Part 4: Ruesta - Sangüesa (23 kilometres)

Last night I went to bed thinking about how Günther wouldn’t be homesick for too long once he heard me performing the snoring version of one of Mozart’s sonatas. So the first thing I did when I got up was ask him if he had slept alright. I got some peace of mind when he said he had slept like a log and not to worry about my snoring because next to his wife, I sounded like a goldfinch. I’m starting to like this Günter more and more. If this continues, I might have to wrap him up as a present and take him home.

After breakfast, when we agreed that we would do today’s route together, we packed up our things and got ready to head out. Between my txapela and what Günther had on his head, it wasn’t clear if we were going to walk in the mountains or go to a fancy dress party. I asked the Austrian where he got his hat from and he told me, with a burst of laughter, that it’s the one from Crocodile Dundee. "Yea, you look exactly like him” – I thought to myself. It’s a good job there aren’t any crocodiles in the Pyrenees because if there were, I don’t think there would have been much left of Günther...

The first part of the route was quite hard. It rained right from the start and, even though it wasn’t a very pronounced slope, we had to endure five kilometres uphill.  Half-way up, with a serious look on his face, Günther showed me a horse-shoe print on the ground and told me, as if I was born yesterday, that we had a horse in front of us. With the same serious face, I bent down and lifted a bit of the mud in my hands and told him that the horse passed here about half an hour ago. Both of us burst out laughing at the same time. A bit further ahead I spotted a huge cow dung and told Günter that it was now his turn to locate the animal’s position, but he didn’t find that quite so funny.

Günther’s laugh really reminds me of one of his fellow countrymen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his flawless (in my opinion, at least) performance in Conan the Barbarian. I don’t feel I know him well enough yet to tell him but depending on how things go I might mention it to him. Maybe all Austrians laugh like that and I just haven’t realised…

Twelve kilometres later, we arrived at Undués de Lerda, the last Aragonese village on the Camino before entering Navarre. We stopped at the bar of the hostel and had a slice of Spanish omelette and a piece of home-made chocolate cake which was to die for. Günther didn’t leave a pick. There was a man from Sos del Rey Católico in the bar who gave us one irrefutable piece of advice which we’re sure to take with us to Santiago: "maños, if you get lost, look for the power lines and follow them; you might go backwards or forwards but you’ll end up somewhere”.

The rest of the route was more or less flat and the landscape a little monotonous. I had a chance to talk to Günther about the divine and the human. I asked him why he was here and he said because he felt that the Camino was calling him. He had wanted to do it for the last three years but his wife got ill and he had to postpone it. His wife recovered nicely and he understood that now was the time to do it. She had already done it before and her plan is to join Günther on the last week and arrive at the Plaza del Obradoiro together.

We got lost on the final stretch and it took us a while to find our way again. Günther freaked out a bit when I translated this sign - car park – that we came across in the middle of a field. I told him to relax, after all he’s only been in Spain for three days and he ain’t seen nothing yet…

As we arrived in Sangüesa, “Kelly’s Heroes” caught up with us. They’d run out of money and couldn’t find a cash machine in Undués, the village where they had planned on spending the night. So they ended up doing 10 kilometres more than planned. Oddball’s back is so bad that he says he’s going to chuck it in the bin. In the local hostel, run by the Aspace Association (for children with Cerebral Palsy), Nuria, a young worker who manages like you wouldn’t believe, looked after us, proving that there aren’t people with disabilities, but rather people with different capabilities. Nuria admitted to us, off the record, that there are some pilgrims who are quite dirty and that she really hates it when they leave their blankets lying on the floor. Speaking of lying on the floor, that’s exactly where Diego was, the one with the goatee. He gave Nuria quite a fright when she confused him with a dog…