In the first part, we learned some interesting things about our travel couple. About how childhood desires can be realized and how coronavirus messed with their plans. Now more about the fact that Slovenians are pretty lucky when it comes to obtaining visas, and why our couple are volunteers.
Well, Asian. Last month in Bali, we really enjoyed and ate at restaurants several times a day, and not only do we still dream of 'mie goreng', but we already dream of eating it again.
Well, that wasn't hard! Slovenians do not need as many visas as citizens of some other countries. The only visa we really had to arrange before traveling was the visa for the first destination – Cuba. Well, a funny story is around this visa (although it didn't seem like that at the time) – just before Milan, we found out that Sandra's visa stayed at home in the scanner! Because of happy coincidences all ended well, but on the first day of our trip we were really nervous to say the least (otherwise, we have one blog post about that!).
For the other countries, we did not need a visa – upon entering the country we just filled in an immigration certificate and received a stamp on our passports, which then allowed us to stay in the country for a while (usually three months, Bolivia and Peru for one month with the possibility of extension).
Yes, we have been volunteering for a long time – Sandra used to sometimes volunteer at the scouts, Bojan at the firefighters (which is a Slovene classic!), then later on in college... We were actually looking for travel associations/groups to connect with and Sandra stumbled upon Hostelling International Slovenia. Her attention was caught by the combination of sustainable travel and volunteering plus, of course, connecting with like-minded people.
The more we travel, the more we are aware of the importance of sustainable tourism.
Otherwise, we care as much as we do at home – trying to limit the use of plastic (for example, we always carry cotton bags with us, which are then folded into tiny buns that can be hung on the keys), we use our own water bottles (we desinfect them when needed), when we do wild camping we use eco-friendly shampoos and soaps (there are many of them now), when we leave the room, we always turn off the air-conditioner (although it then gets boiling hot when we come back). A lot of times in the woods we pick the trash from other people which is not such a huge deal, but it's always best to start with yourself.
We also don't support tourism offers where they exploit wild animals (such as elephant riding, tigers petting, or buying the famous "pooped" coffee, because its grains are "products" of captive animals, etc.).
We are not the most accurate planners – we are improving, though. We much rather go with the flow, explore the place when we arrive (usually, the first stop is at some tourist info spot). Maybe that's why we see less than we would if we tried to tick off all the "must-see" sights, but since we enjoy spending more time sipping coffee and watching passers-by or wandering around the local market, this is ok for us.
We often buy or upload Lonely Planet guides, but then we don't read them so thoroughly and we like to watch documentaries, vlogs or something like that before we go there.
Erm, surprisingly – coming from South America to New Zealand! Everything was so neat, tidy, there were posters everywhere with instructions on what to do and what not to do, people were above average polite. After nine months of Latin America, where chaos can quickly get into your head and you don't even notice the dusty, collapsed buildings, that amazing greenery in New Zealand for a few days was a real shock.
Ugh, this is really hard when we have thousands of them. Um, maybe one of our favorites is from Hobbiton (the location of the filming of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit), where we recreated one scene from the book that goes something like this: Hobbit Bilbo runs and someone calls after him: "Where are you going ?!" And Bilbo replies: "I can't stop, I'm already late!" And another hobbit calls: "Late for what ?!" And Bilbo calls back: »I'm going on an adventure!« We are funny people and we are always in a hurry for a new adventure, so we think this photo really captured our essence.
However, if we were to choose a photo without us on it, we would choose our Pisco van in the salt desert in Bolivia or the statues on Easter Island at sunrise… Ah, it is impossible to choose a favorite!
Last part next time…
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