introduction and How many people have completed the camino in 2003

[Maura Santangelo]

Kay,

I had the exact opposite experience in May/June 2003. We traveled from
May 5 through June12, refugios were very crowded from Roncesvalles on,
starting with Zubiri, where we stayed at our first hotel of the trip.
In Azofra they did not have enough mattresses, we gave up ours after
another couple insisted that it was theirs (they had paid for
it!!!??!!), luckily my husband had a thermarest and I was given one by
another pilgrim.  But we had the advantage of sleeping under the church
portico on a beautiful moonlit night. I would rate it our best
accomodations for atmosphere.  We stayed in hotels after Burgos about
50% of the time and most of the time in the last third of the trip.
Most refugios were full by noon, as people would sit in line until it
opened at 2 or 3.  In Castrojeriz we even had trouble getting a hotel
room.  In S Juan de Ortega we arrived by 2 pm, all the beds were full
and we could not find out until 7 (after the garlic soup) whether we
would have even a mattress or a spot on the floor, the priest's sister
was not very helpful.  she seemed to think that pilgrims should expect
this sort of treatment, that as pilgrims we should have no
expectations, and we should be grateful for anything that came our way.
  The day was beautiful, and we rested outdoors under the trees on the
grass and there was a bar.  In one other place the outflow was also
full, so we asked at the bar, where they called a Casa Rural.  the
owner came to pick us up in his pick up truck, and brought us back the
next morning.  It was by far one of the most pleasant experiences of
the trip.  The casa rural was a converted mill, still working but they
used the wheel to generate their own electricity.  We had one of the
best meals on the camino.  In one other refugio, the one with the 3
tier bunks, some English speaking non American pilgrims actually
removed some things off the bottom bunks becasue they did not want to
stay in the top ones, leaving 4 irish pilgrims to fend for themselves.
If we wanted to stay exclusively in a refugio we had the choice of
getting up earlier like some of the alarm toting pilgrims and leave in
the dark to rush to the next place, or doing it all on our own time.
We chose to do the walk rather than worry about getting to the next
place.  I can tell you that we were not the only ones stuck at the end
of the day.  The newspapers in Galicia had articles about how crowded
the camino was this year reaching numbers higher that during the holy
year.  Also learned from those articles that the mayor of the towns of
the camino have an obligation to open schools or sport centers to house
pilgrims if necessary.  But it sounds like the crowds abated.  I was
curious about numbers as it seemed that May June were particularly
crowded.

I would repeat the camino in spite of all this, it added to the
experience in some valuable ways.

Maura
http://www.fieldofstars.com
PS Met some wonderful Kiwis on the camino, with whom we are still in
touch

On Tuesday, December 9, 2003, at 04:27 AM, Kay Young wrote:

> Hi Maura
> My husband Graham and I walked from SJPP on August 17 arriving in
> Santiago
> on September 19. My previous camino had been in September/October
> 2001. I
> had expected the refugios to be very crowded at such a peak time and we
> carried thermarests. The first weeks were fairly crowded but we only
>  had to use them once in Najera when we slept on the sports hall floor.
> We hit the meseta in the first days of September and were very
> surprised at
> how uncrowded this stretch seemed. The last week through Galicia
> certainly
> were more crowded with the smaller refugios filling up within an hour
> of
> opening. We were very pleased that we had left enough time in the last
> week
> so as to be able to shorten our daily walks and in this way always
> managed
> to get a bed.
>
> Kay Young
> NZ
>