Translator: Sally Barclay
Reviewer: Sebastian Betti As the girls said, I am a traveller. Four years ago I travelled the world, and I say that to you
as if it were totally normal, because for me
this is a part of my life. Probably, right now you are thinking one of the following: either I'm a millionairess,
or a kept woman; I'm a hippy or a little crazy. Not only do I travel,
I make a living from it, and what I want to tell you today
is how I succeeded in converting my greatest dream
into my reality, and even into my way of life, and my job. I travelled for the first time in 2007 when I was 21 years old. I went with a group of friends
to Northern Argentina, and Bolivia, and, when we were just about
to return from Bolivia, I decided that I wanted to visit a place called el Salar de Uyuni,
that's it in the photo, because it wasn't far, but, as nobody wanted to come with me,
I decided to go alone. I shared a ride and went
to visit el Salar. That same day I got the train and went back to the border
to meet up with my friends again, and, as this was a last minute booking, I could only get the cheapest ticket. So, what I remember about this trip is that it lasted all night,
and it was extremely cold, and when I woke up, still on the train, I was covered with a blanket. Then I looked over, because there were four seats opposite each other, and saw a Bolivian girl, also around 21 years old, smiling at me and she told me that
as she had seen me shivering, she had covered me up. When I looked at the blanket and at her I realised that she had covered me with the same blanket
used to cover her new-born baby. We began to chat. We spoke about our very different lives. I took this photo of her son, which is the first he ever
had taken in his life. Then, I played for a while
with her daughter. We both got off at our stops
and never saw each other again. I just told you that this
was the first time I travelled. That's really a lie because
I had travelled before. I'd been on holiday to Uruguay. I'd been to Brazil,
and around the Caribbean. But for me, this trip,
or this meeting on the train, was the first time I felt like
a traveller rather than a tourist because it was the first time that I
encountered somebody from another culture with no economic interest involved. Just a person to person contact. That day I realised that I wanted to make my dream of
travelling the world, a reality. Since I was a little girl I said
that I wanted to travel. I always said I wanted
to know other cultures, to see how they live in other places, and what's more, I also wanted
to write about all this. But I didn't know how to make a living
from this dream. Also, every time
I told somebody about it they all told me the same thing; firstly, that it wasn't very original
because we all dream of travelling, and that it's very difficult
and you need a lot of money, that first you need to get a normal job, and that afterwards when
you've saved enough money only then can you take
your fortnight's holiday. When I finished school, because
I didn't know what to study in order to become a traveller, I started a vocational orientation course. On this course they asked what,
to me, was a crucial question which was, if I had
a lot of money to spend, what would I spend it on? Instead of saying that I would
donate it, or create a foundation, or give it to some voluntary group,
I said I would keep it all, and I would use it to travel
around the world. That was when they sent me
to study social communication. In the last year of my degree,
which was the same year that I had this experience on the train, I became an editorial intern for a magazine, and I loved it because I learned to write,
the routine of being a writer. I realised that I wouldn't be able
to spend all day stuck inside an office seeing
reality through a screen. Instead I wanted to experience
the outside and talk to people get to know places,
and soon after write about everything that I experienced. In 2007, the same year that
I had that experience on the train and the internship, an idea began to form in my mind, and finally I made a decision:
I decided that the day I finished my studies
I was going to travel. But I didn't want to go for ten days,
nor for a month. I wanted to do something much bigger. So I decided that when I finished studying I would go backpacking alone
through Latin America with a one-way ticket
and very little money. Well, when I told my friends and family
this, they had a lot to say, mainly that I would be robbed, killed, and everything in between
robbing and killing, kidnapped. They told me I was crazy, that
I couldn't do something like that. A lot of people even made me annoyed
because they told me that I was wasting my life,
that when I returned nobody would employ me to work
in any company that I couldn't do it, it wasn't
realistic, travelling is not a job. I didn't understand why people took it so personally, because
at the end of the day I was making a decision about my life, I wasn't making anybody else do the same thing. I could see that everyone hoped
that I would get a stable job and just go on holidays
like everyone else, and nothing more. So the two most repeated phrases
that I remember from this time are "you can't
make a living from travelling" and "you're crazy." That same year, when I finished studying, as I knew that nobody would
give me a ticket and tell me now you've finished, here's your ticket
off you go, I went to Retiro with a friend
with whom I went travelling afterwards and we bought two one way tickets
to La Quiaca on the Bolivian border. But my plan, as well as undertaking
this journey, this madness, was to write about it, because I could see that there
was a lot of prejudice around me. Every time I told someone
that I wanted to go travelling they told me to be careful,
that the world is a dangerous place that horrible things would happen
to me, so I was sure that the world was really a lot more like my experience on the train. I was sure that it was hospitable, that all these horrible stereotypes
weren't really true. But I knew that, just as nobody
would give me a free ticket and tell me you can go tomorrow,
here it is, nobody would say I've got 10 magazines for you to publish what you like in. I wrote everything down and decided to send an email to the
editorial office of a daily paper telling them about my plan,
I told them I was going travelling that I was available as a correspondent
if they needed one, and that I would be
travelling extensively. I might not have received any reply,
but the timing was perfect because they were very interested
and at that time in Argentina, at the beginning of 2008,
blogs were becoming popular, so they were interested,
and suggested that I do a travel blog. When I left that first,
that one and only, meeting a week before my journey,
I was the author of a future travel blog. Well, the truth is that a week
before going I was scared to death because I began to think about it,
and thought that maybe everyone was right and that I was going to a certain death, and this would be
the last time they saw me alive because everybody in the world is bad and everybody wants to kill me. Also, something which worried me
even more than this, was not having a story to tell. That nothing would happen
and the blog would be empty and nobody would be interested
in reading it. I finally went on a trip
that lasted nine months and took me through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia. I took a boat from Colombia to Panama. I travelled across Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras. During this trip I learned two things. Firstly, it confirmed my theory
that the world is really a hospitable place. During this trip I found people
who took me into their homes. Friends, families, I don't know,
mothers who looked after me as if I were their daughter. Secondly, I realised that
travelling is not as expensive as I thought, or as I was led to believe, because it's true that when
you travel for a fortnight on your holidays you want to get to know
five countries in a fortnight. Yes, this ends up being quite expensive. But when you travel slowly,
and live in each place, your spending is reduced
to three things which are: accommodation, food and transport. If you do this, not as a tourist, doing things as a local,
it's always a lot cheaper. The truth is that I found it very hard
going back to Buenos Aires afterwards because I went from being
constantly on the move, getting to know new people and places, to being still,
doing the same thing as always. What depressed me the most
was knowing that I'd had a great dream. I had achieved it, and it was over and I didn't know what
I was going to do next with my life because I didn't know if this journey
was just a phase or if it was the beginning of something,
of a different way of life. I stayed in Buenos Aires for about a year, doing different jobs, and things began to happen to me
that showed me that I had to follow this path, that I was doing well. The most important thing
that happened to me at that time, this was at the end of 2008,
beginning of 2009, was that I got an email
from an Argentinian, the owner of a travel agency,
who told me very simply, in two lines, that he liked my blog a lot and that he wanted to begin
to collaborate with me, giving me tickets so that
I could travel wherever I liked. At first I thought it was a joke but it was true, and it was then
that I realised that while there were still many people
who told me "it's over now," who continued to trample on my dream
saying that now that I've returned I should return to reality, get back to work,
your sabbatical year is over, on the other hand, there were people
from far away who didn't know me, who had only read what I had written, who were betting on me,
who were pushing me to continue. A week after receiving this email I made my first journey
sponsored by this agency. I went to Guatemala, which
was supposed to be a three week trip, but lasted for one, because after
two or three days I got dengue fever and I was hospitalised. I spent the rest of the week in hospital and while it wasn't much fun
it wasn't too bad because I got to know
the people of Guatemala from a different angle,
not as a tourist, nor a traveller, but as a patient, again
I confirmed my theory that the world is hospitable,
that there is hospitality everywhere. I thought for a while that
I wouldn't be able to return to work because I was afraid of becoming ill again
and that it would be serious, that maybe this time I was just lucky. But a few months, or nearly a year, later in 2010, I decided that I wanted to
travel again, this time to Asia. I had dreamed my entire life
of going to Asia. Again things began to happen
that showed me that I had to follow this path. I'm not exactly sure when,
around three weeks before I went, I interviewed Steve McCurry
for a magazine. He's the photographer of the Afghani girl. Half way through the interview I veered off plan and told him that I was planning to do
what he did when he started out, which was to go to Asia without a job
to try my luck as a writer and photographer, He really encouraged me,
he told me he loved what I was going to do, and even said that it would be easier for a woman
because it was much easier to make contact with people,
to be invited to their home. Then I realised that, if people like him could begin with nothing
and achieve what he had, that I wasn't chasing an impossible dream. I was chasing a dream
that I could achieve. A few days before going
I opened a new blog which I started afresh
because I didn't know if anyone would remember my previous blog,
I didn't think they would. So I started the blog that I write
today, called "Travelling around." Two years ago I started to promote it
on Facebook and Twitter, through social networks,
and it began to grow. Suddenly, I began to receive emails
through the blog with job offers, that asked me to write magazine articles. They wanted to interview me
on their radio programmes, to write a column, produce content. A month ago I was even invited by the Swedish Secretary of Tourism to spend five days in Lapland,
in the North of Sweden and promote it in my blog to try and inspire people to go there. But as well as all these job offers I began to receive a lot
of reader's emails which I could divide into three groups:
Firstly, people wrote to me who had planned a trip and needed,
for example, help with the route, they asked me for
advice about their itinerary what to see, what not to see. Secondly, people wrote to me who said they wanted to travel like me,
they really wanted to but were too afraid to take the plunge, because their families told them
it's dangerous, they didn't know how they would
make a living. The third type of email I received is the one that surprises me the most,
but which I love receiving, and is from people who thank me,
and tell me to carry on, to carry on doing what I'm doing
and to carry on writing, because they travel with me;
some of these people even say that thanks to me they
were encouraged to travel. Even if it was only for a weekend,
or a few days, they went alone, they went. When I receive these
emails I realise that, not only am I achieving
what I always wanted to, I am generating a change in people, which I never thought would happen. Four years have already
passed since I went on my travels for the first time. The truth is that I never
imagined that in this time I would become, as well as a traveller, a writer, a photographer, a travel blogger a digital nomad. A digital nomad is a person who can work from anywhere in the world
because they only need an Internet connection,
I carry my rucksack with my office inside, I sit where I like and create my workspace
anywhere in the world I want to because I just need to connect
to the Internet and I'm ready. I didn't think that things
would happen to me like seeing the Aurora Borealis
in Sweden as I did a month ago, which was another of my dreams. I didn't think that I was going to travel
for a month in China, and not be able to speak even a word to anyone,
but nonetheless would be able to communicate with people. I didn't think that in Indonesia
they would treat me like a movie star,
just because I'm Western, and different. I also didn't think that in Morocco
I would work as an extra in a film. We were employed as extras
in a Hollywood film. I also didn't think that in Indonesia
I would be robbed on the train. They stole my camera and computer. The police found them,
and I got everything back, and afterwards we took this photo. I also didn't think that
I would be in the desert, speaking to nomads, having friends
from different cultures. I didn't think that I would be travelling
through Asia for a year and a half, and that I would make contact
with all those cultures that, for me, were so far away. Because the truth is that,
if I think about it seriously, and anyone who knows me will
verify what I am going to say, I am the worst candidate for a traveller
that you could imagine, because, firstly, I have a very bad
sense of direction. I get lost everywhere,
and cannot read maps. I get them the wrong way round,
and always go the wrong way. I always get the wrong bus or train. I only speak two languages; sometimes
people think that, in order to travel, you need to speak 20 languages, but no,
I speak two, and I manage with that. I don't like extreme sports, or trekking, I get bored and bad-tempered, but, instead of dwelling on these things, which could be counted as defects, I always prefer to concentrate
on what I feel is my strength, which is writing, and combine it with this dream
of travelling that I had. If I hadn't done this, I wouldn't be here. I would be at home looking at a map and dreaming that one day
I would go on a journey. I would like to finish by telling you that once, a while ago,
a reader wrote to me, telling me that my life was amazing,
but surely there must be some trick behind it because
it couldn't be true. This inspired me to write
the most-read post of my blog which ends by saying
what I'm going to say to you now, and which, for me, is something
you can apply to any job, not only to travelling. I think that the travellers
who manage to survive the trip are those who know how to discover
their talents and abilities and use them to sustain themselves,
to bring something to the world and what's more,
to be able to continue travelling. At least, there is no "trick" in my life I think that the only trick to making
a living doing what you think will make you happy, or what
you have always dreamed of, is to trust in your talents
and believe in yourself And if you decide to dedicate yourself
to whatever makes you the happiest the way will make itself clear. Thank you. (Applause)
