May 17. 3:00 PM. Day 5. Walked 21.1 km (13.1 miles) today. Walked 110.3 of 787 km (68.5 of 478 miles) total.

Today, as all days seem to be, was quite a day on the Camino. It was an exceptionally beautiful walk (I wish I could upload pictures -- hopefully soon!!), especially the last few kilometers as we walked through beautiful green fields directly towards the mountains. As beautiful as the walk was, I struggled quite a bit this morning. The first few days had been relatively easy and mostly pain free for me, and I think I was getting a bit overconfident. This morning, right from the beginning, I was thinking about how tired I was. I realized a little bit into the walk that a big part of the problem is that I may not be sleeping enough. I went to sleep after 10:00 last night, and was up at 5:30. Early starts are definitely key to success out here, so I really need to start going to sleep earlier. In fact, it is a struggle right now just to keep my eyes open while typing this.

Having said all that, I did get a second wind with about 5 km to go this afternoon and was feeling great as I walked into Los Arcos, our destination for today. And there were definitely some great moments today as well. It started with a stop right outside of Estella this morning at a free ¨wine fountain.¨ Much of the walk today was through vineyards, and outside of Estella there is a wine fountain from which you can fill a container with free wine. Many people use the shells that we carry (the shell is the symbol of the camino and we all have one attached to our backpacks)to drink the wine. I started the walk this morning with Bryan (Irish), Sara (Swedish), Grant (Australian) and Ricardo (Mexican), all of whom I ate dinner and slept with last night. We stopped at the wine fountain and were there for a few minutes when all of a sudden... ¨Hola Pablo!¨ Pablo came limping into the fountain area (he hurt his ankle a few days ago and has been hobbling quite a bit since)and filled his water bottle with wine. We all talked there for a while and then started walking again. As usual, I walked ahead of the group and after about an hour I came to a little shop that was selling food and drinks. I stopped there and had two of the best ham and cheese sandwiches (kosher for camino) of my life. As I was finishing the first sandwich, Grant, Brian, Ricardo and Sarah came in and ordered some food as well. We were having a nice rest and chat when in walks Pablo and everyone turned and said in unison -- ¨Hola Pablo!¨ It was at that moment that I realized I was walking across Spain with Norm from Cheers. Pablo was in rare form and showed me his now empty water bottle. ¨My ankle no more hurt!!¨ he exclaimed. As we started walking out of the town and I began pulling away from the group, Pablo said ¨Jon is my best friend in the world!!¨ I didn´t have any, but I am pretty confident that that was pretty damn good wine!

If Pablo is Norm, Grant is Cliff Claven. He is a very nice guy (as literally everyone I have met has been), and I have spent the last three nights with him and the others from that group. Grant is experiencing the Camino moment by moment. I told him recently that, if I have time, I might like to continue walking past Santiago to the beach in Finnesterre (three days walk from Santiago), and he scolded me for planning too far ahead and not living just in the moment. The first day we walked together he explained to me that, at that moment, he was experiencing the camino by noticing the contact of his foot with the road on each step. Last night at dinner he told me that the Camino gives us what it gives us. I am pretty sure that is deep, though I don´t have any idea what it means. Maybe soon the Camino will explain it to me through my shoes.

I arrived in Los Arcos a couple hours ago and found a great little Albergue. The room I have has only four beds in it. One of beds was taken by a German guy with whom I had already spoken a few times, and another was taken by a Japanese woman whom I had seen but never spoken to. There was one bed still open as I was preparing to walk down to post today´s blog. Can you see where this is going? Just as I was gathering my things together... ¨Hola Pablo!!¨ The camino, as is the world, is small my friends; and it gives you what it gives you.

Until tomorrow...