Post by Wynette: We walked with Kate (I think really Katya or close to that) for a while a few days ago. She is from Poland but has lived in London the last 20 years. She is walking the Camino a week or two at a time, anytime she gets some time off of work. We met the morning after we all stayed in Luarca. We asked her where she stayed there. She laughed and said she would show us a picture. It was of her sleeping bag in a store doorway. It was in a covered alcove so she was protected from the big rain that night. She explained that she doesn’t like to stay in albergues because she’s terrified of getting bedbugs. She said she’d gotten them once and it was painful both having the bites and also having to take all the steps to make sure not to bring them home. I think she occasionally stays in hotels but mostly camps out.
We’ve been lucky not to encounter any bedbugs on any of our Caminos, considering we are in a different place almost every night. I don’t think bedbugs were a big problem on the Camino Frances or Portugués when we did those. I don’t think they are a problem on the Norte now, especially this time of year when there are few pilgrims. But we’ve heard there are now more problems on the Camino Frances. We haven’t stayed in any albergues on the Norte. Mostly pretty nice hotels and such. The day we met Kate we had planned to stay in a certain hotel that night, but when we started seeing that hotel advertising heavily to pilgrims on the trail (the first such advertising we’d seen on this trip) it kind of freaked us out, having so recently heard the bedbug story, and we ended up staying another place.
Hotel people always make us feel welcome, but I wonder if they wonder if we are bringing them bedbugs.