I travelled pretty frequently prior to COV. I have lived in France, Ireland, the US and Canada…. 25 cities, 3 provinces in Canada, and 2 US states.
3 caminos… and I would generally find myself some distant place for work 3-5 times a year — nothing like some friends who seemed to have to fly weekly to a client’s head office elsewhere… and nothing like my step-dad who said it was easier to say where he hadn’t been than where he had…
BUT — all of us learned that to travel well requires leaving your own ways at home. If you desire to travel, to be with the people in the world, in the place that they call home, with their food and their ways of organizing daily life…. Then you get ready to “get with the programme”.
I do not know what the albergues will require as far as masking goes — it could change over the course of April, May and June when I and Dear Spouse will be taking our successive walks.
I will take my favourite N95 masks (favourite because they have a foam strip at the nose that prevents glasses being fogged up). Those are for stores and transit. I will take lighter weight KF94’s for sleeping.
I have been treated with nothing but hospitality and kindness by the people of Spain and Portugal. The
only negatives I have experienced or witnessed on camino have been at the hands of other pilgrims (a violent man with a pill dependency; a rumour mongering retired couple)…
Why on earth would I ever travel on a
pilgrimage route that is sacred and think that I come before the locals?
A mask, where required — even as
@jeanineonthecamino says above — is such a minor issue to be able to have the opportunity to find one’s way to Santiago.