The Beginning - Day 1

May 14th

St. Jeand Pied de Port - Roncesvalles - 27.1 km

We arrived in St. Jean Pied de Port last night and slept in the albergue Coq Du Chemin. Its more like a women's house where she rent some of her rooms for pilgrims. 10 euros per person without breakfast. We got up early in the morning about 7:00 am and it was raining. As we were not able to leave our extra luggage in Paris we had to stop at the post office before start our journey.  (I want to start it so bad) The post office wont be open until 9:00 am so we decided to have some breakfast and on our way to the bakery we found Bruce, our friend from USA that we met in the train station. After some coffee we still have some time before 9:00 o'clock, so we went to the pilgrim office and got the maps we needed and our shell. The lady that helped us said even if is raining would be better to go through the mountain because it is Saturday and the road to Spain would be busy and is much nicer the view from the mountain. We went back to the post office and it was so busy, we were only able to leave there around 10:45 am : ( Ok, now we are ready to start, Bruce walked with us until the end of the city. As we left late we decided to stay at the first albergue, the Orisson. Cold, foggy, raining and leaving late it was hard to find people around. We only met a Italian couple walking around. When we stopped at Orisson for our disappointment the albergue was full and they only had tents to rent. As we didn't have any blankets or sleeping bag, we had no choice but kept going. Maybe the view from the mountain was nice but the only problem is that we couldn't see anything because of the fog, I heard sheep and horses but couldn't see. Only at one point we saw a female horse with a baby horse. What a bad luck because the male horse didn't like us around their baby and start chasing us. Awww, running up the mountain with a backpack : ( Not Fun! We hide behind a big rock and stayed there for a while. Good time to have a break and have some food.

After a while walking up the mountain in the cold rain we arrived at the Col de Lepoeder (1450m) and was winding very strong. We were not able to see anything. From this point now we only need to get down. As we were so tired and cold and could see the arrows to well and instead of going the right way we went through the forest when the lady at the pilgrim office said not to take. Too late and too steep. We arrived at 7:00 pm. I was so tired and hungry. Roncesvalles was so busy. I couldn't barely walk, had some pilgrim menu at the restaurant and went to the room. Met Elza, Brazilian from Florianopolis. Very tired, my knees hurt like crazy.

Monica