From dream…to reality

How did we go from dreaming of going to Patagonia, to actually going there?

This post is a short description of how your regular Sunday afternoon talk ended up in a crazy adventure, in the last few days, months and hopefully in the year to come.

It’s truly liberating to plan something which – albeit based in a very tight budget, filled with constant compromises, permanent dialogues and comfortable silences – is all about discovery, adventure and self-realization. Clichés aside, from what we have discussed and knowing one another as we do, all we care about right now is…to leave ASAP!

How did the idea to grab two 40 liter backpacks and travel to 21 countries in 365 days come about?

There is nothing better than to spend an entire, mildly depressing, Sunday, eating freshly baked bread with butter and talking about nothing. Not only can this give way to brilliant, challenging ideas, but it also feels damn good. As I recall it, this is how we got to the “Round the World Travel” subject. The brainstorming started off with a “Hmmm, I think I would like to spend some time abroad, sometime during next year”, but the “abroad” was neither ordinary, precise in terms of location, nor was it precise in terms of timeframe. So, without giving way to our individual desires, we gradually evolved into a more flexible, mutual perspective and definitely more adventurous such as “why not take the whole year off and get to know one country or two?”. If memory serves me right, this mythical conversation took place during November 2011.

Going from the post-carbohydrate overdose Sunday conversation, to actually digesting the idea…

The “google it” moment was a part of the brainstorming. Typing “Gap Year” in the search engine and bamm! At least 10 tabs open with words such as “roundtheworldtrip”, “worlds nomads”, “legal nomads”, “fruitpicking” and a few others that could boost our huge expectations that we might actually pull this off, and get to travel the world for one year, knowing in advance that having very light savings, the fact that we had recently met and the non-existence of Working Holidays VISA agreements from Portugal with other countries, were not the most favorable of conditions.

We were at it for weeks and weeks, opening tab after tab, ingesting carbs and more carbs (something rather annoying since it was mid-Winter and I was doing very little, or should I say no exercise at all), trying to devise our trip business plan. The first few weeks it looked as if it was an unbeatable idea.  The truth however is that during our searches, the information we got was not always as we had initially foreseen and we couldn’t pull off some of our ideas. This really slowed our research pace. However, the objective of departing mid 2012 was still held, thus assuming that within months we would have to communicate our resignation intentions, warn our families, save every single euro possible, etc, etc. We couldn’t pull it off. Maybe because the attachment to the cause wasn’t totally there yet, or simply because it wasn’t the best timing. We weren’t able to move forward with the idea. So, during the Spring and Summer we agreed to leave the “adventure planning” on standby.

Almost one year after having this “carbohydrate-overdose Sunday conversation” and, whilst having lunch at “Bosque” restaurant in the middle of Maia, we started to entertain the idea of going nomad for a year. Why? Because everything (family, friend, work,…) was going well. Neat daily routine. Everything was lining up for us to continue doing what we had been doing so far, and maybe consider taking bigger steps between the two of us, after a short while. Realizing that we were living that point in life where we can just sit back and kind of enjoy a daily routine, which can be pleasing on most days, also made us wonder if we shouldn’t rock the cage and rethink the “going nomad” path.

We went through a few weeks of pondering, going through pros and cons, cost-benefit analysis and so forth. No doubt everything was/is great here, but in reality none of us really felt accomplished and that feeling deep down to kickstart Pegadas em Pangeia was still very much alive, therefore…we sealed the deal and finally…digested the idea!