After a week walking among beech, oak and wheat fields, after having left the tower-house where Ignacio was born, in Loyola, at dusk you reach a small town, still in Navarra, which in Ignacio's time was known as La poblacion Marañón, for being at the foot of a mountain where the castle of Marañón stood. That it was an important route and crossroads is proclaimed by a building that was an old pilgrims' hospital and that still retains the Santiago signs: the pumpkin, the staff, the cane. When we get up at dawn the view is lost in the distance entangled in the heights of the Sierra de la Demanda and Soria mountains. Closer to our feet, cereal fields that in the troughs and valleys become small vineyards that descend the mountain: they are the fertile lands of Rioja. Meano, also known as La Aldea, is the last town in Navarra that we crossed before arriving, after walking along the first vineyards, to Kripán, the first town in Rioja Alavesa that we came across. We will cover a little more than twenty kilometers crossing lands and villages of Rioja Alavesa, accompanied on all the way by the vineyards of Kripan, Elvillar, Laguardia and Lapuebla de Labarca. The path is in clear descent, as we start at seven hundred meters of altitude and arrive at the Ebro riverbank, in Lapuebla, located at 429 meters of altitude.