Juan Pablo Villarino on Travel and Trust

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Today I am very honored to be with Juan Pablo Villarino. He is from Argentina, otherwise his name would be pronounced Villarino. I have now had over 40 conversations with different guests, but there is only one of them I have envied, and that is Juan Pablo. He has sometimes been called the world's greatest hitchhiker. He also has a recent book. He has 4 books. The most recent now is out only in Argentina. He is looking for a publisher in the United States. It is called Hitchhiking in the Axis of Evil: By Thumb Through Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Juan Pablo, welcome.

Hi, Tyler. Thanks a lot for the invitation. Really honored to be here.

If you could just start by telling us, I mean, who are you and what have you been doing?

Okay. So I'm a travel writer. I have been busy in the last 13 years hitchhiking around the world in an attempt, let's say, to document hospitality. And this adventure has taken me across over 91 countries, including the United States, which is my last addition to the list.

And given what you do, do you ever think, well, why doesn't everyone do this? Have you come to the point where you see your way of life as a sort of default, as actually posing a question about the alternatives to mainstream culture and normal life with family, kids, rent, walk the dog? Or do you think it's just a strange niche taste that only you have?

I think that actually more and more people should choose their own place in society and their role. So I don't think this is for everyone, but I do believe I'm like The whole— a lot of messages I receive on social media has led me to think that a lot of people actually want this, you know, to have a much more nomadic lifestyle and to— or to redesign their own lifestyle. And that's pretty much what I am aiming to while trying to motivate my readers.

And is it that you think living this kind of life makes you happier, or it's a form of aspiration where you like the kind of person it will transform you into? And maybe it's actually in some ways tougher or more burdensome on you, but you want to be a different kind of person.

Ah, you mean like when this lifestyle would intrinsically make you happier?

Right. Or you simply think it's a better life.

I think it's the kind of life I desire and I have desired since I was a student. And I think like, you know, everyone should pursue his or her own dreams, but I don't think it's like a universal formula that should be exported like in a massive way. Then everyone should do this. But then if you look at a world map and when you look at a strange place like Kyrgyzstan or Greenland and then you feel like, you know, butterflies in your stomach, then you should pay attention to the signals and then go for it and not just pretend it's not happening.

And what's the single most concrete feature of this new life that has so drawn you in? Is it seeing new faces every day, the thrill of the unexpected, simply being able to walk so much, talking with drivers? What would it be?

I think the final— yeah, what's drawn me into this, it's the chance to have something to do at least with more and more different cultures each time. So, you know, when a country is mentioned on the news, call it Syria, Afghanistan, Romania, Norway, any country, and then you have something to recall, which is not abstract. It's not a tag or a flag, but you can recall in your memory, like, real people you have related with. And then I think you— I feel much more threaded with humanity and with mankind in the broader sense.

And living as a hitchhiker How much social freedom do you think you have on a permanent basis? So if you think of people in mainstream society, there's so much expected from them in terms of conformity at work, in the family. So you're out there on the road, but over time, is there a restriction of social freedom that sets in? Like the other hitchhikers expect you to be a certain way, your readers, your fans, they expect something on the Instagram account. Have you evolved into more social freedom or ended up just as constricted? Playing in a different box.

It's a nice question. I love that. It's always stereotypes. Actually, the reason why I travel is because I want to, in a way, dismantle the stereotypes that there are about certain nations, like Colombia or Muslim countries. But as well, there are stereotypes about people, not only about nations. And there is certainly stereotype about what type of life a hitchhiker should lead. So there's people actually having expectations on me. Actually, I don't think I fit with the stereotype. Like, if some people have described me in some newspapers as, oh, he leads like a nomadic life with no bills, no fixed direction, and no, you know, bills or taxes to pay. But I also have like a house, and I also, you know, have like a point of reference in the world, like where we have a place.

And that's in Argentina.

In Argentina.

In Mar del Plata.

It's actually in another city in San Nicolás because that's where my girlfriend comes from. So when we met, it was kind of a pact, you know, like, okay, we're going to live traveling, but whenever we are not on the road, I want to be near my family. So that was her condition for like being nomadic. So we live there, but we go back there only to write the books because we need our concentration, our space, our archive of notebooks and everything. But then we go back to the road and like 50% and 50%, you know, like one year or one year and a half traveling. Then we go back home like one year in order to start a book project. But yeah, the thing about stereotypes, like people would think, you know, they just would feel surprised. I am, for example, a philatelist. I stamp 19th century, I collect 19th century stamps. And that would be, I think, as far away as a stereotype from hitchhikers it can be. And then the people just expect you to be like a hippie without it. But I'm also attached to things, but I just decided to hitchhike around the world, not out of, economic condition or out of being poor. There was also a journalist who stated that, "Oh, he chose the way he wanted to be poor." It's not about that, you know.

You buy the stamps online or you hitchhike to places where you think you might want to buy stamps?

No, no, I think I buy online, but it's actually interesting to say that my first approach to world geography and history was through stamps when I was a kid. And then I have actually designed trips in order to fit with territories that I had learned about from stamps, collecting like old colonies in Africa and stuff like that.

What strategies do you employ so that drivers, indeed strangers, trust you more?

Okay, I think like as a rule of thumb, I always like to say that you stop cars with your smile and not with your thumb. So there are actually a lot of things you can do to improve your chances of getting a lift. It's not just like, you know, go there, stick out your thumb and get the ride. And I think like Reid definitely smiling as the car is passing, you know, it's a really important thing. And then there are like very subtle things that people wouldn't guess that have an impact and they do.

Like what?

Which ones? Yeah, tell us some. So for example, like it's like there's a driver has like averagely like 3 seconds to decide or 5 whether he's going to stop or not. You know, he sees you, he's driving maybe 80 miles an hour and then you just suddenly pop up. It's a lot of things going on unconsciously through his mind to decide whether he's gonna stop or not. So you have only these seconds to convey an image of trust. So then you have to do things. For example, one is smiling, the other one is— when you manage to get eye contact, then I reinforce, okay, I'm— let's say I'm thumbing, I'm showing my thumb, but I also switch my hand signal and I point the direction, I point the direction in which I'm going as I'm smiling. And this makes a more personalized link over the general thing you're already doing, which is thumbing, you know? So, and then the way you're dressed, the way your backpack is positioned.

How do you dress?

So I try always to be neutral. So I really don't think the road is a place to manifest your aesthetic principles. Like if you like, you know, dreadlocks and a lot of things.

So social conformity rears its head again.

Yeah, just a t-shirt and, you know, like normal, you know, cargo pants. So I guess neutral. I try to be as tidy as I can. And yeah, people pay attention to that, and that's a way to make them develop more trust in you.

In the 18th century, a French political writer, Montesquieu, he claimed that poorer peoples show more hospitality to strangers on average. Do you think he was right?

I think it has to do with many things, not only with economical factors. For example, if you go to countries like Ethiopia in Africa where you can find really poor people by our standards, and then you will not find or receive as much hospitality as I have received, for example, in Muslim countries like Iran or Syria. So this has to do with like the way or the place that interdependence has as a value in that society. And for example, in the Middle East, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with religion, but with geographical things, in the Middle East, I have found that people have been through millennia used to depend on each other because of the long distances and the living in a desert scenario where you could eventually need the help of your neighbors tomorrow, so you help them today. This I have found in the Middle East and the Muslim countries. And I wouldn't consider them poor, but I would put them in a middle scale because if we consider Africa as well, you know. But in general, people, countries which are not so far from, let's say, which they are used to share resources for whatever reason, being religious, Or B, because they were part of the communist bloc, which also developed some social structures in which sharing resources was very common. So then it's easy today to hitchhike in Romania or Poland. So there are many, many indicators or things that could make that vary. But in general, yeah, I could say that Montesquieu had a point, let's say.

And do you have a thought on why some of the societies that seem to show the most trust with respect to hitchhikers in other ways, perhaps superficial or or misguided, but seem to show lower levels of trust. So you mentioned Iraq as being a good country to hitchhike. Iraq is not known at the macro or political level for always having a high degree of trust. Do you have thoughts on that possible contradiction?

I think that the problem is that we perceive countries just because of what we heard on the news. So— or either we cannot— most people would only know about Iraq or Sudan, let's say Sudan. They would only know that it suffered a blockade, economical blockade and sanctions from the US in the late '90s. And then people would know about the Taliban in Afghanistan, about the war in Iraq, but then we never get to know about the real people living there under those flags. And that's what I'm trying to compensate with my travel literature. So I think, yeah, you can say it's a contradiction, but I would say it's the way that information is treated, stereotypes and the way the kind of news that the media like to show is always about either the wars or the things going on between leaders, but the normal people, they just never make it to the headlines.

And there are some published estimates you've offered how long it takes to get a ride in different places. If I may just quote, "So the quickest is listed as Iraq, 7 minutes on average. Next quickest is Jordan, 9 minutes on average. Then Ecuador, 10 minutes. Romania, 12 minutes. The slowest of them all seems to be Tibet, where your estimate is 3 hours, 16 minutes. Now, why is Tibet an outlier on the other side of that equation?

That's right. But the thing is, like, in the case of Tibet, there were so— I mean, vehicles were so scarce because it's just like a plateau with one road crossing it, and maybe you would see 10 vehicles a day.

Just not that many cars. It's not a lack of hospitality.

Exactly. Then you should consider different factors when you want to measure how good or bad hitchhiking is in a country. You shouldn't actually only take into consideration the waiting time, but you should consider the amount of cars that pass you during your hitchhiking. So that gives an estimate, but there are many factors that should be considered.

But in your 6 slowest, you have in that worst 6 Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark.

Oh yeah, Scandinavia.

With slow times, and those countries have plenty of cars. Why are they so slow?

That's amazing to be hitchhiking in Scandinavia. You see all this row of Volvo cars passing you by and they will never ever stop. I had talked to a Swedish friend of mine and she just said like, yeah, it would be, I wouldn't stop either. She said, because, because it's so cheap and affordable to have a car. Then if someone is hitchhiking and doesn't have a car, you would think he has second intentions and something wrong is going on here. What I think it happens is that somehow you know, our society has led us into, you know, you have your own house, your own— when you get out of the house, you just move into your little bit of moving private space into your car. And it's sometimes difficult to break that cycle and, you know, and be ready to share, to meet, to mix. And I think that's pretty much the norm in like Nordic societies. So yeah, it makes it a bit more a bit more difficult to hitchhike there.

In a typical year, how many months of the year are you out there hitchhiking?

So it's, uh, I wouldn't measure of how many months a year, but what happens is like we, Laura and I, we always do long trips.

That's your wife, Laura.

Yeah, Laura. That's right. For the last 8 years we have been traveling together and we always do long trips. Uh, that means that the shortest one together, it has been 8 months and the longest, like, uh, a year and a half. So each trip is made with the idea of making a book afterwards. So after the trip is done, then we go back home and start the book project, which normally takes like another year. So it's 50/50, I would say.

Yeah. Would you describe yourself as a workaholic? A workaholic hitchhiker?

I am. I am. People would be so surprised to see how much time there is involved on the backstage, behind the screen, because yeah, you hitchhike and you have books and you have a blog, but oh, the blog is so time-consuming. You know, when I'm not traveling, I literally spend like 10 hours a day working either by, you know, making new posts, posting on social media, preparing projects for publishing houses. And it's like an 8 to 10 hours routine. So yeah, I would qualify as a workaholic, I guess.

But you don't always travel with your wife. Is that correct? Some trips with her, some trips alone. How do you divvy up which trip is with her, which trip is not with her?

So long trips, we do them together always, like, because it requires like a year and a half. Like, our last trip together was Africa, from Egypt to South Africa on the eastern side, going like through Sudan, Ethiopia, and so on. That we did together, of course. But then after that, like, I know I came here and she's going to Thailand next month. Or she, for example, like last year she went to Iceland with a friend and hitchhiked around Iceland and they had some project to do, some challenges like the audience were suggesting her and her friend challenges to do while traveling. So we do these little side projects on our own. I was in Cuba as well 2 years ago, but the long trips we do, we always do them together.

So your wife is doing some trips on her own. Your general lifestyle, how much harder do you think it is for a solo woman to do what you've been doing? It could be your wife, but there are plenty of other women who do or might want to do this. What would you say to that?

Yeah, it's a good question. There have been, and I know actually some of my inspirations have been girls traveling alone by hitchhiking. Like one of them is Kinga Free Spirit, which is like a nickname, like a Polish girl who hitchhiked around the world from '98 to 2003 and like did amazing stuff. I, I, I would barely dare to do like crossing from Burkina Faso to Niger on a camel, on the camelback, you know, without— not through an official limit and not through an official border crossing and amazing stuff like that. And yeah, I know a couple of girls who have hitchhiked across Africa alone.

And done fine?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and done fine. So that doesn't mean that it's a 100% pink experience in which everything is going to be fine. You definitely have to know your limitations and you know your own template and it must not be your first trip for sure. But I think that the general difficulties of traveling as a woman are not really different from the general difficulties of living as a woman in our society.

Right. What's the deepest, darkest secret you've ever heard from someone who has picked you up?

Okay, so there's something called taxi cab effect. And it translates into people telling you all sorts of secrets after giving you a ride, you know, like from the most simple things, like someone picking me up, like it was like a rural worker in Argentina and telling me, "Hey, you know, I have just been with another woman, which is not my wife." And it was just jumping around and telling me all details I didn't want to hear. But then I had like all sorts of people. I remember a truck driver in Spain who took me all the way to Italy. That was like one day and a half of driving. And he had been in the Foreign Legion and he had been in the Iraqi War, in the first Iraq, in the Gulf War. And he had all sorts of traumas that the Spanish health system hadn't been able to solve, it seems. And he was, you know, every time he would go down the track, it would be a chance to fight with someone. He wouldn't be able to establish normal relations. And after a day and a half of traveling, when I left, he was just crying over the wheel because he had been able to to build a relationship with someone inside the truck one day and a half.

Yes.

And it was so difficult for him then to see me leave. But I think the most interesting one in the list was an Italian guy who he didn't give me a ride, but he hosted me in his house. And then after many bottles of wine, he acknowledged he had been in jail for trafficking drugs between Naples and Milan. And that he had done terrible things. Like an hour later, he confessed he had killed someone and that he had a bit of his past that he wanted to, like a physical thing from his past that he needed to get rid of. And 5 minutes later, he presented me with a knife.

Yes.

And so it was basically a piece of evidence of a murder.

And that was the murder knife. Yeah. And what did you do with it?

I felt that I had to carry it because he needed to to get away with that. And if I could help in any way for his rehabilitation, because he had legally already paid for that anyway, you know, he had been in jail for that. And so I felt I had to take it with me. And I did.

The American author Jack Kerouac in his book On the Road, he suggested that maybe the real problem with hitchhiking is you feel obliged to entertain your driver on and on. And this can be quite monotonous. Do you ever find this to be the case?

And well, sometimes you can get bored, but I think it's— I mean, that's the reason why I hitchhike in the first place, you know, to mix and meet people. Because it has never been a matter of money. Like, I do hitchhike in India or places where transportation is so cheap. So sometimes it can be boring to repeat over and over your story or where you come from, what are you doing, you know, in each car you board. But, you know, it pays off because then people have such amazing stories to share. And it's actually like my default settings, my Typical approach to explore a country is hitchhiking. That's why I do it. So I think it's, it's worth.

And what's the biggest danger you face?

I think definitely I don't have to think too much about this. It was in Afghanistan because actually daring to hitchhike across the country posed a threat because there were, even though my trip was meant to show that 99.9% of the people there were just like nice people, then I knew there was still the 0.1% that could be harmful. And then when getting close to Kabul, I was hitchhiking actually with an American guy who was a volunteer in Bamiyan province where the big Buddhas used to be carved before the Taliban attacked there. And he was so excited about my hitchhiking thing and he said, "I want to join you." And I said, "Yeah, you can, but remember that your life here is much more valuable than mine. They could take you as a hostage, but not really to me because Argentina will not pay any rescuer." And they know that. But we hitchhiked to go to Kabul and we got a ride with an Afghan police jeep.

Yes.

They were patrolling. So they stopped and say, guys, we can take you to Kabul, but you have to know that we are the target. The last patrol we sent here was attacked by the Taliban with a rocket-propelled grenade and everyone died in the ambush. And now we're going to see if the territory is better. So you can come with us or you can do the same but walking. And I say, okay, well, we should better stay in the car. At least it's faster. And next 2 hours were the most difficult hours of my life. You know, these guys were with the AK-47 with a finger on the trigger, ready to fight. And they told us actually to have a look at the roofs of the houses because they were expecting like snipers. And so, you know, suddenly I was like in an army scenario that has nothing to do with my life. But I think definitely that was like the most— the closer I was to a potentially fatal situation.

Do you feel there's something you understand about terrorism in say Iraq or Afghanistan that most other people would not?

I guess that first of all, people would unfortunately relate just terrorism to the names of these countries and they would miss the broader picture, which is the whole people living there. But then I can also understand how terrorists come to being because also being in these countries, which they have sometimes. I mean, in a way, they are absolutely open to foreigners, but at the same time, it's an easy ground in which to recruit people because they are overpopulation. Religiously speaking, it could be very— I think Islam needs an instance of self-criticism. I think these societies haven't been able to go through a process of updating and allowing self-criticism. So I think that in this sense, they are a bit closed-minded. So I think that it's easy, it has been easy for insurgent groups to recruit people. And yeah, I have seen the social mechanisms behind it and the way they really— like some time ago, I was in Egypt and there was a school and the motto of the school was that they wanted to produce good citizens and good Muslims that they would be able to repeat the Quran by heart. So as long as they keep, you know, their goals of education as being able to repeat the Quran by heart, then it's always leaving a gate open for, you know, people who are so fervent about it.

If you consider your longer trip, say the trip through Africa, and I were to suggest a hypothesis that every longest trip has at its core some kind of central place or event or a kind of emotional heart, maybe not planned in advance, probably not planned in advance, but at the end of the trip, you realize this emotional heart of the trip is there. And if it's not there, you did something wrong. Agree or disagree?

I agree, definitely. Yeah, there are moments, peak moments in which, you know, you really feel the whole mystic of the trip embodying there. And yeah, and Africa had several of these moments.

What would be the central core of your Africa trip if you had to say?

Well, there would be more than one, but I guess that Tanzania, Tanzania, or I don't know how to say it in English, Tanzania.

Yes, Tanzania.

Okay, yeah, Tanzania was one because there I did find an Africa proud to be Africa. It was a bit more different from the situation I found in South Africa in which they're having so many tensions, ongoing tensions between groups and ethnic groups. But I really I love Tanzania, but now I recall a moment in which it was like a very dense moment because it shows that you can learn from everyone in these kind of trips. It was in Malawi, and we were looking for a place to camp outside the capital in Lilongwe. It was raining like hell. We asked a couple of people, they didn't give us any solution. And then we arrived to a place which looked like a You know, these places where they organize, like a venue where they organize children's birthday parties?

Yes.

Okay, the place was closed, but there was a caretaker. This guy was 25 years old. He was a refugee from Congo. He had crossed all Tanzania on foot to reach there, crossing rivers infested with crocodiles, being chased by Tanzanian police who wanted just bribes from him. And so he had managed to reach there and find this little job. And he allowed us to sleep in this house. He was taking care of. So that was the inversion of the logic. The refugee was giving us, he was the provider for us that night. And the interesting thing was that all the situations he had to go through in the war and so on, it hadn't turned, converted into resentment, but into love. The guy told me first that mountains, he said this sentence that I can recall. He said, "Mountains are not meant to to encounter, to meet, but men are meant to meet. And that's why he opened the house to us. And then he said, we were talking about the international situation, and he said, "Oh, about Mr. Trump, I understand him." He said, "If I could tell something to him in person, I would tell him that I understand him because he's not a bad guy," he said. And I want to say his words here because he would only dream about coming to the US, but I feel like a messenger now. And he said that he understood he was not a bad guy, but that he hadn't gone through any hardship in his life, and that's why his heart was so hard. And then I felt, "Okay, this guy," I mean, you can learn from anyone in these trips. This guy is a caretaker, he was a refugee, and now he's talking like a Buddha in Malawi. So I feel like when you have these little encounters with random people, that's when the trip becomes really meaningful.

My favorite song about hitchhiking is probably Marvin Gaye, Hitchhike. Do you have a favorite song about hitchhiking?

I don't think I can recall any song about hitchhiking. Probably Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking of Roger Waters. Yeah, that would be.

And try also Vanity Fair, Hitching a Ride. That's fun.

Okay.

Now you told us this is actually your first time in the United States.

That's right.

It's your 91st country. Is that right?

It is because I was actually for a week in Puerto Rico like 3 years ago. Okay.

Yes and no.

Officially the US, but let's say it's the first time in the mainland.

And how long have you been here?

So less than 48 hours.

What has surprised you the most so far?

What has surprised me? Well, looking at the suburban areas from the plane was quite interesting because they look—

The which areas?

Suburban housing states and areas because they look as a Latin American textile pattern. It's very strange that the icon of the US looks like an Aboriginal art piece. But then, yeah, I would basically, how the city, I'm in Arlington now, how the city gets depopulated at night after 8:00 PM, there's no, very few people on the streets, at least in the downtown, nobody lives there. It's just like offices, blocks, and buildings. So this is a bit curious for me because I'm used to living in a more lived-in city, you know?

Argentina is almost the polar opposite in this regard. Buenos Aires at midnight can be quite teeming with people.

Yeah, sure. I mean, you can get out of the street 1 AM, go to a kiosk and buy a drink and whatever you want. Yeah, sure. That's Latin America. It's like that.

Now, in a sense, you started this journey, if I understand your history correctly, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Yeah.

How did Belfast come to pass?

So that was pretty random, actually. I was a student of psychology in Argentina before I decided to take this nomadic lifestyle. At some point, I took the decision. I decided it was much more consistent even with the subject I was studying, it was much more consistent to go and see history unfolding in front of my nose than just staying at university. But then a family, I used to have a summer job at a hotel, just like a bellboy or receptionist. And there was a family from Northern Ireland who I had talked to them and I had explained them I wanted to travel around the world, but I wanted to save up some money to start, to get started. 'Cause in those years, Argentina was going through its worst economic crisis. Right. All the banks had fled the country. Taking the savings of the people with them was like a chaos. And I was the only weird guy dreaming about unattaching things and going around the world. And it was a pretty strange thing. People were trying to get stability, not trying to get rid of their stability to travel. But so this family from Northern Ireland, actually, they offer me, if you ever come over here, you have a place to stay and we can keep you going until you find a job. And that was what I did in year 2003. I moved to Belfast, actually to a small town near Belfast, found a job in another hotel as receptionist, and then slowly started to move jobs and worked there for like a year and a half before I felt I had small budget for the first year of the trip.

And given that most people in the two Irelands are no longer formally religious, if you had to describe in your vision like the core cultural difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, What would that be?

Well, I couldn't even tell you the difference between like Eastern Belfast and Western Belfast because that's summarized there. West Belfast is typically a stronghold of the Republican, you know, Catholic, let's say like the Irish who are trapped there but would like to join the Republic of Ireland while North and East Belfast are like Unionist, which support being attached to Great Britain. And of course, like It's interesting because actually the family that gave me the chance to go there, they were British. You know, they were not pro-Irish. So I like that because it breaks like the stereotype and it's a good starting point of the biography of this trip, which is trying to dismantle stereotypes. So they were not on the side they were supposed to be. But then I met great people from both sides, but mostly my friends tended to be from West Belfast. So they were.

From a hitchhiking point of view, how do the two Irelands differ, if at all?

No, they don't. I think the same way they share a rugby team, they share their position in the hospitality ranking.

Okay. Now, as we know, you're from Argentina, and Argentina has its own history as being a victim of colonial occupation. There's still an ongoing issue with Malvinas, the Falkland Islands, as we say in English. Your background as an Argentinian, how do you feel that has shaped your understanding of Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq?

Well, actually, it helped my understanding and their understanding because it was very easy. It's actually easy to travel around the world with an Argentinian passport, and it's good because people feel empathy because you also come from a, let's say, developing country. Or we are like in the middle. We are not like a rich country. We're not a poor one, but we know what it's like to live in a place where the traffic lights don't work and people just cross with the red cross. So yeah, it has made easier to relate with people from Africa, for example, when I was explaining that we also had a colonial rule in our country. They were so surprised about that. And that was a good point of connection with people.

You've written, I believe, that Colombia is one of your favorite countries to travel.

Indeed.

What makes Colombia so special?

Colombia, ah, Colombia. People, I mean, they have poetry when they speak. I mean, you can speak with anyone there. It doesn't matter which walk of life he does belong to. Can be a coffee collector, can be the owner of company. They will have the same cautious way of speaking. And even though it's not actually easy to hitchhike in Colombia because of all the problems they have had with, you know, with guerrillas and kidnapping, they are a bit cautious at the time of giving you a ride. But once you are there and you are talking to people, I mean, that's, um, I really wish everyone could spend a couple of days a month in Colombia to take all the stress away.

You know, you've also cited Transnistria as one of your favorites. Depending whose side you're on, that's either part of Moldova or a breakaway republic from Moldova. Why is that so interesting?

I like Transnistria. I wouldn't put it in a rank like, oh, the better, the best, one of the best countries in terms of hospitality. But I, as a traveler who is obviously trying to also collect the difficult stamps in his collection, then of course breakaway republics, they are like a very precious price, you know.

They may not be here for much longer, right?

Yeah, yeah. So you have to go there if you can. That was the same case with Somaliland in the last African trip. But the special thing about Transnistria, I think it was bizarre, the place in itself. I mean, it's the only place in the world, I guess, where you can order sushi and sit down in a restaurant to eat sushi only 100 meters away from a Lenin statue, which is still standing. So I think it embodies a lot of contradictions in itself.

Now, here's a question I also asked Chris Blattman. I asked Charles Siman. If we think about the New World, it seems to me that systematically a lot of countries in the New World are much more dangerous than countries in the other hemisphere. If you think about Colombia earlier on, not so much now, you think about murder rates in Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, many parts of Brazil, there does seem to be a difference in the level of violence. Gun deaths in the United States, compared to, say, Western Europe. Why is this? It's not just one country. There's something about the New World that makes some significant parts of it more violent. What is that?

Well, probably because in our evolution as territories, we have had violence as a part of it much more recently in the timeline. I mean, we were conquered by means of powder. So I think that's probably in the genetic of our culture. I guess not. I hope not. But it's interesting what you said about the shootings here in the US. It's something that Of course, as an outsider and as someone who is on his first visit to the country, it would be not proper to give a very deep reflection on that. But I'm going back to the hitchhiking issue. There's some sort of relation I think I can establish. I think when you hitchhike, you are trying to establish social links with random people. But then I feel that in a very developed society like the US, where people have been— how to say— the people, that the value of independence has been stressed over interdependence too much, and much more than in Latin America, for example, or even in Europe. And then I feel that when you are absolutely independent and you don't need help from your neighbors, then also no one is needing your help. So then how do you feel that you are needful for your community. I think that we are losing— that probably something happening here that some people, just some people, don't have the chance to show, demonstrate their value to the community. And this kind of leads to social anomia.

Yes, anomia.

Anomia.

Anomia, yes.

Yeah. And that may be the case when you have someone climbing to the roof of a building and shooting people.

That's the best answer to the question I've heard so far. Consider the South American nation of Chile. Now, there's a semi-famous, you might call it rivalry, between Argentina and Chile. And if you're hitchhiking in Chile—

I love hitchhiking in Chile, actually.

It's a beautiful country. A Chilean driver picks you up. Do you in any way feel that rivalry when you connect with him and he learns you're from Argentina, hears that you're from Argentina, or is that just not at all present?

No, actually, no. First, I love hitchhiking in Chile. It has a very low waiting time as well.— this rarely, actually it never happened. People are really, really like— I remember being in a hiking, some kind of hiking refuge deep in the mountains in Chile, but there was a road and then a truck came and Laura and I were camping inside this little hut and the truck driver stopped and gave us— they took like a cooking kitchen and started cooking food for us because we had been under the rain for like a couple of days. No, people, I really had nice experiences in Chile. But even if we are talking about supposed rivalries, I once got a ride with a guy that was from the Malvinas or Falkland Islands. The guy used to be the coach of the soccer team of the Malvinas, of the Falklands. And the interesting thing was like, you know, okay, it's the first time I see a guy from the Malvinas in person. I mean, we are supposed to what, kill each other? And then he was also like, oh, Argentina. Okay. What do we do now? And we're in a car. We were in Britain. And so the first thing we say, hey, would you enjoy, would you have a pint? Yeah, let's go. We stop the car. We drink, you know, we drink our problems away. You know, it was a way of healing individually the problems of our countries. And I like that.

Where is the food the best?

Food. I actually like a lot, like in the Balkans where people, because I like the Balkans because it's Europe. But it has a lot of Ottoman influence, which means they are like having fresh ingredients in their food is like a priority for them, the way they have this breakfast with olive and this yogurt, but naturally processed yogurts. And so I like that because nowadays you have like genetically modified food, everything you can get in the store is like poison and stuff like that. And I like this middle point like Bulgaria and Albania.

Macedonia is for me the best food in the Balkans.

Macedonia, yeah, not far from there. Definitely all the region, I think Romania, definitely. Yeah, I like that.

Which country has the most beautiful women?

Okay, I should go for Lithuania.

The most beautiful men?

I don't have an opinion for that.

Okay. The knowledge one gains from travel, it's very strong, it's far-reaching, it makes one more cosmopolitan, maybe instills some wisdom in us. But what biases does it bring to us? Just as people who don't travel have biases. If you've traveled a lot, what biases are you likely to end up with that you need to guard against precisely because you've traveled so much?

Let's say, um, that's a hard question to answer actually. Like a bias is like something you are conditioned by your trip, you mean? And then you kind of, things you take for granted, let's say.

You start taking new things for granted.

Probably. Yeah. That's the thing. Probably when you, you know, you just go to a country and the people are just ticking off the bucket list things, just like sightseeing. And probably I've seen like 100 Buddhist temples already and ruins and that. So yeah, I feel that that makes me focus much more on very, very specific things or on people and not on like sightseeing and stuff like that. But that as a traveler, I mean, but in other areas, I couldn't recall now, probably there are, but—

Do you think travel makes people more conservative. I don't mean that in the political sense of any party, but conservative in the literal adjectival sense that you've seen many different ways of life. You see that in different ways they can work, or many people can be happy within them. And tolerance is one half of that, but a kind of conservatism or acceptance is another part. You think that's a bias of travel, a benefit of travel, not the case?

You mean like, uh, if you— okay, you have seen like a lot of countries in which people are striving to get a to make a living. And then you mean that that would cause you to accept that?

That you've seen the possibility that people can be happy in many different settings.

Yeah, I think that definitely makes you stronger, stronger in the sense that it helps you to be happier with less, I think. And also it helps you to not take for granted what you have at home because when we were in Africa the last year and then nobody had a tap on his house where they would just, you know, switch it and have running water. They would have to walk to the next little river. Normally it was the women doing that, and they would have to walk like 1 mile to get a big full load full of water to their house. We all have taps with running water, so it really helps you not to take things for granted.

While preparing for this talk, I looked up quotations about travel. I like to do that.

Okay.

And I was shocked at how ordinary or banal all of them were. It was, oh, travel opens your horizons, travel makes you a new person. Arguably true, but they seem so trite and uninteresting. So I guess a question I have for you is, what is it about travel that no one else will tell us?

What is it about travel that no—

Getting past the trite and the banal, which may well be true, but what will no one else tell us?

I think the problem is that traveling, and even our role as bloggers, has fallen for some people only into, you know, promoting destinations and you fall into the touristic aspect of it. While I try to enhance and stress like the way travel can change the way you relate to the whole planet. And this has also like a responsibility because, you know, the way the more, the more you travel and the more you get out of the abstract tax and the more you're able to relate to real people, then you start feeling empathy. For real people from Colombia, Albania, Iraq, wherever. And then you are less prone to subscribe to any or to vote to the wrong government in your home country, which is then going to declare war or sanctions on these countries. So I think traveling has this little twist that can make you a more aware person. And then you have this responsibility of transmitting this at home and in your— at whatever— in your own levels of influence. So I think that's the most interesting potential traveling has.

If you're going to visit a new country or region where you've never been, other than simply going, what kind of preparation do you do in advance?

Yeah, the fact that I hitchhike doesn't mean that I leave everything at random. So people sometimes tend to think that I will just land there and start hitchhiking randomly in any direction, which is not the case. So let's say I always travel by hitchhiking. That's like a rule. But of course, I always read a lot about the country, about its history, and I try to identify regions, regions that will, that have like their own identity within that country, because that's normally the case. Like if you go to Ethiopia and then you have like the Omo Valley and then you have like the highlands and everything changes between each region. So I try to read a lot of history about the country, but then I would stick to my like standard approach, which is choosing small roads, minor roads, I'm visiting random towns along them. And that would be like my average strategy of trying to get to the stories and to the people.

Now, in 2 weeks, I'm going to Ethiopia for 11 days. Given that you've been there and done some research, what advice or tips would you give me for my trip?

For Ethiopia and for 11 days?

11 days. So I'll have some time, not enough time to go around the whole country, but—

I think I would definitely stick to the north. Which is like the place where you have like Gondar, which is like the— it used to be the imperial seat of power of the kings, of the emperors, of the Ethiopian emperors. I would go to Gondar to see the castles and to understand all this history and lineage of the Ethiopian Empire. I would definitely put Lalibela, you know, the rock-carved churches, the underground churches of Lalibela, which is something amazing, you know, that You should actually be there on a Sunday because then you can even— doesn't matter your religious position, you should go and witness a mass service there. Yeah, I think Lalibela, Gondar, the monasteries in Bahar Dar.

Yes. And conceptually, what should I understand about the country and its cultures that maybe I don't know right now, never having been?

Oh, get ready. Get ready for Ethiopia. It has been one of the most difficult countries for me to hitchhike. But if you're going to be there 11 days and if you will have some things already organized—

I will use plane tickets rather than hitchhiking, just so you know.

Okay, so then you will not be hit so much, but you will be hit.

Hit by what?

People is kind of— people in Ethiopia, you know, it's not so huge country with 90 million people. It's a bit crowded. And I felt that they had a history. I mean, Ethiopian is a very interesting case because they combine the proud of an empire. I mean, they're so proud the empire has never been beaten or conquest, just leaving aside 6 hours of Italian presence during the Second World War. But besides that, they had never been conquered and they have their proud, it's like so much there up, you know. When we went to Kenya after Ethiopia and we were telling Ethiopians our next step, they said, "Oh, you're going to Africa? Oh, they're so different from us." You know, like we are Ethiopians and they consider themselves like a different lineage. So you should be ready for that. In contradiction with all the poverty they have. So it's like this mix of so staunch, proud people with a very, very challenging present. They're not able to identify it.

I have a few questions about Argentina, if I may. Yeah. The elites of Argentina, wealthy, highly educated people, do they understand their own country or are they insulated and removed from it? No, no.

I think they understand, but that doesn't mean that they can feel empathy for them or that they want to do something to improve it. I mean, of course they know Who are they governing? But they are so far away from it. Our country is an interesting case in Latin America because it's composed of a high percentage of people who descend from European migrations. So same scenarios in the United States. I mean, probably if you were European in the 19th century and you wanted to emigrate, your choices were New York or Buenos Aires. The most probable place would be those. Probably Australia as well, but in the rest of Latin America. So that made Argentina very complex demographically speaking. So then we have a lot of provinces which are far, like a world away from the standard of living of Buenos Aires, like the north and the far north. And definitely our elites just don't get there. And that's the areas of the country where development never reaches there.

Why is Argentina today not as wealthy as Australia? As you probably know, it was in the 1920s.

Yeah, yeah, it was. It used to be like in the top 10 richest countries in the world. And that's actually why my grandparents, no, actually my grandparents went there in the 1920s. Like I still have the ship ticket, the steamship ticket in which they came.

Where did they leave from?

Italy.

What part?

They came from Sicily.

Okay.

But normally they would take the ship from Genoa, which is like the standard place where you would board the ship. And actually my family's half Italian, the same as most, like probably 50% of people in Argentina. That's like the average case. Sorry, your question was why we're not as rich as Australia. Yeah, I think there was a turn in our history somewhere in the late '60s, yeah, where the military governments really had an economic agenda which was not set by our own people, but by international entities such as the IMF and the World Bank. So I think we owe a big deal to that for changing the tide.

Mm-hmm. To what extent do you understand Argentina as being a kind of Italian country or offshoot rather than Hispanic in the sense that we might consider much of the rest of Latin America?

I think the richness of the country relies actually on the complexity because you couldn't say Argentina is a European country. We have an important percentage of the population who descends from Europeans, but we— these people also mixed with the original inhabitants of our land. I think it happened similarly in the US in the way that you also had your original people living here, which were gradually moved west. Well, then it happened with us in Argentina the same that happened here. Most of their culture was erased, but those who stayed, they combined and they made the society we have today. So it's definitely a mix and it's not like a European country, though some people like to see that as, "Oh, we are elite, we are different, we are better." We're just different, but we're not better.

Are you optimistic about Argentina?

I think we have survived so many crises that I think we still have the wood to stand new. Actually, now, as we talk now, there's a huge climate of uncertainty and the exchange rate with the dollar has switched like 10% in in 2 days. But yeah.

This is May we're speaking, and it fell about 10% last week for the listeners. But you are optimistic.

I think I'm optimistic, yeah, in the long run, but not in the present government we have now. I'm not optimistic at all about the present government we have now.

Are you optimistic about Pope Francis?

Well, the church hasn't really changed in like 2,000 years. I think they just hold a romantic and symbolic position. So I don't see They're not fighting any battle I can ostensibly see, so I cannot be— I don't know over what I have to be optimistic or not. I just find it funny that we have a pope from our country. But yeah.

Who's your favorite author from Argentina and why?

I like two authors actually, which people tend to consider contradictory. One is Julio Cortázar, which I love, especially— oh, how do you translate Rajuela?

Hopscotch.

Hopscotch. Yes.

—One of my favorite novels. —Yeah, definitely.

I love Hobsbawm. And the other writer is Borges. —Those are also my two favorites from your country. —Yeah, I like the way they just complement each other. I like Cortázar because he mixes the intellectual game of writing with the very bohemian sense of his lifestyle when he was in Paris. So that probably inspired me a lot when taking the decision to live as a wandering artist.

And if you had to tell a person who had traveled a lot, understood something about the world, but they had never been to Argentina before and they had 2 weeks, how would you outline the ideal trip through Argentina for them? And what should they not miss other than the obvious? Well, yes, they go to Buenos Aires, they go to Iguazú, but what else?

Yeah, that's the thing. Everyone wants to tick the list, you know, the bucket list. So probably I would add the glaciers, the Perito Moreno glaciers in the south. Yes. Because Patagonia is an extensive place full of wonderful scenarios. But definitely you should at least eat an asado, you know, our barbecues. Yes. Which we call asado. That's like a typical Argentinian experience. And where is that best in the country? Yeah, you have to meet local friends and do it on a Sunday with local people. I mean, you can't go to a restaurant. You can go to a restaurant and ask for, you know, the best steak they can produce. But you're gonna just be seated there in a restaurant alone. But there's a whole social ritual around preparing the barbecue, the asado. And that's something that will make you understand a lot of things about Argentinian culture, you know, people speaking about soccer results and so on, politics. And so yeah, that should be something that shouldn't be missed.

And what's the best place to visit in the north of Argentina?

In the north? So definitely it's a— I love the northwest. Which is also the grounds in which randomly I happened to take the decision of becoming nomadic. So it's Salta province in the Calchaquí Valleys. That's where in 2002 I kind of had this insight and I said, okay, yeah, I should go for this.

You think of your own future for yourself. What is it you're planning next?

Okay, you mean in the short term or like my retirement? So the short term, I think like I, Just keep doing what I'm doing now. As I said, like—

So you will write more books and take more long trips.

That's something that is definitely going to happen. I think like the next move is trying to make the books available in the US or in the UK, because I feel that's a place where the books are necessary even more than in my home country, because that's where decisions are being made. And that's my whole concept of travel literature is to try it to change people's views and make them have empathy and also affect the decisions they take in life. So I would, you know, that would be like my next big challenge to get published in the US. But as regards lifestyle, I think I will continue making long trips and publishing books, that's for sure.

Yeah. And in the longer term, what is next for you?

In the longer term, I think it's, you know, that when I made this decision of traveling, for life, one of the things I was afraid was, of course, this economic stability. Yes. People were asking me, okay, but what are you going to do in the long run? Okay, you can do this because you're young, but what are you going to do when you are 40? And the thing is, I'm already 40, but they were asking me this when I was 20. And they were forecasting, oh, when you're 30, you're going to understand, you should have kids and this. And then I turned 30 and now I turn 40 and I keep doing the same stuff. I think Oscar Wilde said that the only way not to not to get old was to continue repeating the same mistakes. So he will be proud of me. But when I took this decision, I kind of imagined, okay, what's the worst possible scenario? What can the worst happen to me? And in that time, my books were not like they are now. They were handmade photocopy books, just a bunch of A4-sized papers stapled together. And I would sell them around in bars and hostels. I just decided, "Okay, it cannot get worse than that." I mean, if the worst possible scenario is I will be like an old hippie going around Southeast Asia, sharing inspiration with the younger travelers and making a living out of it, welcome. I mean, I can go for that. It would look nice in my biography. So after that, then I never again had like fears of the future of retirement.

Obviously, you're managing to persist as it is, but do you ever think how your business model might evolve over time?

It evolved a lot already, actually. Tell us. So as I said, this started as photocopy books, just like 50 to 100 pages. Like when I published— well, publish is a very generous word for going to a photocopy place and ordering 50 copies of these. It's all publishing.

We write blogs, right? Everything is publishing.

So when I first wrote the book, I had just finished my 2-year trips from Ireland across Middle East and Iran, Afghanistan, and I arrived to Southeast Asia. I took a rest there. I made a pause and started writing the book. In the first format, it was like 100 pages photocopied book, and I would walk around the streets of Bangkok and the beaches in Thailand to sell it to other travelers. And when I came back to Argentina, I decided to try to get it published properly. So the first thing I did was like expanding the book to like 200 pages, go to a printing place so it wasn't photocopied anymore. But I was still self-publishing and selling it in person. And then over the time, so I was invited to a book fair with my own self-published books, and I managed to sell a lot of books because there was a bookstore that had a little space, and I was with my backpack and a big world map showing my route. It was very curious, and I had my Afghan hat with me, So the first thing people would see when they entered the book fair was this weird guy with an Afghan hat and a backpack selling these little books. So it was a success. And then the big publishing houses from Buenos Aires noticed that, okay, which was the best-selling book in Mar del Plata's book fair? What's this Hitchhiking the Axis of Evil? Who is this guy? I mean, he doesn't even have a publisher. So then I was published by El Nuevo Extremo and RBI Publishing Houses in Argentina and Spain respectively. And I stayed with LA 7 years. But during those 7 years, social media really changed the way artists can promote their products. So in Argentina, at least, I decided to, even though I had contracts to publish my second book, which was Caminos Invisibles or Invisible Roots, even though I had offers, Laura and I decided to self-publish it because people could directly ask the book from us. So we didn't need a middleman. That is effective for like a middle-size market like Argentina, but probably wouldn't be the case like in the US or the UK or countries which are not like my stronghold for followers. But that really changed a lot. Like really the decision of switching from published books with a large publishing house to self-publishing through social media afforded us to have like a better standard of living. That was definitely the case. But now it's again the term of finding a partner in a publishing house if we want to expand to new markets.

Could you imagine doing a big long trip through the United States and maybe Canada, or is that logistically too difficult and too expensive? Because hitchhiking was much more popular here, say in the 1960s, than it is today.

No, I think it would be definitely possible. Like, people tend to think, which is normal of course, that the more expensive a country is, then the most difficult or expensive it will be to travel there. But the interesting thing is that, for example, in a country like Norway, which is probably even more expensive than the US. Sure, much more. Yeah, I think there I have my record. I only spent $30 in 22 days because I think also in these kind of countries, first of all, like food in supermarkets is never expensive. And then you normally always receive help from people and people also because they have hitchhiked before or they have heard about it. So it's not even necessarily related with the fact that they still hitchhike or not because no one else is hitchhiking nowadays, you know, like in Norway or even here, even though here it's part of the culture, let's say in the '60s. But no, I think it would be definitely be doable.

And after you leave here, Arlington, Virginia, What is your very next country other than Argentina? Okay.

So my next planned trip, you mean? Yes. I think in the long, well, not long term, but next year we want to go back to Africa because we really loved Africa. Where? Tanzania. Yes. Yeah. That was the place. But I think now I would like to do, there's a trip I would like to do to a place called Kaliningrad, which is a Russian exclave in mainland Europe.

Königsberg, it used to be called in German.

It's where Immanuel Kant lived. That's where Kant lived.

Exactly. I've always wanted to go there.

Exactly. It's on my list. And what I want to do is actually to get 19th century maps in order to go from like Berlin to Königsberg or Kaliningrad, following the road of old towns which used to have German names, but now they have Lithuanian, Polish, or Russian names. And to see what is left from that time. I have seen there are like ruined palaces and ruined Lutheran churches. So I want to check that out. And I want to play with this thing of traveling with a 19th century map.

It sounds wonderful. My very last question, totally obscure, but tell me, why should I visit Suriname? I've long been curious, but what exactly is there that I will find of interest? Suriname. You've been there. I haven't. I said at the beginning, I envy you, and that's one reason why.

Okay. So Suriname is a must, I think, for any person who feels, who wants to explore a pleasant destination. I mean, if you want to explore a place in this world, everything is exploring, but Suriname is a place. First of all, people in South America don't even know anything about Suriname. And the amazing thing is they are probably the only Hindu country in South America. A huge percentage of their population descends from people who were brought as a cheap labor force from either Java by the Dutch or by the British from India. So the people from India, they brought their religion with them. Some of them are Muslim, but some of them are also Hindu. So you are traveling on the main road in Suriname and you would see 20-foot-tall statue of Shiva, you know, and then you will arrive to a town and people are eating, having Javanese food. So it's definitely a melting pot of places that you wouldn't expect in South America.

Again, I'm with Juan Pablo Villarino or Juan Pablo Villarino. He's the author of 4 books, most notably Hitchhiking in the Axis of Evil. Juan Pablo, thank you very much. We all look forward to much more from you in the future.

Thanks a lot, Tyler, for the opportunity. And yeah, just last words for the audience, every dream is given to you with the power to make it come true, so go for it.

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