Yes...I'm an avid traveller, maybe just my slippers...but never have I travelled for free...usually there's some sort of cost involved...however small...
Apparently there are people out there that are challenging the common sense....and this Wigge is one!! I'd like to share this story with you all...
Michael Wigge left Berlin
without a penny and traveled 25,000 miles to Antarctica, hitchhiking, bartering
and working his way by ship, plane, car and foot, from Europe to Canada and the U.S.
and then through Latin America.
A series about his project,
"How to Travel the World for Free," is airing on some PBS channels
throughout May and June, using video Wigge shot of his adventures. Here are
some details on how he did the project and how it went.
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| Mr Michael Wigge |
THE TRIP: Wigge, a travel
journalist and videographer who speaks German, English and Spanish, left Berlin in June 2010 and traveled for 150 days through 11
countries, arriving in Antarctica in November
2010. More than 100 people helped, providing transportation, food and places to
sleep. He planned the journey for a year before starting out, collecting
contacts for those who might provide accommodations or odd jobs, but he also
relied on the kindness of strangers.
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| India?? |
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| Let's hope there's no tunnels on the way |
FOOD: At first, Wigge scrounged
for food from garbage bins behind supermarkets, but he soon realized that
"Dumpster diving wasn't necessary. I could walk in and do a barter. I
offered to clean the floor or the shelf or wash the dishes in the restaurant in
exchange for an old sandwich. And most of the people I approached in shops,
supermarkets and restaurants gave me something."
ACCOMMODATIONS AND ATTITUDES:
In Latin America, he found that "people
were very helpful if I went to their door and said, 'I have no idea where I
will sleep tonight, can I sleep here?' There was this helpfulness, this
hospitality, maybe because many people there are poor and they know how it
feels. They didn't care about my story. But in the U.S., it was more about the story.
They would say, 'This is cool, we want to help you reach your goal.' Americans
really go for this."
WORK: He crossed the Atlantic
working on a container ship from Belgium
to Canada
in exchange for his passage, doing everything from paint jobs to changing the
oil in the engine room. In Las Vegas,
he engaged in pillow fights for $1 on the street and offered his back as a
"human sofa" for tired visitors. In San Francisco, he collected tips for
"pushing heavy tourists up the hills." Eventually he had 300 $1
bills, which he used to buy plane fare to Costa Rica. From there he
hitchhiked to Panama,
where he worked as a butler for the German ambassador.
To cross from Ushuaia,
Argentina, to Antarctica, he worked on a luxury cruise ship as an
assistant to the expedition leader. "You clean the boots of the tourists,
you help them on the ice, you put red flags around the penguin field, you help
refill the boats with gasoline," he said.
WORST JOB: Wigge's stint as a
porter carrying tourists' luggage in exchange for a trip to Machu Picchu, the
ancient Inca city in the Peruvian Andes, ended "in a bit of a mess. I was
the worst porter the Andes had ever
seen," he said.
The other workers were
accustomed to handling tents and meals for tourists along the 50-mile, five-day
route, then running ahead carrying 60 pounds of luggage on their backs in time
to set up the next campsite before the tourists arrived, all at 14,000-feet
elevations. But Wigge did not have the stamina to keep up.
"They said, 'This is not
funny, you cannot do this, we do not want to lose our clients,'" he
recalled. "I apologized." After two days, they put his luggage on
horses and allowed him to walk at a regular pace rather than staying behind and
running ahead to help with campsites.
VIDEO DIARY: Wigge kept a
"video diary" with the goal of eventually producing a TV series. To
film himself and collect footage that was high-enough quality for TV, Wigge
carried a Canon HDV 1080i camera with a good wide-angle lens and microphone. He
ended up with dozens of tapes, which were edited down to five 30-minute
segments.
He nearly lost the precious
tapes while staying with a German expat in Cuzco, Peru.
"The whole apartment burned down before we went to sleep," Wigge
said. But he was able to get his travel bag — including the videos and camera —
out, and looks back on the incident philosophically: "We are still
alive."
RETURN TRIP: Once he'd achieved
his goal of starting out with no money and completing a one-way trip to
Antarctica, he had no qualms about accessing a bank account for return fare to Germany.
ADVICE: "I would like to
motivate people, inspire people," he said. "If you're not too vain to
do something like pillow fighting or being a human sofa, you can barter your
way from something very small to something very big. Why not travel and be a
bit silly?"
For more inspiration, take a
look at Wigge's
website and self-published book, "How to Travel the World for Free: I
Did It, and You Can Do It, Too!"
Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2012/05/20/travel-world-for-free/#ixzz1vT8ACDsJ
Dear Mr Wigge.....I salute U !!
Ada Brani?? Let's Jom !!!!
