Follow Your Arrow

How did they do this? San Juan de la Peña – a monastery built into the steep cliffs of the mountains to honour St John the Baptist – is an architectural wonder. The monasteries (there are two of them) are located in northeast Spain, a 35 minute drive on windy roads from Jaca or a 6 1/2 hour walk. I got there yesterday by taking the “workers bus” at 9:15 a.m. from the Jaca bus station, a tip I learned from other Pilgrims. Returning to Jaca requires patience, planning or good luck. You can wait for the “workers bus” to return to Jaca at 7 PM or you can arrange for a taxi to fetch you from Jaca at the cost of €40, or if you’re lucky, like I was, one might catch a ride with someone. Through the Tourist Office the day before, I had arranged for a taxi to pick me up in the early afternoon at the monastery. But in my rush to leave the albergue in the morning, I left the taxi driver’s number behind. Thankfully, my good fortune connected me with a a friendly Kiwi couple, whom I met at the monastery; they happened to be staying in Jaca and offered me a lift back to Jaca in their rented car. The Camino provides.

The two monasteries at San Juan de la Peña – include the “Old” one first constructed into the cliffs in the 10th century and the “New” one built in 1705. From the 10th century onwards various improvements were made to the Old monastery; the cloister was built by the Benedictine monks in 1109. Later in the Middle Ages, the Aragon royalty, thinking the old monastery was pretty cool, decided this would be an ideal place to bury their kings. And so they did. The New monastery was built – about 1.5 kilometers up the hill from the old monastery – after a fire destroyed sections of the Old Monastery.

I was happy to have seen these monasteries, especially the Old one. The New monastery offers a lot of history about the Church and the monarchs who ruled Spain over the years, and a bit about the Camino Aragones. But one needs to be able to read Spanish because there are no translations into other languages. My Spanish is not that good so a lot of this information was lost on me. 

I had an hour to spend before catching the public bus from Jaca back to Canfranc Pueblo. It was lunch time so I found a little bar on Calle Mayor and enjoyed a beer and a couple tapas: marinated squid and a “cheese ball”.