Why would one be so crazy to spend 5 months travelling all on his own in Latin America? To explore the limits of human digestion in the state of Tobasco? To risk one's male pride playing football against the local Maradonna? Or to take a stroll on the Lightning Path with general Tapioca? Well, I did ask myself the same question when I first came up with the idea in the fall of 2002. Yes, I had travelled alone before, but that was to Ibiza back in 1993 (I already did crazy stuff when I was 19), and I was only away from mommy for 2 weeks... So that didn't count. But nevertheless, I had been to Nepal and Vietnam before, and spent a year in Paris and in Chicago... So should it be that crazy? Hell no! Just a bad case of travel fever!No, seriously, I had been thinking about going on a world tour already for a long time, and at the age of 29, I had come to that point where I was thinking 'It's now or never!'. But like Willem Elsschot, the famous Flemish writer, said once : 'Between dream and act, there are laws and practical objections.' : indeed, what to do with my job, my appartment, how to pay for it, where to go and what to do, when and for how long,...? Well, as far as my job was concerned, I got lucky. Working in Belgium, I got the possibilty to take up 'time credit', a social welfare system allowing employees to take paid (!!) leave from work, with a guaranteed return, all social security covered!! Nope, it's not a Fidel Castro wet dream come true, it's all Belgian, check it out for yourself at
http://www.rva.be/. Knowing I could easily rent out my appartment (which I did), I could start to ponder the most difficult part : where to go?!! I had been to Asia before, and attracted by its wonderful people and amazing cultural heritage, my first idea was to go back there, doing the 'classical' trip from India to South-East Asia and then down to Australia. But only having 5 months at hand, and not wanting to rush and fly from one place to another, I needed to cut that trip to maybe only India and a couple of other countries. And then I figured : why not limit myself to one continent and one language (something I could learn, like Spanish)? Why not go to Latin-America? Why not do the PanAm?!!Designed in the early 20th century, the PanAmerican highway travels more than 15,000 km from Fairbanks, Alaska down to Buenos Aires in Argentina, crossing 13 countries. The highway cuts through civil war, oil booms, pristine forests and toxic rivers. It passes a variety of races and relgions ; it glimpses dreams and dissapointments. But in 2003, it stands unfinished. Fear for massive immigration from Mexico and the possibility of cattle disease passing through the Darién Gap between Panama and Columbia led the US - the primary sponsor of the project - to back out a long time ago. Fascinated by the surreality of such a road, suddenly stopping in the middle of the Panamanian jungle, my first wild idea was to travel down the highway : all the way from the US to Panama, and from there on, further in to Columbia and South-America. But faced with the enormous travel distance and the amount of time I would have to sit out in local buses, I quickly dismissed the idea. Instead, I chose to honour the golden travel principle 'Less is more', 'limit' myself to a couple of countries in Latin-America, and look to where the PanAm road would bring me from there. Top on the list were Yucatán & Guatemala (Maya trail), some unidentified exotic destination where I could dive and/or surf and Bolivia (why you should definitely go there, ask Lore - hehe). So in good spirits, I started reading and talking to fellow travellers who had been to the region before. I told them that I wanted a good balance between culture, 'pura vida' (dive & surf), trekking adventure and nature discovery. 'Mmm nice, but what about the people and the language?', they asked me. 'Every year, tons of tourists travel through Latin America : and you'll be one of them. But if you learn the language, at least you'll be less of a gringo. People will open up. Talk to people : that's the pura vida.' Taking up this good advice, I enrolled for a Spanish summer course at the
CLT in Leuven. And we talked : the best decision Leen and I ever took. Well, we only found that out afterwards : the rest is history. She'll be in Madrid for a year, I'll be for 5 months on the other side of the globe. If it weren't for the language, we probably would never have met.So, I hope to be back home around May 11th 2004, just in time to chill out a couple or more days in Madrid before picking up work again...that is, if I make it back alive and well! Have fun following my PanAm Viajes!
Etiquetas: El loco del PanAm
