victory

Yeah people! I made it! first day 27 kilometers and according to the guidebook 1200 meters up and about 900 meters down. I feel pretty cool right now. I arrived in Biarritz yesterday afternoon and on the bus I met a fellow pilgrim, a really nice and chilled-out South African woman. We travelled together to saint Jean pied de Port in the French pyrenees and arrived there around 7 in the evening when it was already getting dark. Bit different from my expectations. I expected, as you know, rough tough rocky mountains, but instead mainly saw cows on grass patches....and fog. Yes, the weather has been pretty awful: right nowthere very thick fog and drizzle surrounding us outside. Pretty much the story of the day. Maeve (the SA woman) and me started walking around 7.30 this morning. Hardly slept the night before though. the hut was very nice and no snoring people but they had closed the window so with 6 people in the room it was blooody hot! The thing with waking up because you are hot is that you don´t really find out that that was the reason you woke up only after it has happenend 6 times. then it occurred to me ´wait a minute, maybe I´m just really hot´. Ofcourse it takes another time waking up to finally decide that it really isn´t working and drag your ass out of bed to open a window. helped abit, but still, not much sleep. the adrenaline made up for that though, the 27 km seemed pretty daunting, especially the 1200 meter ascend. So we got up at 6.45 in the end and started walking without breakfast or packed lunch because it was a friggin mountain town where everything was closed. But that´s no problem; my aim is to become skinny as hell anyway so I´d say it was a good start. Although i had kind of set myself onto the idea of walking the first day alone (I just didn´t want to feel any pressure whatsover to walk too fast and collapse halfway),  Maeve and I took it very 60+ age easy and gently dragged ourselves up the hill. The weather was rather shite; constant drizzle and thick, thick fog, but actually i guess this was quite good for the first day because I would´ve definitly gotten a heart attack if it had been any warmer. So even though we looked like drowned cats after an hour, spiriots were high and the pace steady. there were many other pilgrims on the road and we chatted with some of then and eventually met a woman we saw the day before. We hooked up with her and a German guy after the first stop, and continued walking with them all the way to the final destination: Roncasvalles, having crossed the border with Spain on the way. And even though it didn´t stop raining and I´ll probably come down with pneumonia any minute, and we didin´t see anything of the ´´splendid scenery´ because of the constant fog, spirits were high and we had fun! The trip took about 9 hours (including 1 hour rest) and the last 2 hours were a bit tough because the feet soles were protesting and the legs craving a seat, the last hour we hooked up with yet another pair of pilgrims, an italian and a japanese guy, who made sure we were distracted enough not to notice the pain too much.
At the moment i am sleeping in what used to be an old monastry and there are 120 beds in one room and 2 showers. I managed to have on and it was heaven. Now i have 7 minutes left on the internet so i dont have too much time to become extremely witty this time, but hopefully I will have more time in pamplona (in 2 days) to entertain you properly.

So far i am having fun! it is great to have an aim every day, and to be alone and meet new interesting people, and be out in the mountains (even though its raining). Whenever i think of having to do this for 4 more weeks i find it hard to imagine, but this  "holiday" is all about taking it easy and doing whatever I want. Ha, i´m loving it (just like Macdonalds)!

I´m gonna post this thing now and go to bed. yes, it is 20.30 here now at the ,moment and i am missing the mass that started at 8. hard wooden church banks? Didn´t think so.

Adios amaigos! Buenos noches!