a journey called life

For a long time, I’d been looking forward to the last part of my trip: California! Here I was going to visit another Twelve Tribes community, and a few friends from the Shelter, the hostel in Amsterdam where I worked last year. On the 3rd of March I got on the plane in San Jose, Costa Rica, to Houston, Texas, for a long day of travel. Though I had to undergo an thorough luggage check (I guess young solo travelers are always suspicious..), it was nice to be back in the USA.

After another flight to Los Angeles, a bus ride to Union Station, a train ride to Oceanside and then a car ride, it was about 1 am when I arrived Read the rest of this entry »

Early February, I arrived in Costa Rica. This country has a reputation of being the most safe and peaceful country in Latin (or at least Central) America, a little paradise being all about “Pura Vida” (Costa Rica’s slogan, which means something like: “full of life”).

So I was certainly curious to see what that was all about, but it was not my first objective. First, I was going to visit a Canadian who calls himself “the medical missionary man”, and who is trying to set up a Christian community in Costa Rica. It was to be another chapter in my journey of exploring the idea of (Christian) community, while at the same time having a place to hang around for a while, and do some work in exchange for food and a bed.

And so I arrived by bus in Dominical, a little beach town on the Pacific coast, Read the rest of this entry »

Much later than my initial plan was, I arrived in Central America. When I started planning my trip, I was thinking about 3 months of South America and 3 months of Central America. But there I was in Panama City, on the 31st of January, with less than two months left. Many travelers that I’ve met along the way had had similar experiences, so I guess that’s just the way it goes!
I landed at Panama Tocumen Airport, which is the very airport from where I will take my flight back to the Netherlands. Strange to realize that.
Just getting from the airport into the city was already an adventure, I was trying to save some money and took the bus. About 3 hours later I finally arrived at Luna’s Castle hostel (funny, since it only took me one hour to get from Medellin to Panama City). At the hostel I was lucky to get a bed, since I hadn’t been able to make a reservation. “If anyone asks, just say you had a reservation, ok?” Ok.

Luna’s Castle certainly is a cool place, Read the rest of this entry »

My final two weeks in Colombia were spent in Medellin, one of the biggest and most notorious cities in Colombia (drug lord Pablo Escobar used to live and reign here). In this very place I was going to work in a project in the slums called Pa’ Mi Barrio (“for my neighborhood/slum”). I found it through a German missionary, who (partly) runs this project, and during the rest of the time works as a schoolteacher with kids of the wealthiest families in the city. In this way he is trying to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.
Now how did I end up with this guy? Well, in December 2010 I was visiting relatives who live in eastern Germany. On Sunday, in their church (where he’s originally from), he was there to hold a presentation about his work in Medellin. At the time I already knew I was going to Colombia so I asked if I could come by for a few weeks to help out with Pa’ Mi Barrio.
We kept in touch and on the 15th of January, over a year later, I arrived in Medellin.

The slum where they’re running the project is called 8 de Marzo and when you learn more about it, your heart just might break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Coming from the Caribbean coast, arriving in Manizales was like arriving in another country. Cooler weather, mountains, clean streets and modern buildings. I spent a few days here, staying in the highly recommendable Mountain House hostel, enjoying the vibe of this city and visiting the Nevado del Ruiz volcano and Hacienda Guayabal, a coffee plantation. Both places showed two very different sides of Eje Cafetera (the name of this region).

The trip to Nevado del Ruiz was long, expensive, mostly done by bus and literally breathtaking Read the rest of this entry »

Since I had quite a lot of time to travel around in Colombia (4 weeks), I figured it would be nice to stay in one place for a while, and do some work. So I was looking at workaway.info and found a hostel called Casa Loma, in the little village of Minca. It’s located in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, an area of mountains covered in rainforest on the Caribbean coast.

After a stiff walk up a hill, I arrived and immediately loved the place. It has an amazing view and a very relaxed atmosphere. Casa Loma is run by a guy from England, and there was another girl from England who was helping out just like me. I pretty much started working right away, helping with cooking dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. Read the rest of this entry »

On the 19th of December, at 3.30 in the morning, I took a cab to the airport of Rio de Janeiro. It had been good, though with mixed feelings. Changed planes in Lima, which was a bit like familiar ground to me, since I’d been there in 2009. On both flights I managed to get a seat with extra legroom, thanks to seatguru.com. Meanwhile, the ‘mixed feelings’ hadn’t changed, in fact, I had to admit that I just felt like crap. I was homesick and tired of traveling. I just wanted to be done with it, and wanted my family and friends, Dordrecht, winter, whole-wheat bread with ‘hagelslag’ and good cheese! And I couldn’t think about much else. But, for now, not much else to do than to carry on and see how things go.
A Colombian guy who I’d met in the Twelve Tribes in Argentina had offered me to stay with him and his family in Bogota, but I hadn’t heard from him in a while, so I wasn’t counting on it. What a surprise it was to find him waiting for me at the airport, awesome!
So there I was in Colombia. My first impressions of Bogota: a huge and modern city, and cold! It took us more than 1,5 hour to get to my friend’s house by bus, and later I saw we had only crossed part of the city. I was welcomed warmly by my friend’s family and got a hug from his little sister. The ‘Christmas spirit’ finally started setting in here, since it was quite cold here and they had a big Christmas tree.

It was amazing to stay with this family and it made me forget about my homesickness for a while. Read the rest of this entry »

On the 22nd of November I arrived in Ritápolis, at the place of Wim & Daniëlle and their kids. They have been working as missionaries in Brazil for some time. I got to know them last year when I went on a mission trip to Brazil for a few weeks. Since a year they are living and working in Ritápolis. It’s a village with about 9,000 inhabitants in the state of Minas Gerais, about 5 hours north of Rio de Janeiro. It’s nicely situated, spreaded out over a hill. Wim & Daniëlle’s house is on the edge of the village and has a beautiful view over the surrounding hills. Not a bad place to be!

Read the rest of this entry »

While visiting the incredible Iguazu Falls, I was already only a few minutes away from Brazil, my next destination. Immediately I could see the appearance of the people change, they looked… Brazilian! I wasted a day in Foz do Iguaçu and got on the night bus (unfortunately, this time the seats weren’t so nice). Before I left I was able to catch a nice sunset.

Since it was more or less on the way, I decided to visit another Twelve Tribes community (like I did in Argentina). There are three in Brazil, all in the state of Paraná, and I stopped at the one that’s located close to a small town called Mauá da Serra. It was really cool to encounter the same kind of life here, Read the rest of this entry »

For the third and last time I arrived in Buenos Aires, this time to take the bus to a city called Rosario, about 4 hours northwest of the capital.

A girl from there once added me on Facebook, we started talking and kept in touch, and now I was ‘in the neighborhood’ so I had the chance to visit her for a couple of days.

Read the rest of this entry »