[Gocamino] Chinches Otra Vez

[Pat Rush]

Perhaps the Camino needs to import some bedbug-sniffing dogs from New York!
There are, apparently, exterminators who have trained dogs to sniff the
critters out;  these dogs are in high demand at some of New York's finest
hostelrys.

Ultreya,

Patricia from upstate New York
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Grant Spangler" <gaspangler at hotmail.com>
To: <saintjames at yahoogroups.com>; <GoCamino at oakapple.net>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 10:45 AM
Subject: [Gocamino] Chinches Otra Vez


> Pilgrims to Santiago Battle Lice Hazard
>
> Giles Tremlett in Madrid
> Tuesday October 10, 2006
> The Guardian
>
> The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and
> clarifications column, Wednesday October 11 2006
>
> In the article below we identified the wrong culprit. The creatures
> concerned are bedbugs (clinches in Spanish, family Cimicidae) - not lice
> (piojos in Spanish, family Pediculidae).
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
>
> It has survived storms, famines and droughts over the past 12 centuries,
but
> now the Road to Santiago, one of the oldest pilgrimage routes in Europe,
is
> buckling under the weight of a new threat - the common louse.
>
> Convents and hostels along the route to the north-western Spanish city of
> Santiago de Compostela are closing their doors as the tiny beasts bury
> themselves deep inside mattresses, sheets and pillows. Carried by the
> 100,000 sweating and not always well-washed pilgrims who travel to the
> shrine of St James in the city's cathedral every year, the lice have found
a
> perfect environment in which to live and reproduce.
>
> "They say that many pilgrims are turning up with lice and that some are
> falling ill because they can cause very high temperatures," a spokeswoman
at
> the Federation of Friends of the Road to Santiago told Spain's ABC
> newspaper.
>
> The tiny creatures inhabit the seams of sleeping bags, rucksacks and
> clothes, and survive the journey from one warm, comfortable guesthouse to
> the next. Pilgrims complain that some hostels along the route will now
only
> give a bed to those who can prove their clothes are louse-free.
> The Convent of the Benedictine Mothers in León, northern Spain, is one of
> the latest to close its doors while it fumigates the premises. "But that
is
> no use unless everyone does it," said Fernando Imaz, of the friends'
> federation.
>
> Lice have reintroduced an element of genuine mortification into a once
> arduous pilgrimage that has increasingly become cosseted by modern
luxuries.
> Whereas pilgrims once carried little more than a staff, a cloak and a
gourd,
> today's pilgrims are equipped with navigation systems and water-resistant
> jackets.
>
> To gain admittance to the hostels along the road to Santiago de
Compostela,
> pilgrims must present a credential to prove that they are hiking or biking
> the road. Each day, as pilgrims pass through towns, they receive one,
> sometimes two, stamps in the credential. At the end of the journey in
> Santiago, pilgrims present the stamped credential to confirm that they
have
> hiked at least the last 100km (62miles), or cycled the last 200km of the
> road), and receive a Compostela, proof of having made the pilgrimage.
>
> Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1891571,00.html
>
> Buen Camino,
>
> Grant
>
> Grant Spangler
> GASpangler at hotmail.com
> http://groups.msn.com/ElCaminoSantiago
> http://community.webshots.com/user/ElCaminoSantiago
>
>
>


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