
I am a sucker of tours – anything related about culture and heritage. I am such a sucker that I was able to build a business out of it by selling tours myself. Now that I am making a bit of money out of it, I have become more curious how are the tours around the world are done. Let me cite an example – a pilgrimage tour.
Locally I can only think of the Visita Iglesia – visiting churches on Maundy Thursday and Holy Friday for just a daytime duration. I did organized visitas to iglesias en Cavite, Batangas, Bataan y Pampanga recientemente so I can relate a bit to this.
Pero en otras partes del mundo, puedes un mes o mas. Un ejemplo es Way of St. James o El Camino de Santiago en Español, a revered site visited by millions of peregrinos or pilgrims to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northwest of Spain where tradition has it that the remains of Saint James (one of Twelve Apostles of Jesus) carried by boat from Jerusalem is buried. This route can be traced to Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Italy and finally to Spain even declared as the first European Cultural Route and was also named one of UNESCO’s World Heritage sites.