I woke up wondering if I had been dreaming. Did I really finished the long sportive that I had been training for? Was it all over? The medal on the bedside table, shinning under the morning sun, was leaving no doubt. I did it!This summer, after all these years of good services it was time to give my old and loved Quechua backpack a well deserved retirement.
Warning: reading this post will make you want to quit your job and go travel!
Two years ago, I handled my resignation letter to quit my corporate job. A few months later it became reality when I left Europe with bags of excitement and a one way ticket to South America. This was the best decision of my life. I stay for 222 awesome days exploring this wonderful continent.
Since then, many people -friends or not- have questioned me about this experience. All are curious, and I can tell many are tempted to do the same even if they don’t really dare. Today, exactly a year after I came back from this wonderful adventure, I will answer the most asked questions ever about taking a career break and go travel.
If you are asking yourself this question, you probably already know the answer.
July 2015. We could have been on a beach in Greece…
“You are crazy, making me climb all these stairs!” she said, pointing at her crutches and trying to look upset before bursting into a big laugh. Nicole is 55 years old than me and for 4 days, my travel companion for a mini road-trip on the roads of Normandy (France).
We all know that life is too short. A couple of months before this trip, I felt the urgency to spend time with her. The first time I met Nicole I was barely a few weeks old, and I have always said she is my 3rd grand mother. But lately, with me living abroad we barely meet each other twice a year for a couple of hours over dinner or coffee.
“And you would like to go with me?” If you love travelling, why not sharing this passion with this (these) special one(s)? Many older people didn’t really had much opportunity to travel and at this age, regrets and loneliness may be a huge part of their daily thoughts. In this article I want to show you that with a bit of planning and some concessions it is possible!
Show them it’s never too late to travel. Share with your older loved ones a moment you will both remember.
They all say that travelling changes the way you see the world. At the occasion of Earth Hour, Adnan, my travel companion, shares in this article his thoughts about travelling and green responsibilities. Anyone who recognize him/herself?
Traveling in South America made me think about humans role on this planet. How are we supposed to live without destroying this beauty? Or are we supposed to end it all? Is it our role here? I don’t think so, we are build up by the same building blocks as all life on the planet and in a way we are the same. What differs us from the rest you might think? We humans are the only living species that can take control on our own actions, good or bad, happy or sad. That’s why we today more than ever need to take responsibilities for our acts who affect the planet and discuss how to live in a sustainable way. In this posts I am sharing my thoughts about the problem and why, as a traveller, I feel more than ever concerned.
You have heard that before, the ennemy is called Green House effect and the responsible : CO2. CO2 is a colorless, oderless gas vital for all plant life on the planet. The gas is mainly a biproduct from animal respiration, yes we breath out CO2, its also a product from organic combustion such as a camp fire. Also CO2 is produced from natural decomposition done by microorganism or fungi (some kind of mushroom).
Interesting enough, its almost impossible not to produce CO2. Breathing and even dying for example, produce CO2. CO2 is a natural part of our life cycle, it is necessary for all plant life on planet earth. It is also needed to keep our home warm enough to be habitable. CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas and reflects a part of our sunlight back, which warms up our planet. Without CO2 our home would have an average temperature of around minus 18 degrees Celsius. The perfect mix of CO2 in the atmosphere is actually around 300ppm (parts per million) which is roughly 0.03% of all the gases in the atmosphere.
But today, following the industrial revolution, the concentration of CO2 is climbing above 400ppm – a rise of 130% in the latest century and its accelerating. This is due to huge unnatural production of CO2, emission coming from all kind of fossil fuels: petrol, coal, natural gas etc. In 2100 scientists predict that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere would be around 900ppm if we continue business as usual, a rise of 300% from the “normal” mix of 300ppm! This means a rise of 5 degrees of the average temperatures on Earth ; with all the disastrous consequences we know: glaciers are long gone, sea level rises, forests becomes deserts, land becomes sea and fragile eco-systems are destroyed, with million species disappearing for ever. After spending more than 7 months admiring wonders of nature (Amazonas, Galapagos, Atacama desert, glaciers… among many) it cannot leave me insensible.
Looking at this fact, there is no doubt: green revolution must happen now if we want future generations to be able to enjoy views like this.
The amazing 27km long campo hielo sur, grey glaciar, Patagonia Chile
And we have to start acting now!
Starting the South American journey but an transatlantic flight… not so great for the planet. Unfortunately, you don’t always have alternatives…
It might be difficult to know where to start. Why not doing something simple first? Tonight, I’m turning my lights off during earth hour (8.30pm local time), and if you have recently admired landscapes that you would be sad to be gone, why not doing the same? Earth hour is just a small step to spread awareness.
During our trip, we got inspire to try to make a change in our life to try to reduce our carbon footprint. A first step was to try to measure it. So we have been traveling for 7 months and during our months of travel we spent a lot of fossil fuels, for transportation, but also to just to live. To be precise we evaluated that we spent around 60000kWh of energy, Which can be translated to around 60000kg of CO2. Using a simplified conversion where 1kWh of coal produces around 1kg of CO2 (the conversion differs depending on which energy source you are using). Its a lot! Is there a way to pay back our carbon dept? Sadly today there are not so many payment plans and the debt is just rising bigger and bigger. Luckily plant earth has some answers, by making plants breath in CO2 and breath out oxygen. But if we would like to compensate for all our CO2 produced during our travel we would need to plant 8500 trees (one tree can offset around 7kg of CO2/year)! Just for us two…
The fragile eco-system of bio reserve Limoncocha, at the border of the Amazonas
Is there a better solution? Can technology help us? This of course triggers many questions…
Have you ever tried to measure your carbon footprint? Which tools did you a use? In a future article we will share our own energy calculator, it is our small contribution but first, let us switch off the lights.
Turning 28: awesome!
Exactly one year year ago, on the 7th of February 2014, I gave myself the most extraordinary gift ever: I handled my resignation letter, quitting my corporate job to go on an amazing adventure. One year later the circle is complete: I am back and I am wondering who is that girl in the mirror. And this has little to do with the fact I haven’t seen myself much in a mirror these last months or that I have a brand new haircut. I am back the same, but different.
We reached it. After 7 months on the road, all the way from Cartagena, Colombia, we eventually arrived. Ushuaia, the most southern town on planet Earth. The end of the world.
More than 30.000km on the continent, 103 buses, 6 planes, 13 boats, 67 taxis, 1 train, 1 car and 1 scooter? The figures speak for themselves. We are far!
Really? The GPS do not leave any doubt, our furthest position is S 54 51’40”. If you are looking for a reference from the north hemisphere, it would be Belfast, in northern Ireland or almost Copenhagen. In other words, living in Stockholm for 3 years, I was closer to the north pole than now, in Ushuaia, to the South one!
If you are following our trip “live”, you may have noticed we have been silent for more than a week. No posts, no tweets, no Instagram pictures. So what did we do the last 8 days? We walked. 151kms to be precise, for more than 47 hours of hiking, over 8 days and 8 nights of camping to explore one of the jewels of Patagonia: National Park Torres del Paine (Chile). I am now sharing the magic of this place in 14 pictures captioned with extract from my travel diary. Enjoy the trip!
Fresh and excited. Note that we are doing the trek in autonomy and carrying around 30kg of equipment between us 2: tent, mattress, sleeping bags, food for 8 days.