October 1, 2001
Puente La Reina- Estella (sunny)
11.9m/19km - 67m/107.1km

We start late this morning because we have to wait for the post office to open. It is in a small room and soon crowded with pilgrims mailing things forward to Santiago. It takes about a half hour for B and J to get their stuff wrapped and mailed. T is behind some other people and tells us to get going and that she will catch up with us.

Today is the first time my legs do not ache so I find walking pleasurable. About 4.6m/7.5km down the road from Puente la Reina we come to the village of Cirauqui at the top of a hill. Most of these villages are built on the tops of hills so they could be easily defended. When we are almost to the other side of the town we decide to pick up some food for our lunch. We ask a woman where the market is and she tells us it is at the other end of town. We start walking back on a street that is parallel to the street we walked up when we came into town. As we walk through a small plaza I turn my head and look toward the street that the Camino follows and see T just as she is one step away from disappearing between two buildings. By the time I yell out her name she is out of sight. A couple of seconds later she steps backwards into the street, see us, and walks over to join us.

Just outside Cirauqui is a bridge built by the Romans and we stop here to eat our lunch. From here we will be walking on a section of Roman road that leads up to the ruins of a medieval village, one that was built (where else) on a hill. I can't get over how old this road is. I come from a country where people think houses built at the time of the Revolutionary War (1775-1783 ) are old-old. And here I am walking on a road built over 2,000 years ago. I love it.



As we get closer to Estella we walk on a dirt road that cuts between rows and rows of grape vines. Some people veer off the road and pick bunches of grapes and start eating them. I am not sure if this is allowed so I do not do this. This is because as a kid I was the one who always got caught whenever I did something that wasn't allowed. The one time I chewed gum in class I got caught. The one time I took a candy bar from the grocery store I got caught. The one time I cheated on a spelling test I got caught. This does not mean I have any compunction about being an accessory after the fact. P picks some grapes and I help her eat them. But even then I get caught. I sometimes have an allergic reaction to sulfites and the first grape I bite into causes a tickling sensation in the back of my throat and my sinuses to swell shut a few seconds later. After that I can no longer breath through my nose.

This would be bad, right? Wrong. When we reach the outskirts of Estella we are wrapped in a thick heavy blanket of the most malodorous stench I have ever not smelled. Actually, this is so bad even I can smell it. This foul odor is so thick I can taste it. It isn't the fetor of sewage. It isn't the rankness of a slaughterhouse. It isn't the stink of a stockyard. It isn't the putrescence of a dead skunk. No, it is all those things combined. T and P are gagging and trying not to throw up. Welcome to Estella.