[Gocamino] Santiago news and bedbugs.

[blaroli@aol.com]

Hello you all, 
Today's "Correo" reports the creation of a new web source to provide information about different stages of the camino to those pilgrims who may request it.  The site is:   www.peregrinoalerta.jeyl.es  the report s that pilgrims with inquiries may then proceed to number 5295 (!).
Santiago's councilman Xose Maria Iglesias has informed that the Monte del Gozo albergue will add facilities for horses. Mr. Iglesias said that in the last two Holy years, 1999 and 2004, about one thousand five hundred pilgrims went to Santiago on horseback, and that the need for clean facilities for the horses, under the supervision of a veterinarian, has made itself evident.
The Association of Hotels and hostals in Santiago has denounced the existence of about 40 unlicensed and unsupervised facilities that offer rooms to pilgrims for 15 or 20 Euros a night.  These facilities are in the Casco.  Reportedly, a seemingly respectable and innocuous person approaches pilgrims at Quintana or Obradoiro offering inexpensive rooms. An undisclosed reporter followed one of the offerors to a building where she was offered a small room, with rather tattered furnishings and a shared bathroom and toilet, for 20 Euros a night.  While the room appeared clean, the Hotels' Association claims that these facilities use the same, used,  bed linen for several days, a condition which goes undetected because these "illegal" facilities do not have to pass any licensing inspections and such.
 
Of late there have been a spate of messages referring to "bedbugs" in the Camino.     Well..... in tomorrow's New York Times   (we get the special Sunday sections on Saturday) in the Real Estate Section, the front page is Headlined  "BEDBUGS" in two-inch bold lettering.  Since the middle of the summer there have been a great deal of complaints about  bedbugs infestations in the city. The complaints were started by tourists who were paying up to 500 Dlls. a night in first class hotels and who were attacked by the critters.  With characteristic xenophobia the first  inclination was to blame those tourist who might have brought the bedbugs from Europe, South America, or whatever.  The newspaper reports, however, that the infestation is just as noticeable in ghetto areas of the city, which are highly unlikely to have been visited by tourists.
For months, tenants have refused to pay their high rents and some have even sued their landlords. Apparently the only effective means of combating the bugs is by bug-bombing and sealing off the room or rooms for a few days.  In letters to the editor, and such, some sufferers have suggested that getting rid of all the bedding and dousing the bed frame and nearby furniture and walls with rubbing alcohol seems to help.
The bugs' bites produce a rush that metamorphoses into liquid-filled welts which are terribly itch.  (I haven't gotten bitten, fortunately, but several friends of mine have).
Might these bugs be the Weapons of Mass Destruction that we have all been fearing?
 
Big hug!
 
Rosina
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