excellent Wise Pilgrim App made a huge difference. The list of small towns, the alternative routes and the commentary by other pilgrims made me feel much more confident, and safer.

Industrial area means industrial area

Leaving Zubiri, the Wise Pilgrim app warned me about passing through an industrial area. Well, indeed it was. And it sucked.

Except for a couple of nice villages the trip to Pamplona wasn’t particularly exciting. Except for Larrasoaña, which the app described as a “side trip”.

The three gifts of the camino

In Larrasoaña I met an hospitalero whose coffee was more than tolerable. A camino veteran, he went through the CF 11 times in the last couple of decades (that’s 9000 kilometres for you! Kudos)

While having breakfast, he taught me about the three gifts of the camino:

Focus
“On the Camino you walk along you companion, Pain. The only way to overcome this is with Focus. Focus on your walking, focus on each step, focus on the conversation with the pilgrim next to you.”
Presence
“The Camino is a huge challenge. To overcome it, you can’t waste energy worrying about the past or the future. The only thing that matters is this thing you are doing right now. “
The Essential
“On the Camino you can’t bring much with you. By the time you make it to Santiago, you’ll have walked all that distance with only a backpack and a few belongings. When you get back home, you’ll be able to understand what is truly essential for your life, and what you don’t need in your backpack”.

Focus, Presence, The Essential: these three gifts indeed come to you as you walk the camino, and can stay with you once you get back to the real world.

Of course, if you are asking somebody else to carry your luggage and taking taxis half of the time, well, I am not sure whether this still applies…

Pamplona is for Bulls

Pamplona is a nice city. It does look like a nice city. Things to do in Pamplona: San Firmino’s celebrations, bulls everywhere. Else: nothing.

Well, all things considered this stage wasn’t too bad. The real challenge for this stage was surviving dinner with an American lady. Out of hundreds of options, of course we ended up eating… a burger. Award-winning, heart-stopping burger.