Day 5: Zumaia to Izarbide

I awoke to the sound of rain in the early morning and thought this might be our first day of hiking in the rain, but as luck would have it, the rain just before we headed out into the semi-darkness after a jolt of espresso, bread, cheese and cheesecake. We crossed the river, passed the woman by the well statue, and then straight up the mountain. The gloom and low hanging clouds appeared to be clearing a little, and a little breeze picked up off the sea. We walked past farms with steep fields, sheep, horses and a solitary farmer with a rifle and two dogs high on a hill above us.

We walked onward, up and down, meeting almost no one, eventually finding our way into the hamlet of Itziar. We hoped we’d find a little bar there to take a break. A couple of townspeople gave us directions, but none resulted in an open establishment. At this point we ran into a young German woman who welcomed our company and we hoped maybe to share a coffee together, but it was not to be. The church was open, so we went in to get our Camino passport stamp, and as we headed toward an exit there were a half dozen children hiding just inside the door. I imagined that their teacher was just outside, so I whispered ( stage whisper) , I won’t tell anyone you are here. And as I left and encountered a teacher, I played along and said, I have not seen any children just inside the door. He smiled knowingly and we said our good-byes.

After one false turn, we lost only 1/2 km, but were able to easily recover and start out descent to the town promised by views of the sea. The descent seemed to be increasingly and impossibly steep and Alice slipped a couple of times on the moist stoies, but we arrived well to the town of Deba. We spotted a couple of elevators to get us into the past few meters and soon found a very classy looking bar where we could get our typical pintxos, tortilla, cheesecake and orange juice for lunch.

There was not need to tarry, so we bought some oranges and headed across the river and up the mountain again. Soon we were on the ridge with views of the sea, and only 90 minutes later we were approaching our albergue — or hostel— for the night. We were checked in by the Colombian woman who struggled on despite poor English. We found our beds for the night, got our showers, washed clothes to be ready for the morning.