307 – Delivering good vibrations around the world | PABLO AND ANNA
Delivering good vibrations around the world! Happy Valentine’s Day and lots of love from the road! | ¡Enviando buenas vibraciones alrededor del mundo! ¡Feliz San Valentín y mucho amor desde la ruta!
••••
“The Book of Independence works its magic like a bellows on the embers of wanderlust, inspiring us to break away from the norm, to slow down and smell the proverbial roses… or cow or elephant dung. It’s not about what you’ll do after you retire, it’s about what you do before you die.”
Chris Collard, Chief Editor, Overland Journal Magazine
•••••
On year 2000, Pablo Rey (Buenos Aires) and Anna Callau (Barcelona) quit their jobs and rented out their apartment in Spain to travel around the world during four years. Four somehow turned into fifteen. The couple, living out of their small 4WD van, a.k.a. La Cucaracha, has travelled more than 220,000 miles, passing through 60 countries, with no end in sight.
After leaving Southern Europe, these committed nomads have driven through the Middle East, Africa —from North to South, the entire American continent —from Tierra del Fuego (at the Southern tip of Patagonia) to the Arctic Ocean in Alaska, before settling in for a couple of years of discovery in North America. Getting here was no small feat. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean from South Africa to Argentina in a fishing vessel, survived elephant and Kalashnikov attacks in Africa and paddled down an Amazon river in a 6-log wooden raft. Their engine broke down in the middle of the Sudanese Sahara and froze at 15,000 feet during a very cold winter in the Bolivian Altiplano, and that’s just scratching the surface.
In 15 years they have met, shared food and stayed with some truly amazing and hospitable people. Whether in a house, hut, tent or under the stars, the take away is the same, in whatever culture, remove the dogma and indoctrination and you realize that we are all the same, one big human family living in a beautiful, albeit fragile, Earthly home.
Pablo Rey (Buenos Aires) and Anna Callau (Barcelona) also known as #viajeros4x4x4, have been overlanding the world non stop since 2000 on a 4WD Delica van. They mastered the art of solving problems (breakdowns and police harassment, between them) in far away places, while enjoying their nomadic lifestyle.
They’ve been 3 years driving through Middle East and Africa, between Cairo and Cape Town; 7 years all around South America, and 7 years going to every corner of Central and North America. They crossed the Southern Atlantic Ocean in a fishing vessel, descended an Amazon river in a 6 log wooden raft, and walked with a swiss knife between elephants in wild Africa. On the last two years they started to travel by foot (Pyrenees mountains coast to coast, two months) and motorbike (Asia), with the smallest lugagge possible.
Pablo has written three books in Spanish (one translated in English), many articles to magazines like Overland Journal and Lonely Planet and both are in the short list of the most respected latino overlanders.
¿When will the journey end? It doesn’t end, the journey is life itself.