I have not had such great experiences with truck drivers on my trip so far (as they keep asking me for paid sex and have even masturbated on isolated roads upon my passing by), but finally I have met two decent representatives of this profession. Traveling from Yauca to Lima in the truck of Abel and Willy was an eye-opening experience — not just for me but for both parties. Here’s a short resumé of our conversations.

Carmen Carcamo is an olive saleswoman on the Pan-American Highway (a network of roads which spans over 30,000 kms) in Peru. Aged 38, she has been working in olive sales for the past eight months. In fact, most inhabitants of the little village of Yauca, in the department of Arequipa, work with olives in one way or another.

I shot this video three years ago, and today I suddenly thought about this man and his incredible skill of making animals and roses out of carrots and beetroots (maybe because I’m suffering from food poisoning in Peru and am dreaming about anything fresh!). I was mesmerized then, and still am now. The most troubling part of it all is that all this vegetable artist would receive for his work was donations — and sometimes these donations were worth no more than 20 cents. 

There’s something about roads that I’ve always loved. From the very first family road trips in Europe to the time me and my three sisters sat inside a hot van, thighs squashed into each other, on our way to Graceland. There has just always been magic in the air for me in being on the move. (Mind you, by the time we got back home to Georgia from Graceland, we knew every single Elvis song by heart, including all the background vocals.)

Waking up to the sound of one rooster is normal, but how about waking up to thirty of them? This morning, that was my alarm. As I stepped down to have breakfast with the owners of the hospedaje (bed and breakfast) I’m staying at (which the local priest paid for me, afraid I’d get washed away by floods if staying in my tent), I found out their son is a rooster fighter. Intrigued by this pass-time I knew nothing about, I decided to find out more.

Traveling is wonderful. When you travel you experience unique things, meet amazing people, see outstanding places. Everyone has their own reasons for traveling and everyone’s reasons are just as valuable as the other’s. Although my personal reasons are getting to know foreign cultures, languages and people, I don’t deliberately avoid other travellers on the road. Yet, there’s something about some of these encounters that really gets me every time: the competitive traveller syndrome.

Upon my stay in Asunción more than six months ago, I had the great honor to interview one of the first street artists of Paraguay, Oz Montanía. Now, in La Paz, I’ve had the immense honor to encounter and interview one of the very first and still rare female street artists of Bolivia: Norka aka Knorke Leaf. I met her as she was putting up an exhibition at the Alliance Française.

The Carnival of Oruro is the most important Carnival in Bolivia. It has been given the title of UNESCO cultural patrimony, and together with the Carnival of Tilcara it is one of the most traditional carnivals in the whole world. It is also one of the few synchretic carnivals where Pagan and Christian traditions still exist hand in hand. I accidentally ended up in Oruro on the day of the burial of the Carnival.