ADVENTURE | FULL-TIME TRAVEL | MOVING ON

Just Like That, A New Adventure Begins

It’s always bittersweet to leave a place that we have grown to love.

Our ride to the city leaves in 2 hours. We are heading back to Varna. We aren’t sure if we will be there for one or 2 nights, we will see. Today we pick up our friend Nico from the airport, he is flying in from Berlin to hang out with us for 10 days. We have a rough idea of places to travel to with him, but we will wait until we can discuss it with him before we make any big decisions.

It’s always difficult to leave a place that we feel at peace in. We have been here for three weeks and I think it is that glimpse of stability that makes us yearn for longer. Especially in a place where the people are so nice, the food is amazing, and the house is comfortable.

Yes, we have physically worked very hard while we have been here, but we relished it. We got good exercise and we feel good about the work we did and how much we helped this family.

They are good people and they needed help.

Our host told me about how their ‘gardener’ would come once per year, trim a couple of things, leave a few branches on the ground to make it look like he had done something, then send them the bill. Meanwhile, the vine was taking over, the apple trees didn’t get pruned, and it was getting more and more overgrown.

We have completely opened up the orchard now and it is like a breath of fresh air. Even they feel like they can now manage it moving forward.

Before it was too overwhelming.

The other night they held a bit of a going-away dinner for us. We told them that we were so thankful for how well we had been treated and that it has been so nice staying here.

Marina simply said, “We like to treat people well because we realize that you could be anywhere else in the world right now, but instead you are helping us.”

And it’s true.

But you know what? Not too many people see it that way. We have volunteered for some pretty entitled people who don’t appreciate one bit that we have stopped our journey for them. Finding a place like this is the exception, not the norm.

And so, it is with a bit of a heavy heart that we must move on. I told Marina last night that I will probably cry when we eat dinner next. Her food has been out of this world! We haven’t eaten this good in a really long time and we will surely miss it.

But, we are also excited for our next adventure with our friend Nico. Nico has an interesting history with us. We initially met him in Costa Rica at a hostel. We had all been chased out of Nicaragua because a civil war had broken out in the country. We called ourselves the Nicaraguan refugees.

Funny, not funny.

We were all shell-shocked and not sure where to go or what to do next. We ended up staying there for a whole month together and Nico witnessed the first-ever mural project that set us on track to start painting murals as we travel. At the end of the month, he went one way and we went the other, but we kept in touch.

Two years later we traveled to Morocco in January 2020. Nico was back in Germany and told us that he wanted to visit us for 10 days. We agreed that it would be awesome to see him again. The only problem is that he arrived to Tangier, Morocco on March 9th, and you can well imagine what transpired after he arrived. In just a couple of days, the border to Spain was closed and then restaurants started closing.

Yes, Nico was with us when Covid hit.

We were all shell-shocked by the turn of events that took place. We were in the north of the country, and we ended up traveling south by bus together, Nico accompanying us to our next mural painting job. Then he continued on to Marrakesh where he waited at the airport for 2 days for an emergency humanitarian flight from his government.

The last time we saw him was at about 5:00 am as he was headed to catch his bus to Marrakesh. I was a fearful mess about the state of the world and I was certain we would never see him again. It felt like the world was at war, and nothing was guaranteed. We promised him that if things got really bad, we would find a way to come up to Germany to stay with him and his family.

It was a very forlorn time and none of us knew what was coming down the line.

But, here we are 2.5 years later and we can’t wait to see him. He has been locked down in Germany all of this time, while we were exploring Africa. We will have lots of stories to share, I’m sure.

And, well, I can’t help but think about our track record with Nico so far and the fact that things happen in threes. Let's just keep our fingers crossed and hope that this visit will not be fraught with civil wars, or virus outbreaks, or heaven forbid………the thing that is happening across the Black Sea from us.

Thanks for following along on our journey. If you are joining me here for the first time, please consider following my new publication Artistic Voyages News where I will continue to share our travel updates as we move around the planet.

xo Jill

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Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We paint FREE murals in exchange for accommodation. Consider tipping us on Ko-fi!

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