My backpack has been sittin’, waitin’, wishin’ for a ride to Berlin in Germany! Today I’m hitchhiking from my mom’s place in the Netherlands to Berling in one day. My folks were kind enough to give me a kickstarting ride to this great gas station along the A1 highway. They had people to visit or things to do in the east of the Netherlands, so it’s great that I could join for a short while. I made sure to snap a picture with my sweet old dog Ashley. Like a comet passing by, I used their gravitational force to launchContinue reading
Experiences of 2015, #2: The Airplane Hitch over Malta
This is part of a series on my travel experiences of 2015, read #1 about Albania too! #2: The Airplane Hitch over Malta In 2015 I hitchhiked my first airplane over the Maltese islands, which was really cool in terms of getting things off my bucket list and having seen Malta from the sea, the land, and the sky. All from people’s hospitality and generosity! What’s really awesome is to go through security, not at the main entrance, but the back, at the private jet parking. I loved hanging out in the hangars with other plane-aficionados who are painting or otherwiseContinue reading
Cuevas Waterfalls, Samaipata Bolivia
I didn’t jump from this waterfall. Just chilled an entire day at the three falls of Cuevas, close to Samaipata in Bolivia. Ultimate chill alert! What a beautiful place to cool down one’s feet and enjoy nature. I did get my camera a little wet with all the micro sploosh that’s floating in the air at the bottom of the biggest waterfall. There are two other waterfalls with beaches to relax at. Cuevas is about 20 km from Samaipata in the direction of Santa Cruz and costs 15 Bolivianos for entrance. Unfortunately, it gets really busy in the afternoon onContinue reading
Experiences of 2015, #1: Albania! All of it!
It’s almost the end of the year according to the calendar I grew up with. And all the bloggers seem to be doing it. So here’s a recap of my year in hitchhiking, adoring nature, and meeting people! 2015 was not the most exciting year I’ve had in travel; there were a few sad things going on personally. I stayed in Europe mostly as I was trying to hitchhike to all the missing countries I haven’t been to. But suddenly a happy change happened; now I’m in South America continuing the adventures in hitchhiking! There were so many opportunities justContinue reading
Samaipata and Bolivia’s other “Death Roads”
When hitchhiking through this amazing valley to get to Samaipata, Bolivia, football-sized rocks fell down a cliff. It’s such a strange thing to witness. They barely missed the car in front of ours. My driver told his daughter who was sitting in the roof-window of the car to come down and sit inside between Jonas and me. “We have to do this quick”, he says in Spanish. He slows down the car and waits for the dangerous stretch to clear. This doesn’t worry me at all; I grew up with the assumption that if there’s any danger, other people willContinue reading
Santa Cruz de la Sierra: Christmas Time in Bolivia
Here in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, they have the most fabulous Christmas trees I’ve ever seen! They fit the landscape and the architecture pretty well. It seems like everyone is already in the mood for Christmas, which I usually struggle with. I’ll probably spend my Christmas hitchhiking to Titicaca Lake, but before I do that I’ll make recommended stops in Samaipata (nature+history), La Paz (should be magical is what I’ve heard!), and whatever other cool things come my way. Jonas will probably join me for that route, as he’s getting into hitchhiking. So far, Bolivia hasn’t been thatContinue reading
Butterflies + the Bolivian Border from Paraguay
I’ve arrived in Bolivia! Here I was taking a *butterfly break with the backpack, a great shot Jonas took. We were hitchhiking toward the Bolivian border through Paraguay’s Gran Chaco region—a rough diamond. If you tell Google Maps to drive from Asunción to Bolivia, it tells you to drive through Argentina instead. It’s a clear warning of what this road would be like. Truly, this was one of the most difficult roads I’ve ever hitchhiked in terms of traffic, road quality, temperature, and water availability. It took four days! On the bright side, it’s the mating season or something ofContinue reading
Paraguay from the Back of a Pick-Up Truck
Just another day at the office… for a hitchhiker! Today I hitchhiked in the back of this pickup truck toward Mariscal Estigarribia, the last village with a sizeable population in Paraguay before the border with Bolivia—and that border is still 250km away! In Paraguay, you usually get your entrance/exit stamps in your passport at the migration office in a town before the border rather than at the actual border. This also happened to us when leaving Brazil and entering Paraguay. Besides being a little strange and not straightforward at all, this is a complicated process of asking around for ‘laContinue reading
Salto del Guaíra to Asunción: Paraguay by Hitchhiking
Paraguay! I’ve been weirdly and inexplicably excited about going to this country for a while now and I’m finally here. We crossed the border from Guaíra in Brazil to Salto del Guairá in Paraguay. And no, those áććéńt́ś are not a typo on my part, and the name Guaira is apparently in the Tupi Language, and not in Spanish or Portuguese. There used to be waterfalls here on the Paraná river, but they disappeared after the building of the Itaipu Dam. That’s a little heartbreaking. Hitchhiking is fairly easy. Yesterday Jonas and I did 400 kilometers in seven rides to hitchhike fromContinue reading