About Us

Bei Pellegrini has been lovingly conceived by Rebecca and Salvatore Zambito. Together and individually they have traveled the globe and bring their diverse, unique and spiritual experiences into the development of each and every Bei Pellegrini itinerary. In addition, they consult with and include others who are passionate about the countries and regions visited to enhance your pilgrimage experience.

Bei Pellegrini’s goal is to incorporate the sacred into your daily life while on sojourn, as well as enhance your understanding and appreciation of a region’s history, art and culture. Walking the cobblestone paths of an ancient village, partaking in the delicious cuisine of a speciific area, and staying in small, friendly local inns allows you to truly experience the spirit of a place. For us at Bei Pellegrini, this is what travel is all about.

Rebecca Zambito

Rebecca has traveled since she was an infant — her grandparents took her camping at three months of age – and she has never lost the wanderlust. Travel has always been a part of her world with the expectation instilled by those grandparents who believed travel could provide more education than school. She has visited every state in the Union, explored Europe, Australia, and Central America.

Rebecca has found herself to be an ‘inadvertant pilgrim’ as her travels have drawn her to revered sites, places of miracle, and sites were holy relics are enshrined. This new magnetism has taken her on many an adventure and propelled her to co-create Bei Pellegrini. Walking a portion of the Camino de Compostela in 2003, to the burial place of St. James, was the other incentive to develop Bei Pellegrini. The powerful experience of walking a sacred trail, one traveled by kings, saints and peasants for the last 1100 years, was and is transformational and one she wishes to share with others.

Salvatore Zambito

Salvatore is a mystic, rogue scholar, and world-traveling recluse. In addition to being one of the co-creators of Bei Pellegrini, Salvatore is also founder and director of the Yoga-Sutras Institute and a published author. He has established several yoga centers in the U.S. and taught yoga related subjects at institutes and universities around the world.

He lives with wife Rebecca, dogs and a flock of pampered chickens on a tiny hobby farm in western Washington State. As an American Yogi, Salvatore brings a unique perspective Bei Pellegrini itineraries.

Niobe Weaver and Gil Yslas

Niobe Weaver, Spiritual Troubadour and Sound Healer, will serve as a Spiritual Guide, through music, sound and meditation, on many of the Bei Pellegrini tours, including this year’s Seeking the Divine Feminine Pilgrimage to Provence and Languedoc, and next year’s Ireland itineraries.

Niobe brings over 25 years in the healing and performing arts to Bei Pelligrini. Niobe will offer daily meditation, toning and stretching to begin each day of sojourn with intention and awareness. In the evenings or select times throughout the tour, Niobe will share her gift of music and song with a ‘singing’ crystal bowl concert and her beautiful resonant voice. Niobe will also be available to individual travelers for private spiritual counseling.

Gilbert Yslas is a producer, master guitarist, songwriter, composer, and lifetime musician. Performing early in life with “The Prophets” in local church communities in Los Angeles, Gil went on to starting his own record label “Sundown Records”. One of the first in new age music, Gil partnered with another guitar player to offer several CD's of Renaissance music. Achieving a world wide audience by having national and international distribution, his music has been used extensively for movie soundtracks and TV productions. A move to the Northwest was the change to fuel new inspiration in his original works of visionary and inspirational music. His studio MagicRock Music has produced local artists and award winning music for educational DVD's the “Song of the Salish Sea”. Gil is currently in production with Niobe on several projects due to be released throughout 2008.

Learn more about Niobe and Gil at www.sacredsoundmusic.com.

Margaret Starbird

Margaret Starbird was raised within the Catholic faith, holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Maryland, has studied at Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany and at Vanderbilt Divinity School. In 1995, recommended by a friend, she read Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Baigent, Leigh, Lincoln), and her life as a faithful daughter of the Catholic Church changed forever. The major premise of this book was that Jesus had taken a wife — the Mary called Magdalene, the same Mary Magdalene that her church called ‘penitent prostitute’!

Starbird made the decision to “debunk” what she saw as the blasphemy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. To do this she researched the paintings of the artists implicated by the authors as being in collusion with the Grail heresy. She worked with the symbols found in these paintings, cross-referencing them with watermarks (symbols worked into paper used for writing) of the Cathar/Albigensian heretics (they flourished in Southern France from about 1020–1250 AD and were brutally wiped out in a crusade called by the Pope).

”My research eventually drew me deep into European history, heraldry, the rituals of Freemasonry, medieval art, symbolism, psychology, mythology, religion and the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Everywhere I looked, I found evidence of the feminine that had been lost or denied in the Judeo-Christian tradition and of the various attempts to restore the Bride to her once cherished status. The more deeply involved I became with the material, the more obvious it became that there was real substance in the theories set forth in Holy Blood, Holy Grail. And gradually I found myself won over to the central tenets of the Grail heresy, the very theory that I had originally set out to discredit.”

This all led to the writing of her first book, Woman with the Alabaster Jar, about the sacred feminine and how it has been denied through time. And thus began a quiet odyssey that has touched lives around the world.

In Goddess in the Gospels, Starbird tells how she was guided in her personal search and in her ever-deepening study of the New Testament and gematria–number coding of the Greek alphabet — by an incredible series of synchronicities. This led to the revelation of Sacred Union that has become the cornerstone of her message.

In Magdalene’s Lost Legacy, Starbird decodes the symbolic numbers embedded in the original Greek phrases of the New Testament, revealing the powerful presence of the feminine divine.

The controversy surrounding Mary Magdalene and her relationship to Jesus has gained widespread international interest since the publication of Dan Brown’s novel, The DaVinci Code, which specifically cites Starbird’s earlier works as a significant source. In Mary Magdalene, Bride in Exile, Starbird examines the many faces of Magdalene and reveals exciting new information about the woman who was the most intimate companion of Jesus.

Sandy Bochonok

Writer, ecumenical retreat provider, labyrinth facilitator, former nurse and Navy Chaplain, leader in her local ministerial association, the Reverend Dr. Sandra Bochonok is an associate member of the Little Sisters of St. Clare. She is founding pastor of an international multilingual internet outreach offering spiritual hospitality to seekers representing 140 countries.

She has provided labyrinth events since 1998 and explored more than four dozen labyrinths in the Pacific Northwest during her 2004 clergy sabbatical. In her free time, she volunteers as a Master Gardener and Master Composter, and enjoys clogging, hiking, cross country skiing and small boat sailing.

Heather Anderson

As Bei Pellegrini was being “birthed”, and the first itineraries developed, the vision of a logo representing pilgrims through the ages, walking to sacred sites in Spain, France and Italy,began to incubate. Heather Anderson, a life long resident of Poulsbo, Washington, and personal friend of the Zambito’s, has been an artist from childhood. She has shown talent since she was able to hold a crayon in her hands and that was evident by the masterpieces she left on the walls of her room. As she grew, her mediums grew and she was known for some time to be able to create a mean mud pie statue. Now in her maturing years she has mastered oil and house paint and creates exceptional canvases.

Heather was commissioned to give dimension to the Bei Pellegrini logo vision and what you see here is a beautiful representation of that vision — the scallop shell has been a symbol used on the Road to Compostela for centuries, the Fleur de Lys is synonymous with France, and the harvest-ready grapes on their vines iconoclastically represent Italy. The colors are rich, multi–faceted and vibrant, as is life in the countries, cities and villages we visit. We are honored to have Heather as the creator of Bei Pellegrini's logo.