First day of rain.:-(

I was hoping to avoid it, but the rain eventually caught up with me.
However, by chance I stumbled across an awesome albergue in Guemes run
by a priest named Ernesto. It's a huge place on a hill and they only
take donations. I was given a clean place to stay with wonderful meals
and plenty of wine.

Ernesto has traveled to 75 countries around the world and and has a
huge library of information and photos.

In the Basque region I had a great map from the tourist office, but
once I got to the next region, Cantabria, nobody had a good map to
follow and the signs became sparce or non-existant. Fortunately I was
able to dazzle the locals with my ten word vocabulary of Spanish
(English is not common at all) to get around and find the right path.

I decided to take the train from Deba to Bilbao and then the bus from
Bilbao to Castro Urdiales because the path was either not interesting
and/or went through cities.

When I finally reached Ernesto's albergue I was so exhausted I crashed
for a few hours. Then I woke up, stepped out of my room to the
veranda, and saw the French couple I met in San Sebastian. It was a
great surprise and we caught up on stories, but I had to tell them I
cheated a bit to get there. Then later that evening, while we were
having dinner, in came Inga all dazzed and tired. I yelled out,
"Inga!" and we caught up over dinner.

Ernesto said that the Camino in this region is confusing because there
are numerous paths and each book tells of a different one. Once you
loose a path, then you could easily stay lost.

The next two regions are Asturias and Galizia, hopefully I'll
findbetter maps there. Otherwise, I'll just keep meeting more people
to ask:-)

Steve