“You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave.”
The Eagles, Hotel California
On THE VACATIONS YOU ALWAYS WANTED you will meet sunburned tourists fighting to board a ferry. You will encounter religious fanatics trying to convert you, and a crowd of hipsters cheering for a Colombian black metal band. There will be American tourists in neon-colored leggings on ancient sacred fields, next to pot-smoking new-age hippies. You will see the most beautiful sunsets on solitary beaches, but you will suffer from mosquitos in the hotter places, and from cold in the rest. There will be couples loving and couples fighting, friends laughing and friends crying arm in arm, there will be wanna-be rappers posing and horses waiting to go out for a ride, but most of all, there will just be people around breathing, screaming, drinking beers, more beers and then, even more beers. Sometimes, while on the road, you will hate yourself just for the very decision you made to leave your house. But once you come back, you will always be ready to take the next flight out there.
This harshly edited, yet still very large series is dedicated to all the people that converted the vacations I always wanted into a deeper voyage to myself, especially to Ben, Enoes, Laura, Mafalda, Sam, Samanta, Steve and Tiago from the Amazon Tour 2009. All of you, travel safe. You are the reason I will never stop with this.