Puente La Reina to Estella (21.6km)

Today was a fantastic walking day. Overall, it was very peaceful. The weather was also near perfect. There were some beautiful moments that I definitely saw as gifts from God!

I woke up after sleeping clear through the night again. Feeling rested, I got up after my 7:00 alarm went off and got ready for the day. After getting my pack into order, I checked out the vending machines in the albergue. They have great vending machines in Spain. For less than a dollar you can get really good coffee from a coffee vending machine, or a decent sized sandwich for under €2. I had a sandwich and a coffee that were delicious.

After the three of us got some kind of vending machine breakfast, we headed out at 8:00. Once again we walked in silence for the first two hours of the day. We soon left the city of Puente La Reina and were back on countryside trails.

The entire walk today was gorgeous countryside trails. The landscape was a mix of mountains and fields, with more mountain terrain in the beginning. This also included some uphill, but after a short climb, the uphill was done for the day!

We encountered three small towns on the road to our destination today. Each was very small, some too small to have a cafe open. One had a single cafe open, but it made all the difference. We weren't able to buy groceries last night, so we didn't make any lunch ahead of time. This cafe definitely saved us! We all had coffee and this amazing spanish sponge cake. It's twice as good when dipped in coffee! We relaxed and talked for a while there. Sean told us about Irish funeral traditions and how whole towns will go to a funeral. Fascinating!

Between the towns were endless rolling green hills. It was beautiful. I had lots of time to pray, which was fruitful for me. It took me a little while to get into it, but once I realized it was taking some time, I decided to start listing off things I'm grateful for to get me in a prayerful mindset. This helped, and boosted my mood as well. I especially thanked God for the Camino and everything I had experienced so far.

I started to realize the truth in the old Chinese proverb that Sean had recited the other day. Essentially, it followed the story of a man who had alternating strokes of good and bad luck, each one flowing into each other and being the cause behind the next good or bad luck. And every time something good or bad happened, his neighbors would tell him "what good luck" or "what bad luck", to which he would reply "We shall see." The moral of the story is that something that may seem terrible now could turn out to be great, and vice versa. The reason I mention this is because, as I was reflecting on each day's walk, I would think about things I missed. But I would realize that, in the moment, I thought nothing of it, or even didn't like it. For example, the rain we had in the beginning had seemed like bad luck to me, but in the present moment, with the hot sun out, it seemed like a good alternative. Or the Pyrenees mountains had seemed a little monotonous after a while, but I found myself missing them. So, in prayer, I realized that I must do my best to be content in every situation. Because everything is not as it seems, and we will only know the full story given time.

After a few hours and passing a few towns, Margaret, Sean, and I started talking. We played a game where we each made up our own best guess of the most likely backstory of other pilgrims we'd seen. That passed time pretty quickly, and it was good fun.

Pretty soon, the sun was fully out. We passed another small town and we each got a coke from a vending machine. We enjoyed them while walking and talking. We talked about our favorite kind of movies, our favorite kind of comedy, and our favorite and least favorite actors. We also found a very friendly cat!

After a while, we started to spread out again naturally and do our own thing once more. We actually spread so far this time that we couldn't see each other. Walking through yet another town, I found a church and, like usual, decided to try the doors. This one was actually open, so I went inside to check it out. As soon as I got in, I heard footsteps, and found an African priest. He was a very nice man. I talked with him in Spanish for a bit, until I misunderstood what he said, to which he gently corrected my Spanish in perfect English. Then we learned where each other is from (he's from Ghana) and I told him that I'd be getting married and starting missionary work soon. He was a very kind man, very young too, and he gave me a blessing and a stamp on my pilgrims passport before I left. Funnily enough, he said he was only stopping by to grab something, but had decided to leave the doors unlocked just in case a pilgrim came by. I'm glad he did! Having these small yet genuine and heartfelt experiences with other people on the Camino is very touching.

After leaving that town, I found yet another church in a field of olive trees. This one was abandoned but beautiful. There were tons of little messages written on paper on the altar. I wrote one and left it there.

It wasn't much further from there to get to our destination city of Estrella. We whistled to "500 Miles" on our final stretch there. Finally, around 2:00, we had arrived. We got settled in the albergue, then set out to find lunch right away. We found a pretty good looking place, and had a classic 3 course meal. I got spaghetti, steak, and yogurt. It was great! As always, we were pretty quiet and tired at the beginning of the meal, but the food woke us up right away and we had a good time talking. We talked about alcohol and how wildly different the drinking ages can be from countries like Germany to the US.

After dinner, we headed back to the albergue and I showered. Feeling fresh, I headed out to check if the local church was open. It wasn't, but it was very beautiful and there were some tall steps that overlooked the city, so I sat outside as I prayed my rosary.

After a few minutes, the church actually opened, so I finished my rosary inside. They had opened for the choir to practice singing, so I had beautiful background music to my prayer.

Once I had finished praying, I headed back to the albergue. At 6:30, I had a zoom call for onboarding with FOCUS, my missionary organization, so I got to talk to some other new missionaries which was nice.

At 7:30, Margaret, Sean, and I headed out for some food and drinks. We chatted while we had a drink and just had a nice time together. We were all getting pretty tired though, and you could see it, so we headed back around 9:00.

From 9:30-10:00, I called Mikayla. I had been missing her a lot today and thinking about her all day, so it was nice to hear her voice. I'm glad I'm doing the Camino, but I really do miss her. I'm very excited for our reunion once I get back home!

Finally, around 10:00, I got ready for bed and wrote this blog post. And finally I'm done, and can get some sleep. These take about an hour to write. I'm glad I'm doing it though; this will be great to look back on. God is so good, and he has given me a beautiful day. I can't wait for tomorrow! But I'm even more excited to sleep. Good night.