OUR TRIPS

SOLIDARY WAY

WHO WE ARE







The first important decision of my life couldn't be more wrong. When I was 14 years old, I decided to study to be a watchmaker. I can not even blame my parents, so they didn't insist to force I follow with the job familiar tradition.
I considered, at that time, studying was a way of wasting my time. Maybe at that age I started to realize I didn't like to follow the rules of a system I hated.

After two years, I could get out of my studies, saying to my family I was not motivated.
The thing is that when I was 17, and already suffering the lack of studies, I couldn't find a proper job. The true is that I didn't feel very comfortable in the working environment.

At that time, I was called to go to the army. Trying to find the positive side, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to get independent and go to live to Zaragoza, 300 kilometres away from home.
The army was a period of my life in which I started to know myself. As I didn't want accept the military rules with his stupid hierarchy system, I was arrested 136 days in the nine months of military period.

I went back to Barcelona. In a few days I realized I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. Fortunately, I knew what I did not want. That, at that point, it was a lot. I know people around 40 that don't know what they don't want
I decided I wanted to be free and independent, so I planned to go to live in any Spanish city. ... Yes Bilbao, Bilbao was fine. I don't know why I chose this particular city. I needed to save some money, so I worked a while as a welder electrical installations.
But life was saving me a change of plans, and that's how a tragic event reminded me of John Lennon phrase that says "life is everything that happens to you while you're busy planning for the future."
The new situation made me fearful and sad person. I started to do jobs I was not interested
Finally I found a lot of excuses to take a major step, I go to work as kitchenporter to England for four months. I returned to Barcelona with a suitcase full of memories and the heart broken by an English woman.
Time healed the wounds, but also brought other time ... and again ... until I understood in this life you have to take risk and let the things happens.

So again I took the backpack and I ventured to see the world. This time was a couple of months between Senegal and Gambia to collaborate with an NGO. I discovered many things in a very short time, but above all a world I did not want to be part of it. That experience changed my life.

Back in Barcelona, I had several jobs. Printer, waiter, salesman of firecrackers, dependent on my father's jewelry ... but I soon leave again, so I went to Reims, France, to work as a kitchen helper.
But after a few weeks, something made me go back home. Perhaps I was too old to not have a proper job, so back to Barcelona and a lot of intensive courses allowed me to work as a graphic designer in a sports newspaper and later in an editorial.

And when life began to seem routine and predictable, my way crossed with Carme, the perfect person to travel around the world with.
After that year traveling planet, I dream became truth, to write a book. Also, always with Carme, founded the NGO BPM.
Returning from our trip, I felt that I was used too much freedom not to have someone to obey. After working only three weeks in a reprographics center, I started my own web business.
Life was happening gradually, without major surprises.

And while it's easy to fit into a society where the welfare premium, the day always brought with them memories of other times, where in a backpack had the necessities of life. And what was an annoying minor itching, eventually became impossible to ignore pain.
Carme that day came home tired from work.
- We need to talk, I said.
But in his eyes I guessed that she had long been in the same situation as me.
- You do not need you to continue, 'he replied. The answer is yes.

After that second round the world tripe, no one could make us believe that there was something better than wandering the planet with just 10 kilos on the back. We went to India and Nepal for 4 months. After, another travel to Egypt for 2 months... but then a serious vascular disease that could eventually overcome, gave me the chance to receive a breath of fresh air that changed my life completely. I managed to trim the sails of my life, and nothing and no one could keep me from getting ready to enjoy the pleasure of being alive at all times.
Again with Carme, more close than ever, we started our third round the world trip, the most emotional, spiritual and exciting of my life.




I was born on a hot August 1976 in Barcelona.
I've always wanted to believe that my conception was closely related to the bottle of Catalan champagne that took my parents to celebrate the Spanish dictator's death.
I was born in the middle of the political transition ... I'm of that generation with no very hard experiences: We have not lived a war, not a dictatorship, not even the unleashing of the 70's.
I was lucky to travel when very few of my social class did in my country. My parents, that use to be camping lovers, had no problems about traveling with the car, caravan and a couple of little girls. So I had the opportunity to visit Europe and develop the love for travel.
The teenager period is better not to remember very much (fashion, in the 90's, was very cruel with my generation ... you know, shoulder pads, pants too shorts, toupees, etc.). What to say of those days ... rebellion, sprees, first loves, second, third ... well, no need to explain everything.
I started working very young, always combining it with my studies. I could say I've always been very independent and responsible woman, but the truth is that my parents gave me no money for my whims.
I worked as a babysitter, phone marketing operator, in sales promotion (I even got to dress up as Santa Claus assistant!), as a cashier at a fast food restaurant, in a clothing store ... well, a series of experiences that convinced me to continue with my studies to try to find a good job.
I studied psychology. As there was not much employment in the clinical and social branches, which were actually my favorites, I decided to work in the business world: human resources.
I had the feeling that my work would help people to be happier in the workplace. I've always been idealistic... Then I discovered that it was not working like this. So I started thinking that maybe I had a divine mission, I felt like a double agent, "fighting from inside."
When I realized that the self fulfillment in your company was a bullshit that somebody has invented for justify in working overtime without being paid, I met Xavier, certainly a bad influence according to some people. Almost without realizing about this, we were telling to each other about our childhood dreams, the desire for adventure, to know new worlds, new realities... until the day we bought a one-way flight ticket to Buenos Aires, the first step of one year trip around the world.
This trip, though it may sound cliché, changed my life. I learned more in one year than I had learned in almost 30.
Beside of the knowledge, I learned to appreciate the good essential things of life: freedom, friendship, love, diversity ... and I stopped giving value to their substitutes: money, luxuries...
There is nothing greater than being with the person you love, a chat with a friend, those who arrange the world in an hour, a hug, owning your life, act on your principles ... And all this you can not buy.
The year passed really fast for me. We went to Barcelona and, on the contrary to what we imagined, nothing had changed, everything was the same. Maybe that's why I thought I could restart my life right there, where I left off. So again I worked in human resources...
There were no changes in the company where I used to work: the same stories, the same arguments. But I had changed, I was not the same person.
What once would have been important for me then became ridiculous ... which I had not felt before, then it did hurt me. Definitely, I didn’t like very much my old life.
It took me two years to realize that I was I living a life that did not want to live, Was anyone forcing me? Perhaps it was the time to take control of my life and, at least, try doing something that I really believed in, something that I loved... And that’s the way our life project began, a different life project in which we'll develop our life traveling.

In early 2008 we took again the backpack and started our second trip around the world, the viability of which was closely linked to our own design website business that we maintain while we travel. We had 8 months traveling when the incipient European crisis came into our lives, and forced us to return home for searching resources.

Since then life has not been easy, as economic as a healthy level, but instead of feeling afraid of that, we feel that we have to keep trying to live our lives as we want. As karate player do with the attacks of its enemy, we have taken these eventualities and we used them to get impulse, and that impulse is what made possible our third trip around the world.

We never thought that our trips were only physical, but now more than ever we perceive that we are learning through situations and people that the way is giving to us. We’ll visit many countries, but we are certain that the destiny will get us nowhere in particular but to ourselves.