Learn Spanish (Spain): Caminamos desde la playa hasta el pueblo. - We walked from the beach to the village.

You are right! For regular -ar verbs, the "we" form is exactly the same in both the present tense and the simple past tense. You usually have to rely on context to know if it means "we walk" or "we walked". Here, the context implies the journey is already finished.

Why use desde and hasta for "from" and "to"? Couldn't I just say de la playa al pueblo?

You absolutely could. Both ways are correct, but using the pair desde and hasta adds a bit more emphasis to the exact starting and ending points of the journey. It makes the distance feel a bit more significant.

Wait, shouldn't hasta el combine into one word like del or al?

No, hasta el never combines. In Spanish, only a + el becomes al and de + el becomes del. Any other preposition, like hasta or desde, stays as a separate word next to el.

Can hasta be used for time as well as physical distance?

Yes! In this sentence, hasta shows a physical limit (meaning "as far as" or "to" the village), but it is also very commonly used for time limits, meaning "until". For example, you probably already know phrases like hasta mañana (until tomorrow).