Camino Pilgrim

The easiest way to travel the Camino is to follow the guidebook. This way you get to stay in locations with the biggest choice of accommodations around. The situation becomes a lot trickier if you are walking smaller or bigger distances.

Available information sources

Typically if you have a guidebook then the general information on restaurant and albergue options are more or less up to date. Phone contact numbers rarely change. Prices do, but not that much even during difficult times. As a result of Covid restrictions and temporarily less pilgrims for two years, many of the albergues on the less popular locations have closed their business for good. That is where sticking to old guidebooks might get you in trouble.

Using applications gives you a lot more up to date information. You can even see pictures of how life in the albergue would look like to help you choose between the cheaper options for example. Still there are a lot of albergues and its hard to keep everything always up to date.

Third option is to use websites for accommodation options such as https://www.gronze.com/, which is well updated. They seem to have an app version now also. Here the prices and information is really accurate. I do not always agree with the rating to albergues that people leave, but I guess its because negative experiences are rated much more often than good ones.

Costs

Albergues that are more than 100km away from Santiago are usually priced around 12 Euros. This is insanely cheap compared to private accommodation options that are at least twice if not four times more expensive. Hotels of course are even more expensive than hostels.

Great resource for alternative accommodation options is https://www.booking.com/. Most locations in Spain are marked there. It is the best option if you want to book something ahead.

Bedbugs

Apparently bedbugs is a thing on the Camino. Pilgrims carry them from one location to another with their backpacks. I personally have never had an issue with bedbugs, but I have heard stories from other pilgrims.

The most important detail inside the albergue are the beds itself. Bedbugs love to live in the cracks of wooden beds. That is why majority of the albergues have bunkbeds with metal frames around half a meter from the ground. The mattresses are covered in linoleum like a wrestling mat. Thankfully all the albergues offer paper covers as a bedsheet (sometimes you will need to pay 2 Euros to get them).

Pilgrim dinners

This is a great tradition on the Camino. Having pilgrims come together and share their stories over dinner bring the experience closer together. Pretty much all main stops have at least one albergue where they have dinner available for an extra fee.

Alternatively there are restaurants you can go to. Since in Spain the cook is having a siesta break then the first possible evening dinner time for pilgrims is kind of fixed. Especially in smaller villages. This will bring hikers naturally together.

The final option is to talk to pilgrims in your albergue about going to the grocery store and buying ingredients to cook dinner together in the kitchen. Not all albergues will have a kitchen for you to cook in so make your research beforehand.