Day 9 - walking from Viana to Navarette (21.5km)

For most of the morning I walked through cold,wet mist. The previous day I had seen the big city of Logroño in the distance, but today I could barely see 100 m ahead of me. If there were still hills on the horizon they had disappeared into the fog. I saw some signs explaining there was a lake and a bird observatory, but all I saw was cloud.

When I got to Logroño it was a bit of a shock from the peaceful country side. People were racing everywhere, there were a lot of cars and very few people responded to greeting of ´Hola´in the street. I went to a shop off the camino and got a little lost trying to find my way back. I looked at my map and it seemed as though the next street ran parallel, but somehow I got completely turned around. In contrast to square Canadian streets in Europe they often use a confusing star configuration. When I finally made my way to the Santiago church and found the camino I realized that while I had been lost I had been walking backwards on the camino.

After the city I walked past a lake, and this time the sun was out, for a brief moment the countryside looked like Canada with people barbecueing and having picnics.