Day 2: Puente la Reina to Estella + Obama in Spain

Hola!!

Thanks to all our new readers who have posted helpful comments! We will keep them in mind as we go!

So the big news of course is Obama! We woke up and everyone in the alburgue was asking if we knew yet (as the acting US ambassadors for Punete la Reina). We got online and ran up and down the halls with the news! Everyone was very excited, some were evening singing his name. So far nearly all the international community we´ve met has been for Obama (minus 2 racist men we meet who don´t think a black person should be President- we won´t count them though)

This morning we woke around 730 am to our 3 other roomates moving about. All the alburgues seem to want you out around 830 so that was a good time to wake. We bothslpet pretty well although the beds make a lot of noise when you move which was not ideal. Tonight I think we´ll wear the ear plugs.

They gave us a warm blanket and there is a fitted sheet on the bed, plus we had our sleeping bags. We slept very warmly and tonight may not need the blanket.

For breakfast I had a few small donuts and an apple we got the night before. We brushed our teeth, packed up, and hit the road by 830.

All day long we saw other peregrinos (pilgrames) on the ´road´. It was very nice to see familar faces. You always wish each other ´buen camino´or ´good walk.´People in the towns also say it as you walk by.

We walked 23 km today over 6 and a half hours, bringing our grand total to 44km or so. Only 716km left!! So far no blisters for either of us and we haven´t gotten lost yet (knock on wood)

. We got 2 more comments today about Justin wearing flip flops on the trail which brings that total to 5. We have a bet going for how many comments he´ll get the whole trip. You can vote on our poll as well. I say 110, he says 100.

We passed through 4 very sweet little towns today. We ate lunch at a supermarket in one of them. Justin ate canned peas with tobasco sauce- I´m not sure what happened there.

The path was pretty flat today and with a lot less mud. We bought 2 nice walking sticks yesterday and they helped a lot with mud and keeping my knees from hurting on inclines and declines. We are making a notch in them for each day on the trail.

The weather today was about 50 - 60 and sunny until about 2pm when it started to drizzle, but nothing bad. We got to talk to Jan and Dan on speaker phone in the afternoon which was a big treat!

We got to our alburgue again around 4pm and it is again 5 euros a person. It´s similar to last night - kitchen, big common area, internet, bunk beds- although we are all in one big room this time.

We are with mostly the same people as last night minus a few. I think there are maybe 12 or so people here.

Estella is a bigger city with about 13,000 people. We think we´ll go exploring soon to find food to cook for super.

After arriving today I took a nice hot shower and did some yoga- both of which felt great!!

Another big day tomorrow- 28 km I think!! We´ll have to rest up.

Hooray again for OBAMA!!!! Thank goodness!!