Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela

[ivar]

I just saw a report on TVE24 (Spanish news) about the bed bug problem on the Camino de Santiago. There was a representative for a Spanish pilgrim association (don't remember his name or more details... it went fast), and he was pulling for closing the albergues on the "Camino de Santiago" (Ivar:my guess camino frances) to close down at the same time so they could disinfect and get rid of the bed bugs once and for all.

The reporter then mentions that if they closed for 15 days that would probably be enough.... and that it would have to be in the "low, not-so-busy-season", some time this winter I would guess, so that it would affect as few pilgrims as possible.

It sounded like this was just a suggestion, and that they had not decided on anything, but I found it interesting since the Camino is not often mentioned on national news.

Maybe in a few hours the story will be available on http://www.rtve.es where they have tons of news video clips available.

Anyway, just thought I would pass this one...

Saludos,
Ivar

[WolverineDG]

Ivar, if they decide to do this & announce the days that the albergues will close, perhaps you should make this a "sticky" or place it on the homepage. That way, those who will be walking the Camino at that time will be able to see it & know that they'll have to budget extra for hostals or hotels instead of albergues.

I would suspect that if they were going to do this, they'd do it in around Christmas & New Years.

Kelly

[ivar]

Maybe closing down and fumigating is the only solution to this?

Read this post today:
BED BUGS IN GRANON AND SAN JUAN DE ORTEGA!!!
el-camino-frances/topic4317.html#p25745

Saludos,
Ivar

[Peter Robins]

more on this in El Mundo http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2008/08/2 ... 28276.html
It's the Spanish Federacion that's calling for the albergues to be cleaned all at the same time.
I've not seen mention of any response from the authorities!

[Jochen Schmidtke]

If you close all albergues for a certain period at the same time the pilgrims would shift to the Hotels and hostales. Somewhere the have to sleep at last. And they will bring the chinces with their backpacks into these places and infect these. After the reopening of the albergues they will infect the albergues again.
Buen Camino
Jochen

[ivar]

I guess we would have to hope that the hotels are prepared to keep themselves bed-bug-clean during these 15 days. I hope they are also involved/educated in this "project" that they are thinking of doing.

Saludos,
Ivar

[Javier Martin]

I guess we would have to hope that the hotels are prepared to keep themselves bed-bug-clean during these 15 days. (Ivar)

May be, Ivar, but don't forget that most of these hotels are small, run by a family, who will continue cleaning rooms, laundry, baths, etc, in the same way than ever. Possibly they don't know about bugs, and if you ask them to do their best changing their way to work during these two weeks they will say, "we ALWAYS do our best".

Big hotels as the Alfonso IX in Sarria possibly will be able to do that, but not the most.

Buen Camino,

Javier Martin
Madrid, Spain.

[Rebekah Scott]

Having attended meetings of the Confederation of Amigos hospitaleros (which remind me more of World Wrestling Federation Cage Matches than anything else) I wait in wide-eyed wonder to see how anyone hopes to convince all these EXTREMELY opinionated people to do ANYTHING in a coordinated manner. Good luck and God bless!

(I know it sounds harsh, but I speak from experience.)

[Javier Martin]

(I know it sounds harsh, but I speak from experience.)

I'm afraid it sounds real, what can I say

Buen Camino,

Javier Martin
Madrid, Spain.