Next stop was Puente La Reina where they have a magnificent Roman bridge. The refugio was very nice with only about 6 beds/room which gave more privacy and made it quieter. Here we met Yves from France who was providing car support for his wife. Some people need a bit of help to walk the camino, or get sick, or lack the time to walk the whole thing. So some take the bus or train for a section (as we did) or have their packs ferried for them to their destination, or take a taxi. Unfortunately some people think this is cheating, or mistake some of these people for those who are looking for a cheap place to stay who drive to near a refugio, put on a pack and pretend they had been walking all day. Sometimes when you check in to a refugio they question you to try to determine if you are one of the 'cheaters', but Tim and I were usually so sweaty and smelly, I'm sure there was no doubt of our authenticity. ;^)

You can also bicycle the camino (but you have lower priority for a bed) and we saw a few people traveling by horse.

In Puente La Reina we met Jacques and Raymond from France who were also in our room, and I tried my best to introduce myself with my very poor high school french. (Tim thinks they were also in our room in Cizur but I hadn't noticed them.) There are a lot of people from France walking the camino, and many of them could only speak french (as I could pretty much only speak english), but I tried harder to rack my brain for french words and phrases as we met more french people we wanted to communicate with.