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Welcome to the Members page of the American Pilgrims on the Camino web site! It is our intention to post here information related to the Camino that will be of interest specifically to members of American Pilgrims. In keeping with our mission to provide information to the public at-large, information that might be of interest to the general public will be posted in the public areas of the site, not here.
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Late-Breaking News and Topical Items: • 7/2/08: Simone Ortega, author of the classic, best-selling cookbook 1080 recetas de cocina, died today.This book, first published in 1972 and generally considered to be the Spanish equivalent of The Joy of Cooking in the United States, sold more than 2 million copies and has been translated into English in both British and American editions as 1080 Recipes. She has been described as having spent "an entire lifetime dedicated to advising and teaching consumers about good cooking and good cuisine, with special emphasis on the qualilty of national products." Read the full announcement in El País. (Spanish)
• 5/5/08: American Pilgrims on the Camino has settled on the place and dates for the 2009 Gathering of Pilgrims! Mark your calendars for the week of Tuesday, March 10 through Tuesday, March 17, 2009 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. An outline of the week is Check American Pilgrims' National Gatherings page for further details as they develop. • 3/14/08: If you walked the Camino last year, you were probably struck by the number of German peregrinos. German was almost as useful as Spanish as the lingua franca. (Now there's a mixed metaphor!) Perhaps you heard that the reason behind this phenomenon was the appearance of a book on the pilgrimage by one of Germany's most popular entertainers, comedian Hape Kerkeling. The book, "Ich bin dann mal Weg: Meine Reise auf dem Jakobsweg" ("I'm Off for a Bit, Then: My Journey on the the Camino de Santiago") was published in May 2006 and has become one of the best-selling non-fiction books in Germany since the Second World War. After discovering the existence of the Camino and in need of a spiritual timeout," the first book he read was ‘The Joyful Path of St. James,’ ” Mr. Kerkeling wrote in his first chapter. He found the whole idea preposterous. “Chocolate brings joy, to some extent,” he wrote, “and whiskey, in extreme situations.” He bought the book anyway, and read it in one sitting. The rest has unfolded on the Camino. Read the full story in the March 8, 2008 New York Times. • 3/11/08: The dollar continues its slide against the euro This is not exactly breaking news for anyone who has contemplated or who has actually carried U.S. dollars to Europe at any point during the past year but taking U.S. dollars to Europe is a painful experience to say the least. News can be read virtually every day in any newspaper or on any news web site. The current exchange rate is displayed below in the graphic. If you plan on renting a car at some point in your trip, remember that this will necessarily involve pumping gas into the tank also. The price of gas in the U.S. is trivial compared to prices in Europe! Click here for a chart of gas prices assembled by the U.S. Department of Energy. Updated weekly.
• 3/1/08: Spain suffering worst drought in over a decade Spain faces water restrictions widely this summer as it suffers its worst drought in more than a decade. In one of the worst affected areas, Catalunya, the Barcelona government is hoping to pre-empt a summer crisis by importing water by tanker. Read the BBC World News report. • 11/7/07: The Xunta de Galicia, the Galician provincial government, has announced that it has begun the process of privatizing the management of its network of 30 albergues on all routes of the Camino de Santiago in Galicia. According to the plan, the government will accept offers from interested companies until the 12th of November with the winning bid to be announced approximately four weeks later. The government is proposing to pay annually up to 2.4 million euros (approximately $3.5 million) to the company with the winning proposal. The new operator will assume control of the facilities on January 1st, 2008 and on that date the affected albergues will cease to operate on a donation basis but will then begin charging a flat fee of three euros. Albergues presently operated by local municipalities, those run privately and those outside Galicia are not involved in this plan. Perhaps most important to peregrinos, the new operator will be required by the contract to completely clean and disinfect the facilities every 24 hours seven days a week. Likewise strict attention will be paid to mattresses and pillows. The management company will be required to staff the albergues between 1 p.m. and 10 p.m. and attendants will be required to be on hand to stamp credentials and to offer advice and assistance to peregrinos. Read the full article here. (Spanish)• 10/17/07: Those of you who have read any comprehensive biography of John Adams will perhaps remember that, sailing to Paris in December 1779, the leaking ship carrying Adams and his party was forced to put in at Ferrol in Galicia from where they eventually made their way by land to Paris. And for those who knew this and then wondered if Adams knew of the pilgrimage to Santiago or wondered what he might have written about this journey, you few will be most interested to know that indeed he did know well of the Camino and that he "…always regretted that We could not find time to make a Pilgrimage to Saint Iago de Compostella." To read the gory details from Adams' autobiography you can connect to the Electronic Archive of the Adams Family Papers maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Start reading at the bottom of the page for the entry of 24 December 1779. On this page and the following six pages you will read Adams' description of traveling from Coruña through Lugo, O Cebreiro, Ponferrada, Astorga, León and Burgos from where they turned northward to Bilbao. His horrendous descriptions will give you some small sense of what the Camino was like at the end of the 18th century! If you'd like to read the entirety of Adams' Spanish experience, back up a few pages.
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The American Pilgrims on the Camino Newsletter: American Pilgrims on the Camino publishes its Newsletter four times a year and every issue is packed with useful and interesting material for both past and future peregrinos. And receiving a copy is a benefit of an American Pilgrims membership! As long as this page is public, there will be only this one sample edition of the Newsletter available for downloading. After it becomes password protected and for members only, we will always have available the latest edition as well as an archive of previous editions. The November 2007 American Pilgrim Newsletter has been distributed! Consider a membership in American Pilgrims!
If you would like to receive a complimentary back issue of our magazine, American Pilgrim, before joining, please submit a magazine request form.
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Actually for a while this page will be a construction site and will be accessible to all visitors, primarily to allow potential members to see what information will typically be found on this page. Gradually this page will be greatly expanded and eventually it will be accessible only to members of American Pilgrims on the Camino. Of course in keeping with our primary mission, information and resources of interest to the general public will remain in public areas of the site. 
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