Pinch us, is this real?

The sunrise wakes us.  We eat yogurt and pears, bid goodbye to our friends and set out for a 20K day in Cantabria.  The air is cool and fresh, pungent with pine and echalyptus.  Occasionally we encounter the bell symphony that is a livestock farm in the hill country.  The far off sounds of the A8 highway (think I-94) sometimes push through the calling birds.  The only real disturbance is the occasional local bus that pushes past (the Spainards utilize the bus-and walking or biking-much more frequently than we do back in the States).  Our legs loosen (not a quick process for me-think Tin Man in the Wizard) and we set ourselves on the days first goal: expresso in Liendo, 8K down the Way.
We are so early and the Spanish seem to be so nocturnal that when we arrive in Liendo at 8:00 or so, none of the bars (there are no breakfast joints and few restaurants here--food is served in taverns that sometimes have spaces like restaurant spaces) are open yet it seems.  We have to push nearly 1K through town, asking of several startled older gentlemen who thought walking their dog this early was challenge enough, nevermind inquiring Norteamericanos smelly from an hour and a half of left right left right.  Finally our morning coffee is to hand and we are lucky not to have to share the space with civilians as our clothes are already giving off that exercise aroma.
The day is hot as we pace on.  Nicodemus returns to our minds interspersed with talk of wives and children we are missing more and more each day.  We see no other pilgrims as the day wears on and our path turns sharply toward the coastal fishing and resort towns.  We begin to talk of knees, feet, and toes as this days walking surface is pavement and our feet begin to take on that pounded and tenderized glow.  We ache and trudge on in awe of the european super stars who routinely push on to 30K a day.  
We come out of the hills into the large resort town of Laredo (yes, we sing a bit of Marty Robbins) and walk its 3K of beach front.  The giant concrete walkway is lined with tall apartment buildings and resorts to landward and showers and paths through the sand dunes on the seaward side.  It could be Florida.  Yet it is both very early in the 'season' and the economy has collapsed in Spain to the south.  There are For Rent signs everywhere.  We walk to were the beach meets the river and wait in the sand for a ferry to take us across.  The ferry drives right to the sand, lowers a ramp and we board for the five minute ride across to the tuna canning capital of Spain.  As we ride we nearly break into tired and hysterical laughter.  We are like boys on a great adventure--we are on a 10 passenger ferry boat, riding under a Spanish sun, on Spanish waters on a 40 day journey to Santiago.  As the not so eloquent, but oh so expressive Wavey Gravey said on the Woodstock album (just before the Santana cut I think), "Pinch me man.  Is this for real? real

The rest of the day merely. Repeated the show, beach, mountain, beach, until we reached Nojq. We had be told we would find an albergue here. We did not, so we found the cheapest bed and breakfast we could find, showered, found wine and dinner (yeah like finding wine in Spain is hard) and returned to lay aching feet to rest. Pinch me is this real? My prayer partners were Sue A and anonymous. Our guide books tell us we have come near 258K from Irun our starting point and we have 610K yet to travel. We need stronger feet and continued courage.