Woke up this morning after a good nights rest. But that doesn’t mean I wanted to get out of bed. I did anyway – the pilgrims life is early to bed, early to rise.

I went to a Meson around 1900hrs last night in hopes to get a bite to eat. No such luck, the kitchen was closed until 2100hrs and I was hungry and tired. I got a pincho and beer instead and wandered back towards the Engaño. The bar/cafe on the way was also out of food. At least I had stuff in my pack.

Out the door at 0800, I was hoping for the cafe to be open – alas, it was not. So no breakfast until later.

This morning was cold and foggy, the sun broke out as I cleared the 2-300m climb just outside of Santelices. I ended up stoping in Soncillo and had breakfast. I also found a bottle of IPA from a brewery 30km from my house in California. WooT! Too bad it was not quite 10am.

The first part of this mornings hike was quite nice – green everywhere, farm tracks, rushing water. The best thing was that there was very little cow muck to dodge making navigating the farm track much nicer.

Getting to Montejo I stoped again and had a poncho and a KAZLimon. From here, the next 12-13km were windy and mostly on a rural country road.

This is where I found the snakes. I don’t know what type they are but they appear to be poisonous due to the triangular head. They also had serious attitude and anger issues. Even though they were only 12”/30cm, the struck out like they were much larger – kinda like chihuahuas.

Arriving in the Camping Playa Arija, I found out that the proprietor has had problems with pilgrims before and no longer will accept them. But since his son took my call last night, he would let me stay. He then gave me a ride to the local cafe. Seems like a nice enough guy, I don’t know what transpired previously, but it’s too bad he won’t be accepting pilgrims any longer.

Observations:

Overall a nice walk today. Cold and foggy in the morning. A bit windy in the afternoon. The trails were well marked and I missed one marker and took another (not wrong) route into town. It added maybe 500m to the walk.

With the campground closed to pilgrims, that leaves only 2-3 hotels in town. This is a blow to the Camino.