October 3, 2001
Torres del Rio- Logrono (rain off and on)
12.8m/20.5km - 97.8m/156.5km

Start my morning with breakfast at the restaurant we ate in last night. I have a banana, a roll and a cup of cocoa. This is what I eat most mornings.

By the time we reach Viana it is raining off and on. I am walking with P and T under a sky that is beautiful. J and B are up ahead. As we walk the sun plays hide and seek with us behind the big fluffy gray clouds that scurry across the sky just above us. The next instant the clouds huddle together blocking out the sunlight and there is a burst of rain. We run to the side of a building trying to find protection from the wind blown rain as we put our rain gear on. As soon as we get covered the rain stops. This happens several times as we walk.

On the other side of Viana it starts raining steadily and heavily so we decide to shelter in front of a large metal building off the road. As we stand there waiting for the rain to ease up a little, a small truck pulling a trailer drives up. A man gets out and opens the doors to the building, and the truck pulls inside. Ten or 12 men sitting in the trailer climb out of it. The driver of the truck comes over and tells us we can wait inside the building. The building is a farmer's equipment storage shed and the men work for the farmer.

Three of the men from the trailer walk over to us. One of them speaks English so he does the talking. We learn the men are migrant laborers from Pakistan and that they pick the grapes and olives that grow in this region. The man asks where we are from and P and T answer, "Belgium." "Mexico." When I answer, "Estado Unidos", he stares at me for a second, turns his back on me with out saying a word, and ignores me for the rest of the conversation. I find this amusing. He focuses on T, once asking her if she would like him to come with her. T is uncomfortable with his attention and after a couple of minutes I ask her if she is ready to leave. She says yes and even though it is still raining, we go.

When we reach Logrono we head for the refugio where we will meet up with J and B. We get there around lunchtime and find the refugio closed so we decide to look for a place to eat and come back later. Most of the refugios close after the pilgrims leave in the morning and then reopen later in the afternoon, so we know J and B will come back there.

We wander around looking for a place to eat but we are so tired we cannot decide which restaurant to pick. Finally we walk into one bar and when we get inside we see there is no one there. I am just about to say we should leave when the song "Guantanamera" starts playing loudly on the sound system. This is one of my favorite songs and I smile. I look at T and she is smiling too. We stay. We realize that the bar is empty because it just opened up and it is still too early for people to eat lunch in Spain. We relax, drink tea, and eat the tapas the bartender makes. It is nice to sit here quietly, out of the rain, talking and listening to the music. After we have been there an hour the bartender brings us a plate of shrimp tapas on the house.

By the time we leave the rain has stopped and we head back to the refugio. When we get there the doors are open and J and B are waiting. They ask us where we have been, they have been in the refugio since they reached town. Didn't we see the note on the door telling us to come around to the side entrance to the refugio? We were walking on the other side of the street when we reached the refugio and although we could see the note, we could not read it and thought it said the refugio was closed. Something we could already tell because the doors were shut. We find out the front door is locked for security reasons and when that door is locked the side door is open.

The people running the refugio are very accommodating, stamping our passports, giving P permission to take a shower, and letting J and me use the computers. I send an e-mail home telling everyone I'm doing fine. Right before we get on the computers J tells me his girlfriend has broken up with him over the phone. I laugh at the absurdity of it. First T and then J. What kind of a person would break up with someone on the phone when the person they are dumping is hundreds or thousands of miles away? Walking the Camino takes a little planning, so the break-uper has plenty of time to tell the break-upee that it is over before the break-upee leaves home.

P is leaving us. She is walking the Camino in sections and has to return home today. T, B, J, and I planned on walking to Navarrete but now I am thinking of stopping here in Logrono and getting a hotel for the night. I feel the need to be in a room by myself. It isn't until we are leaving the refugio that I make my decision. I'm going to stay. I tell the others and make plans to catch up with them in Azofa.

P says she will walk with me while I find a hotel. I have a list of affordable ones in my guidebook and we search these out. Each one we check on has no vacancies and a couple we can't find, so I am forced to look at pricier ones. Funny thing, I have been using the map in my guidebook to find the street where each hotel is and when I first looked at the map, one hotel name jumped out at me but since it was out of my price range I did not consider it. This is the hotel I end up in, the Hotel Ciudad de Logrono. After I check in I ask P if she wants me to walk to the bus station with her. She says no (she knows my feet are hurting), she will walk there by herself. We say our goodbyes and she leaves.

After she is gone I lie down and take a nap. When I wake up I turn on the TV and find the only English language station, CNN International. For the past week my world has been the Camino and not once have I thought about what is going on in the universe beyond it. After watching for a couple of minutes I feel dizzy and have to look away. There is too much happening on the screen. The news announcer is taking up most of the screen but to his upper left is a smaller screen showing a tank racing across a desert. Below him words scroll across the bottom part of the screen while in the lower right hand corner a small box is flashing stock market quotes. The whole thing is a visual merry-go-round that makes me feel queasy, so I quickly turn it off. I then go and take a shower and after that fill the tub and soak in a hot bath. After my bath I do my laundry and when that is done I think about going out to eat. I am so tired I decide to go straight to bed instead.