Day 12 is Viana to Navarette. We are settled at an albergue in Navarette after the longest walk ever for us. 24.7 km (15 1/4 miles). We crossed over the boundary from the region of Navarre to La Rioja. Basque Country lies not far to the north. We have noticed a difference in spoken language in the last couple of villages. Less Basque and more Spanish. Sounds now like what we’ve been taught in our Spanish classes; Rosetta Stone and Babel.
Viana was a Wamego sized village with lots of shops, bars, fruit and food markets. The larger grocery stores are called supermercados. I guess Spanish doesn’t have a word for super. The reason I’m talking about Viana here is because the power kept going out like every five minutes or so. After an hour of this the wi-fi decided to not power back on nor did the wall outlets. So we couldn’t charge our iPhones or connect to wi-fi and we had no cell signal inside that building. Cell was weak all over Viana. Therefore no update to the website or photo uploads for El Olivio in Sansol to Viana. Back to Day 12.
Leaving Viana it lightly sprinkled all morning. We installed the rain jackets over our backpacks. We decided to press on to Logroño and decide there if we should go on to Navarette. The trail was through gentle terrain on good paths so walking was as easy as it gets for an old geezer and his Senora. The scenery was mostly unremarkable yet pleasant. My favorite pastime that morning was forced on me by Nancy who said I should try to come up with a better name than ‘sons of bitches’ for bicyclers on the path. These guys worked hard going uphill but on the downhill could reach speeds of 30 or more MPH. If you were walking downhill you couldn’t hear them coming behind you. Then Whoosh! Sometimes multiple whooshes. There’s always one lagging behind. Just when you think it’s safe to sidestep a puddle then Whoosh! Thus my name for them and for the life of me I can’t find a better name to appease Nancy.
At a cafe in Logroño we had tiny thick coffees and massive grilled cheese and ham sandwiches. They had difficult Spanish names but they were ham and cheese. If I had looked up the Spanish name on Google Translate it probably would have told me ham and cheese sandwiches. Very large. Grilled.
We decided to press on to Navarette because this city of 150,000 was urban noisy and rain was dissipating. It was a good choice. The Way was gentle, wide and smooth; maybe asphalt. Benches were placed at 100 meter intervals, between towering pillar-like Italian Cypress, for at least 3 kilometers. After that we were solidly back in the country but the roads stayed gentle. We could see Navarette long before we got there and our feet were hot from so many miles. 
We wanted to get there so we could cool off, dry out, and relax, but sometimes it seemed to be getting further away. But we did get there finally and entry and navigation through town was the usual maze of steep uphill cobblestone roads designed to turn visitors into meek quivering masses begging for relief at the first hospitalario (albergue). The Senora there delighted us with a third floor private room with good ventilation and a FAN. We had good internet connection there but were too tired to update photos or post anything.