Cheap Travels

San Sebastián to Zarautz

Distance Covered: 13.8 miles / 22.2km

After a long first day of hiking from the French border, it was time to leave San Sebastián to walk to Zarautz, the town where I taught English (ESL) from 2015-2017.

I got in touch with a friend who I had met while volunteering at a hostel in San Sebastián, and he happened to be staying in Zarautz with a buddy of his. My friend said I could crash with them, so I at least had a place to stay that second night.

Being back in the Basque Country truly felt like a bit of a reunion as I bumped into old friends, past students, and ex-coworkers, many of whom seemed to be returning for the summer after years in other cities around the world.

If you’re starting on this page and want to learn more about this hike, check out my post on the Camino basics. To see all the posts related to my Camino hike, take a look at the Camino del Norte / Camino Primitivo page that lists all of the related posts from start to finish.

Note on places to stay on the Camino

There are albergues in both San Sebastián and Zarautz, I just chose to stay with friends when starting out. It’s important to note that you cannot stay in an albergue for more than one night unless you are seriously injured, or can convince the staff there that you have a good reason to.

For those of you curious about the albergue system, I have included a link here with a list of every albergue along the Camino del Norte route.

If you’re flying in from far abroad, consider booking a few nights somewhere in San Sebastián, or Bilbao, or wherever you’re setting out from. It took me several days to truly get adjusted to the local time zone, and in hindsight, I would have been much better off just relaxing the first few days and not fighting the time change. So just keep this in mind, and if you have the flexibility to, plan in a few extra days at the beginning of your trip to adjust to the local time, explore a bit, and collect any last-minute gear you might need for your trek.

If you’re hiking during the summer months, especially August, it’s important to arrive as early as you can to your accommodations because the public albergues accept guests on a first-come, first-serve basis. There were several nights on my hike where I was turned away from public albergues and had to find a private one. It isn’t a huge deal, since there are almost always other places to stay in towns. You will, however, pay on average two or three euros more for a bunk in a privately run albergue compared to the municipal ones.

If this seems like it might cause you some anxiety, the private albergues along the Camino routes accept reservations ahead of time. They also allow for pilgrims to use a service to send their bags ahead so they can walk without the weight on their shoulders.

Many public albergues are also run by volunteers, so they only show up for an hour or two each day to check people in and do a little quick cleaning. The public albergues will all usually be full by around 5 or 6 PM, so keep that in mind.

TL;DR:

• Take a few days at the start to adjust to the time zone and the local language, if your schedule permits.
• Wake up early to make sure you can secure a bed at an albergue público, or expect to pay slightly more at a private one where they take reservations.

Starting the hike from San Sebastián to Zarautz

It had only been a few days since I arrived in Spain, and my internal clock was still very much set to my American time zone.

Battling the time shift, and tired from the long hike the day before, I slept in later than I should have and got a late start on the trek towards Zarautz. While I had done some hikes in the space between these two cities, I had never actually walked the entire connecting route.

As I set out to walk in the high noon sun, I very quickly learned why people wake up so early to cover ground before the sun gets really strong. Another thing that I had forgotten about was how late the sun stays up during summertime in Spain.

Spain has been in the “wrong” time zone since WWII, and in the summer months it is particularly noticeable. In June and July, it’s typical for the sun to set around 10:00PM, and as late as 11:00PM on the far western side of the country. This late daylight means that it’s possible to comfortably hike late into the evening, but just make sure that you secure a place to stay ahead of time if you want to hike into the evening.

I followed the shell signs through the city, a mix of steel symbols set into the sidewalk, tiled signs plastered onto buildings, and bright yellow, spray-painted arrows. Through the city things were pretty clearly marked, and after a few weeks my eyes grew keenly aware of even the slightest hint of yellow on any and all surfaces.

As I made my way out of town, I started meeting more pilgrims on the trail. Many of them were from other regions of Spain, or other parts of Europe, but I met very few Americans in the early weeks of this hike. Understandably so, since the hike from all the way from France can take anywhere from 30 to 40 days to complete if you factor in rest days.

Trying to cover a lot of ground before the sun rose too high, and the day grew unbearably hot, I didn’t take a ton of photos as I walked out from San Sebastián. The outskirts of most cities can make for some monotonous hiking, and I was still getting used to my pack weight with all of my gear, plus water and snacks.

If I were to do it all over again, I’d honestly pare my gear down even further. One of the best parts about the Camino is that you can get away with carrying very little and still have a great experience. I ended up ultimately leaving some unnecessary gear with a friend in Bilbao, but we’ll get to that a little later on.

In the above picture, you can see some typical Basque architecture on the way out of San Sebastián. The architecture changes significantly as you go from region to region, and what you see here is a style typical of Basque farmhouses. Exposed stones on the corners and foundation, and plaster covering the stone walls in between.

The further you get from the city center, the more quaint farmhouses you begin to come across. Once you get out into the rural parts of town, the trail becomes more rugged, changing from pavement to grass and stone.

There are fewer trail markings out between cities, but it’s hard to get lost as there is often only one obvious route to take. Hard, but not impossible; if you consider yourself directionally challenged, consider downloading one of the many Camino Map apps available.

As you get further away from the cities, you’ll be seeing more farm animals and gardens, and even some stretches of coastal forest. In some spots, the trail can even get pretty overgrown, as seen in the photo below.

After a few hours of walking, I stopped in a shaded spot to eat the last of my leftover meal from the day before, a sandwich from my favorite restaurant in San Sebastián. The midday sun was wearing me down, and I was glad to sit for a minute under a tree and rest.

I chatted with a guy from the Netherlands as I ate, who told me he had been walking for a few weeks already through France. He told me he was excited to be in Spain, since there is a much more extensive system of albergues to sleep in. He had been wild-camping through much of France and was glad to be able to shower each night. I’m sure everyone around him was thankful, too.

Between San Sebastián and Zarautz you’ll see some of the first vineyards along the hike, which are plentiful in this area and produce the renowned Txakoli wine variety.

These roads are beautiful to walk down, but you have to keep an eye out for stray cattle and farmers driving their tractors down these paths. More than a few times I had to jump off trail to avoid tractors, trucks or a herd of cows on my way to Santiago.

After a long, hot afternoon of walking, I finally caught my first glimpses of the town of Zarautz. It was exciting to see Zarautz again after all of these years, and to see it alive with tourists as the summer traffic was starting to pick up.

In the center right side of the above picture, you can see the “Ratón de Getaria”, the shadowy rock formation in the shape of a mouse.

After talking with my friend and catching up a bit, I decided to stay in Zarautz an extra day to let my legs rest a bit and to take some pictures. The following day there was a big triathlon coming through the town, and it ended with an open-water swim from Getaria to Zarautz. In my years working here I had never heard of anyone swimming this stretch and I thought it would be cool to see.

I walked down to the beach at low tide, and put my feet in the cold ocean water. The cold salt water felt amazing after a long, hot day hiking up and down steep hills. There were people laying out on the beach, surfing and generally just enjoying the summer weather.

Not pictured here is the boardwalk just out of sight, where dozens of bars have chairs and tables set up on their patios. After seeing this place for so many years in fall and winter, it was exciting to be around to experience the summer atmosphere.

My friend’s apartment had two large windows overlooking the beach which was amazing, and made for a cool vantage point to take photos from.

Rest day in Zarautz

These photos are from the end of the race the next day, where people frantically tried to make it out of the water to finish the triathlon.

In the pictures below, you can see race security riding on jet-skis, surfboards, and boats to try to corral the racers. Honestly, I was a little surprised to see people swimming that whole stretch, as up until then I had never seen anyone swim it. My memories of the beach here are mainly from winter, when the waves are powerful enough to keep people from trying.

Overall, it was really cool to watch the racers swim the final kilometers, and there was an excited energy to the town that day.

The iconic changing tents, or “toldos”, on the beach for swimmers. These white striped tents show up on the beach every spring and are an integral part of the beach culture in Zarautz.

During the rest of the day, I hiked around a bit, checked out the renovated building that used to be walled off until they fixed it up, and visited some cafés where I used to teach private classes. The coffee was still good, as were the pastries.

When I lived in the Basque Country, this whole building was walled off and covered in graffiti, deemed unsafe to walk on. I would occasionally walk up here when I had a break between classes, but there was a 10-foot (3 meter) tall brick wall blocking the stairs. I was excited to finally climb up it and met some guys up there testing out their new drone.

Because they looked so young, I mistook them for high schoolers, which they were not thrilled by… I guess that’s how you know you’re getting old.

I remembered that early phase of being very nervous about crashing a new, expensive drone, and I gave them a few pointers. Then, I sent mine flying off in sport mode and grinned from ear to ear as their eyes grew wide with horror, wondering if they’d ever seen it again.

After taking some photos from the top of the hill just outside of Zarautz, I made my way back into town to wander a bit and to enjoy some more coastal swimming before the hike took me inland.

My friend and I got a drink in one of the many terrace bars in town and talked about what we had been up to since 2017, when we last worked and lived together.

Only two days into my hike, I was starting to notice the differences in how hungry I was each day. Averaging somewhere between 10-15 miles (16-24 km) each day of walking, with several hundred feet of elevation change, I was in the early stages of “hiker hunger”, the insatiable feeling of always feeling like you should probably be eating more.

After eating an obscene amount of food that my friend’s roommate had cooked, I turned in for the night, hoping to get an early start the next day.

Final thoughts

It was nice to take the extra day to rest up a bit, catch up with a friend and revisit some of my old stomping grounds. I eventually came back at the end of my trip to get coffees with a few past students and coworkers once I knew that I had enough time to complete the hike.

Something that I cannot recommend enough is factoring in extra days to allow flexibility in your Camino. I felt very lucky to have peace of mind knowing that I would not seriously alter my plans by taking one extra day to hang out in Zarautz.

Plus, I got to rest up a bit before starting a big day hiking along the cliffs in Zumaia (which you might recognize from the Game of Thrones series) on the way to Deba.

Drop a comment down below if I left anything out, and if you want to be notified when the next article comes out, feel free to subscribe below. As always, ¡Buen Camino!

Subscribe

Enter your email below to receive updates on the latest posts!