Albergue San Saturnino
Today was pretty wonderful. Post-meltdown turned out to be pretty peaceful and lovely. Ha! It started out pretty sleepy and sluggish as the mornings often do, but our trek out of the fast-paced Logroño led us through a beautiful park and nature preserve, which felt like coming home after our big city night. I fueled up with a Diet Coke at a trailside cafe in the park, and I was a new woman. We got a later start than we intended yet again, but this proved to be divine intervention, as we ran into some Camino friends we hadn’t connected with in a few days and had been wondering about.
First, Ramon.
Ramon is calm and quiet, a man of few words at first, but it has been a joy to get to know him. He is a professional photographer, has lived in big cities in the US, but was born in Spain and has been living in Madrid the past 4 years where he has an in-home studio. Ramon is documenting his journey with the most spectacularly beautiful photos, including portraits of fellow peregrinos. We ran into him just outside of Logroño and walked with him (and his cousin, visiting for the weekend) for a bit on our way into the next little town of Navarette.
Along the way, as I was asking him about his photography, he said, “Hey, I was thinking, maybe I could take your photo?” Uhhhhh YEAH YOU CAN, Ramon. Are you kidding?? I kept my cool a little better than that and tried not to pee my pants with excitement because I’ve seen his work and it’s UNREAL. He snapped the shot, wrote down my email address, and off the went. We ran into them again at a coffee shop down the road, where he showed us the finished product and sent it to me. Needless to say, it nearly brought tears to my eyes to have such a gorgeous documentation of this beautiful journey, and I will cherish it forever.
Do yourself a favor and visit Ramon’s website at www.rppstudio.com and/or his Instagram @rppstudio to check out more of his stunning work.
Not long before the end of our walk, we also ran into our friends from Korea, filming their band documentary! It was so nice to reunite with them, because we thought they were miles and miles ahead of us, and there’s really something special about connecting with people with whom you’ve shared this entire journey. They were so excited to see us too, and I hope it happens several more times before this trip is done.
It was an extreeeemely humid, muggy day today, and one of the band guys said it best: “This day is one of the hard ones... it’s like swimming.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. But it was absolutely stunning, walking through vineyard after vineyard.
We swam into our destination for the night, the adorable town of Ventosa, around 2:30pm. It was SO nice to be done walking early enough to have a leiseurely afternoon and evening, and this place is absolutely beautiful.
The sweet stuff is that much sweeter.
Beautiful.
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