We chose to come in early March for two reasons:
(1) To beat the rush. We expect the Camino to get crowded with pilgrims, perhaps as early as April. This is because of the pent-up demand of people not being able to come because of covid the past two years. Also this is a holy year on the Camino. The definition of a holy year is a year that St. James’ (Santiago’s) birthday falls on a Sunday. Actually, last year was the “real” holy year but, as Charlie says, it’s up to the pope to determine what is a holy year and he made this year a holy year since last year was pretty much a bust because of covid. The number of pilgrims goes way up in holy years. (Double or more.)
(2) The other reason we chose to go early was because we decided we’d like to get home before holy week, the week leading up to Easter. It’s even harder to find places to stay and eat that week. (We found that out the hard way in 2019.)
Now we are finding out the downside of coming so early.
(1) It’s been quite cold. Every morning we wake up to freezing temperatures. Actually it was something like 34 this morning, the warmest morning we’ve had. But it was also the grayest/drizzliest day. Even in the afternoon, it’s so cold and breezy in the shady tunnel-like streets of the little towns that we have very little inclination to stroll around and explore.
(2) We’re meeting very few other pilgrims. There’s been only one that we actually had a (brief) conversation with so far. He was from France. We met some bicyclists this afternoon but we were all freezing and rushing to get indoors and out of the drizzle and wind. Most of the places we’ve stayed had few other guests and as far as we could tell, no other pilgrims.
(3) Because of the scarcity of pilgrims, many place aren’t even open. We’ve been amazed to call for a reservation to places that looked like a wonderful place to stay to find they are closed. We are starting to dread hearing the word “cerrado” (closed) as much as we used to dread hearing the word “completo” (full). It’s not just the hotels that are closed but many bars and restaurants.