About

Between 2011 and the beginning of 2020 I had done the traditional route of the Way, the French, three times, once from Roncesvalles and twice from St. Jean Pied de Port; the Aragonese access from Somport to Puente la Reina; the Portuguese Way from Lisbon; and parts of the Camino del Norte, connecting the second time with the Primitive route. In the latter case, I met an irreverent Mexican and a Polish woman who could curse fluently in five different languages, and from Oviedo we started with the same mission of reaching Santiago. In Tineo we had to hire a taxi to jump over some 117 kilometers buried under the snow of an out-of-season storm, but we promised to return to complete the Primitive route as planned, all on foot. Although COVID-19 reared its ugly head to postpone those plans, we keep our dream alive.

I have written three books about my pilgrimages, Into Galicia, A Camino for Enrique and Different Paths, in which I have tried to combine my personal feelings and reflections with the physical experience of those walks. As one reviewer commented on Into Galicia, “A great travelogue. A must read… to accompany the agony and bliss of transformational travel.” I was moved. My daughter is very generous.

I spent nearly forty years at the Inter-American Development Bank and, after retiring in 2004, have remained equally committed to Princeton in Latin America (PiLA), a nonprofit foundation whose mission is to provide recent college graduates with service experiences in that region that allow them to develop the skills, character and compassion necessary to serve as the world leaders of the future. Twice married, this time for keeps, four times a father, five times a grandfather, blessed with lifelong friendships, I’m a very lucky man. I feel like a foreigner in our home in Bethesda, Maryland, at home as a foreigner abroad, including on the Camino.