Day 4 - Zubiri to Cizur Menor

Day 4 - Zubiri to Cizur Menor

Cloudy, drizzle

After cutting back on the distance yesterday, we didn't think that we can make 25 km from Zubiri to Cizur Menor. The terrain is much better but it still took us 8 hours to cover 20 km. We need to recalibrate our plan!!

Back to today, there was one hill but the rest is quite flat, according to the guide book. But that is not how you walk. It could be relatively flat in a small scale profile but still have the undulating, wet terrain where we go really slowly. I thought we did quite well on the flat terrain with Gigi recovered a little and have learned how to make use of the poles that she has.

We made it to the edge of Pamplona by 4 PM and found out that all the Pamplona albergues are full with events happening all over town this weekend. Another nice hospitalero helped us find beds in Cizur Menor and got us a taxi to send us off to there! So we ended up where we wanted to be without walking the last 5 km. That may be cheating a little but there is no way we could walk the extra 5 km.

Cizur Menor is the smaller of the twin cities at the outskirts of Pamplona as we would leave Pamplona to continue the Camino. The part we are in is part of the main road in town but still very quiet. We found our pilgrim meal and a variety store selling everything so we got our supply for breakfast tomorrow. 

Pilgrim meal is good today with choice of first course (rice, pasta, vegetables or salad), the main course (with choice of beef, chicken, pork and fish) and a nice piece of cake for dessert. And there is always a bottle of wine. This time just for the three of us.

It is unfortunate that we arrived in the big city Saturday afternoon and leaving Sunday morning. Even if we were in Pamplona, we wouldn't have been able to get the local sim card that I really want. It will have to wait a few days. Most albergues have internet access but internet access means different things in different places. In fact, the restaurant we went for lunch along the way today has better internet connection than almost all the albergues. Having a data plan would make life easier for me.