GRATITUDE | TRAVEL
I’m Grateful For the People We Meet Along the Way
It’s the people that make our planet so interesting.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times.
I travel to meet the people.
If there is one thing that travel has taught me, it’s that the world is full of wonderful and kind people. In fact, I would venture to say that at least 95% of people are innately good, and likely even more. It’s just unfortunate that the small percentage that has bad intentions gets all the limelight.
From a very early age, while traveling with my parents, I became interested in other cultures and their ways of life. I was always fascinated to learn that things were a little different no matter where we went.
Each culture has its own unique food, dress and traditions, and the variety is endlessly fascinating to me.
And it’s not only the people we meet in each country that fascinates me, it’s also the ones that are traveling, like us, that there is much to glean from.
We have now been staying in a hostel in Bulgaria for more than a month. It seems that whenever we find a place like this one where we stay for a while, we end up developing a really fun hostel family. This past month has been an exceptional one for us and we have really had a lot of fun staying here and hunkering down for a little while.
But, of course, meeting the people that live in the countries we visit is also paramount to our happy travel experience.
To celebrate some of our friends that we have met during our 5-year nomadic journey, I’ve decided to share a photo of a few and a short description of who they are and how we came to know them.
I’ve decided to post these pictures in chronological order and am starting in Costa Rica where our nomadic journey began back in 2017.
This is Yolanda and she was one of our first hosts that we stayed with in Monte Verde. We stayed with her for 3 days spending time on their 3rd generation cattle farm where she made us fresh cheese each day and the most delicious Costa Rican food.
Meeting Joseph in Costa Rica was such a treat. He used to be an animator for Disney and his creativity, experience and skills with various art disciplines really inspired us both creatively. He is Canadian but has a beautiful property in the jungles of Costa Rica these days and is enjoying a quiet and tranquil life.
Greg and Alyssa are from the US and we initially met online through a platform called Location Indie. They left to travel full-time at about the same time that we did and when we learned that they were also in Costa Rica housesitting, we arranged to meet them in person.
The following year, we also connected in Nicaragua when we were both traveling there. We still keep in touch with them though we are now nowhere near running into them again as they are on the other side of the planet these days.
I initially met Gaspar in 2004 when my ex-husband and I lived in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua for 4 months. He is the nephew of the lady that we did a Spanish immersion homestay with for two weeks. It was so nice to reconnect with him in 2018 when we were in Nicaragua, and it was even cooler to see his cousin again that was just a 9-year-old boy when we lived with him those many years earlier.
We volunteered for Amanda to help her to build her earthen home in Nicaragua. She grew up in the US but was building her dream home on her grandfather's land in Nicaragua. We had a very interesting experience there which you can read more about on my blog.
We volunteered at a Botanical garden for 6 months on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean. The staff was mostly Pilipino but there were a couple of locals that worked there as well. The owner is in the middle and is from Nigeria.
On the island of Anguilla in the Caribbean, we stayed with BJ, another Pilipino man who was the caretaker for the botanical garden owner that also had a home there. We had some fun touring around the island with him and stayed there for 2 weeks.
Moving on to Morocco now. We stayed with Hassan for 5 weeks on the edge of the Sahara Desert in 2020. During our time there we painted a mural for him in his hotel. One day we went into the market to get some clothes made and we decided that we should get a picture of us all in our Moroccan clothing.
Hassan does wear this outfit often and he is a true traditionalist.
While in Morocco, our German friend Nico came to visit us. We initially met Nico in Costa Rica after we all got chased out of Nicaragua because of the civil war that had broken out. We had a great visit with him in Morocco, however, while he was there Covid became a serious threat and Morocco closed its borders. He was lucky to get the last emergency flight out back to Germany.
He also recently visited us in Bulgaria for 10 days, and we look forward to visiting him in his hometown of Leipzig in Germany next spring.
In Port Sudan, we made friends with a group of men that would have coffee at the same place every day. They all spoke English well, and the man between us in the photo below, Mohammed, actually has a daughter going to school in Toronto, Canada. These guys were a great help to us as they got us set up with an apartment to rent, and they also took us out on a boat on the Red Sea one day.
They were a great bunch of guys.
We also met Fatima in Port Sudan. It was a thrill to meet a female in Sudan because they are generally very reserved and not very social, as is the norm in their culture. I was really excited when she invited me to her home to meet her sisters and mother one afternoon. It was a rare glimpse into their fascinating and secretive lives. On one of our last days in Port Sudan, we took her out for lunch which is when we took this picture.
It’s interesting to note that through all of our travels, we have mostly befriended men along the way.
Here is a video I did of the experience for our YouTube channel:
Moving on to Uganda we made a great friend in Cris. At one point he was volunteering at the Entebbe Zoo and he arranged for us to meet the zoo’s Outreach Director who wanted to talk to us about painting murals in schools in Uganda. We ended up staying at the zoo for a month and painted a large mural project in their visitor center. One day we had the unbelievable privilege to be zookeepers for the day with Cris.
We got to clean the lion cages and get up close and personal with them through the cage, plus got to feed numerous animals including these giraffes.
This was certainly one of our favorite days in the past 5 years.
We hung out in the village of Kikorongo, Uganda for 6 months in 2021. We met many amazing people that we are proud to call friends. In this photo, our friend Edmon took us on a hike up to his village in the hills. We had an amazing day with him and his family and learned that we were the first foreigners to ever go to his village. This photo was taken on the hike back down and is looking down over the Ugandan Savannah lands.
I made a few videos of our time in Uganda including this one below:
We just loved Muazu’s smile! He owned a restaurant and bar in Kikorongo and was a pro at making Banana Gin which we purchased our fair share of. We think he mostly drank the profits from his sales! No wonder he smiles so much:) In all honesty, he is certainly one of our favorite people and we love his good vibe and happy energy.
In Fort Portal, Uganda, we spent 2 months at Kalitusi Backpackers where we painted a large mural plus did numerous other small art projects around the property. We made great friends with the staff and were really sad to finally leave the beautiful property and wonderful staff.
Here we all are in front of our large mural project.
In Zambia, we met Hilda. We initially met her sister in Lusaka when we were researching bus options to get to the border and back up to Tanzania. We wanted to stop halfway to break up the long journey and the lady we spoke with happened to have a sister living along the way. We didn’t stay with Hilda, but she did have us over for dinner one evening to spend time with her and her son and daughter.
This picture was taken the day we left when she drove us to the bus stop. She was a very kind lady.
Next we are moving up to Bulgaria where we met George in the town of Sevlievo. George was introduced to us through a friend that we had made in Bulgaria back when we visited in 2015. We spent 4 days in Sevlievo and much of our time with George.
We met Marina through an online platform called HelpX. We volunteered on her property for three weeks near Varna in Bulgaria in September/October 2022. As we are still currently in Varna, we have kept in touch with her and enjoyed a lovely lunch down by the sea just a couple of weeks ago.
And finally, here is a bit of a collection of some of the friends that we have made here at the hostel where we are currently staying. There is a real crew of us that have been here for the last month, and we have had a lot of fun getting to know them plus meeting many other travelers that have come through.
As I went through my photos, trying to pair down just a few for this article, I was struck by how many great people that we have met. It has been an amazing journey for the past 5 years, and it has certainly been enhanced by these lovely smiling faces along the way.
We are continuously grateful for the wonderful people that we have the privilege of meeting and for all the kind people that have made our lives so much better in the process.
Are you grateful for traveling? Maybe you want to jump on board the Globetrotter’s November writing challenge. There are still a few days left!
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