Hello, everyone.
We left Deba at what was turning out to be our new standard departure time: between 6:45 and 7:15. (We would have liked to leave earlier, but we kept forgetting to set our watch to 0530 to get the day started!)
This was a day of walking away from the ocean and into the mountains.
The river at Deba was beautiful in the early morning.
We crossed the dam and began the long day's climb. Y'all can just see the beginnings of the path at the right side of the picture.
Parts of the path were reasonably level. Parts of it were steep. The village of Olatz was in a little enclosed valley that doesn't drain away: a polje I think it's called. The bar had a very welcome bite of food to eat. I refilled my water bottle at the sink in the ladies' room.
A bus group came and sat around outside the bar in their couple or three dozen, eating sack lunches and buying nothing from the little business. I felt like it was tacky of them. If they ordered the sack breakfasts from the lady at the bar, she could have had them ready and the extra business might have been the difference to make it worthwhile for her to be open an extra day during the week. Instead of only at the weekend.
The trail, which was mostly on dirt lumber roads, went pretty high. We had some lovely views.
We had gotten a barra loaf and some sardines in Deba, because of the notes in the guide book about a near-total lack of facilities en route, and about 1 we sat down near a farm with a (non-potable) spring and ate. The kids at the farm had set up a table to sell drinks: sodas, Aquarius water, and maybe some beer. We bought drinks to go with our food and enjoyed a rest on the grass.
The lunch stop was about 10 kilometers from our destination, according to a sign we saw. Those were some long kilometers! There was a really long descent at one point, somewhat steep. I zigzagged my way all the way down on the concrete way. And it wasn't the end! There were still some more miles.
We got to Markina about 4 in the afternoon, and almost the first thing we saw was the famous shrine to St. Michael the Archangel. The statue is in the center of a megalithic rock construction. There are a couple of benches for a visitor to sit down for a minute inside the building.
In Markina we stayed at the convent of the Benedictinas. The building was in the classic hollow-square shape and clotheslines for the pilgrims were inside the paved courtyard at the center. (In that climate the heat reflecting off of the walls is an advantage.) They had something I'd never seen before, a little electric gizmo that would spin-out your wet laundry after you washed it in the (cold!) water at the sink. This was interesting, it almost got the clothes as wrung-out as an actual washing machine load. I needed help to figure out how to start the machine.
The Benedictinas had blankets, beds, showers, and the above discussed things--but no internet. (Not that internet is necessary, it's more of a luxury. Come to think of it, having a bed instead of a bunk is a luxury, too!) There are a number of places in the area to eat and we enjoyed a hot meal for dinner.
We made sure to get back to our sleeping place before the doors were locked and the lights turned off at 10 PM. This had been standard when we were on the Camino Frances and the Camino Portugues, but it is less so on the Camino del Norte. Some of the pilgrims, especially the ones who were more hikers than pilgrims, felt like the rule of 10 PM should be relaxed so they could keep the lights on later. This didn't work, as the sisters had established that as a strict rule that probably has been in force as long as they've been sheltering pilgrims on the Way. We were too tired to want to party all night anyway.
