Thursday, July 26, 2012

life is full of surprises

One of my favorite movies of all times is Forrest Gump. One of quotes I like in the movie is when he says "my mamma always says that life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get". I couldn't agree more with you Forrest.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

welcome back!

I think I've traveled a lot. From where I come from we don't have a travelling culture. We only go for short holidays. We work like robots, go on a short holiday and return to keep working like robots. Some don't even do that. Some, go on holidays and get in debt and then they have to pay off those debts. For that reason, a lot of people automatically thinks that you need to have a shitload of money to go to Europe. It's inconceivable to for them to go Europe with, let's say 50€ in their pocket for example.

I traveled for 2 years, 7 months and 29 days. I have been to 35 countries and successfully hitched in 34. I hitchhiked most of those thousands of kilometers (in the US I didn't hitchhiked at all). I'm also not counting the intercontinental or trasatlantic flights I've taken. I've been to 4 continents (I have been to Izmir, in the Asian part of Turkey) and succesfully hitchhiked in all 4 of them (Mexico is part of North America). I have even hitched between two of them, overland and over water!

Not many people have hitchhiked a boat. I had the luck to do that, twice. Not once in all those hitchhiked kilometers I was even close to be in some kind of danger. The only scary incident was in Turkey going to Greece. I had been in more danger when I'm not hitchhiking!

I hitched a sailboat coming home. I hitchhiked cars, trucks, even a tanker coming home. All safe rides. I had to come back home, get off my last ride (the truck that drove me from the Honduras / El Salvador border to Guatemala City) and had all my shit stolen in (literally) blink of an eye. In less than 1 bloody minute, I lost all my possessions. Everything. Luckily my important bag is always with me so I didn't lose my passport, camera, pendrive, books of memories and id. Aside from that, I was only left with the clothes I was wearing at the time. 

I fucking hate this situation but all this is part of travelling. I'm very disappointed of my country. Was this the kind of welcome I deserved? I don't hink so. But it was the welcome I was given. Now I don't have any other choice than to get up, shake off the dirt from my shorts, and find a way  to be happy and get to my happy place.

People ask me if I ever was robbed. I said no. Having my laptop stolen in Colombia was my fault, I accept it. So basically, it was not robbed, I gave it away. Didn't work anyway. Had more sentimental value to me. Sadly, I had to come back home to lose everything.  

My dad always told me to (or at least try to) look for the positive side of things. At least I lost everything in my home turf and not 2421752415 kilometers away. My big brother picked me up and drove me home. I ate my mum's food and slept that night on my bed. So, for this and for many other things, I consider myself a lucky bastard.

I apologize if I don't post what happened between Colombia and now but right now I don't feel like it. Maybe in the coming days you will start to see the posts.

Keep on thumbing in the free world!