Breaking Free: A Journey of Self Discovery Read online

  Not long after we arrived on the island, the Greek owner of the guesthouse that we were staying at approached me, and in broken English, asked if I would help her find people to stay in her guesthouse. The deal was very simple. Whenever a ferry arrived I had to go with her to the dock and stand there holding a board with the name of her guesthouse. Standing alongside a bunch of other Greeks, who were also holding boards and also vying to do the same thing as me, I had to try and lure over the passengers and get them to choose our guesthouse above the rest. If I did, I would get a free night’s stay. It seemed like a fair trade and so I started working for her straight away. What my landlady didn’t tell me, however, was that the first ferry came in at around eight in the morning. Sometimes I had only just put my head down on my pillow before she’d be at my door telling me to wake up. I bet she knew full well what sort of state I’d be in, therefore to help me get going in the morning she would knock on my door with a mouth watering foot-long sandwich and a glass of fresh juice. She was a businesswoman, after all, and so I’m sure that this was her little way of saying, ‘Now don’t you go quitting on me. I need you to make me some money!’

  ***

  With all the ladies staying in our guesthouse, the three of us each had our own approach as to how best to go about things. Dave, who I had got to know fairly well during our four years at university, was a massive guy standing six foot five inches tall. With his broad shoulders and his thick stubble, he liked to play it cool and go in cautiously. Whereas I, on the other hand, did the exact opposite. I wasn’t one for taking things slowly and so I'd throw back a few beers and then go in with guns blazing. Any sign of interest from one of the ladies and I'd be in there like a hyena at a kill. This approach, although it certainly did come with its benefits, meant that I often ruled myself out of the game too quickly, while the others got to be more open to see where the night would take them. Then there was Josh. Unlike Dave and I who had every intention of meeting a lady for the night, Josh really didn’t care whether or not he met anybody at all. His big love in his life was his guitar. He carried it everywhere and could sit quietly on his bed by himself for hours strumming away. Not only did Josh know his way around the guitar, but he also had a soft, magical voice to go with it. Josh was already going grey and so he carried the musician look perfectly. At the start of the night Dave, Josh and I would all be on equal footing, but then as the drinks started to flow the guitar would invariably come out sooner or later. The result was always the same: Game over for Dave and me. You could just feel all the ladies’ attention very quickly turning to focus on the quiet and unassuming guy playing the heavenly music in the corner. Like a Hollywood superstar arriving at a nightclub and getting to make his pick of ladies for the night, in no time at all Josh would have all the ladies in the guesthouse eating out of the palm of his hand.

  Despite Josh not making it easy for Dave and I when it came to the ladies, life on the island got better and better all the time. At that stage it seemed a safe bet that we weren’t going to be leaving Ios anytime soon, but then everything took a sudden and unexpected turn. We were about to learn one of the golden rules of backpacking, and that is that you can never plan too far ahead. You may think you have it all figured out, but in the end your plans often turn out very differently to how you imagined they would.

  ***

  The first blow came when we discovered that we wouldn’t be able to extend our six-week tourist visa, which is what our plan had always been since the start of our trip, and the second blow came when Dave got offered a job at a resort in Dubai through a friend of his. Now that Dave was taking off, it meant that from here on in it would be only Josh and I. The most obvious option available to us was to make our way to London and to find jobs there, but having had a small taste of the Mediterranean, the last place we wanted to be was in a big city. Just when we were starting to think that we had no other options but London, we discovered that South Africans could get a one-month Turkish visa at the border. This meant that we wouldn’t have to fuss with embassies and applications and all the rest of it. We could simply hop on a ferry and be in Turkey within a few hours. We would still, however, have to find work somewhere along the way, but for now money wasn’t a problem as we had enough cash to keep us going for a few months.

  “What about working at a kibbutz in Israel, Jed?” Josh then suggested. “We can travel overland from Turkey to Egypt, maybe spend some time sailing up the Nile River and scuba diving in the Red Sea, and then when our money starts running out we can find volunteer work on a kibbutz.”

  It sounded like a great idea. I didn’t know much at all about volunteering at a kibbutz in Israel, but I did know that for a few hours of work each day they gave you free food and lodging. This meant that we could at least come out even, and not have to dig too much into our pockets. Once we had made up our minds that this was what we were going to do, Josh and I packed up all our things and set off for Turkey right away.

  ***

  Our adventure through the Middle East gave me my first real taste of what backpacking was all about. I’d always imagined that backpacking would be a daunting and scary thing to do, but it wasn’t tough at all. The hardest part of travelling, I could now see, was plucking up the courage in the first place. Once you had boarded the plane and were on your way, everything seemed to fall into place perfectly. The guidebook that Josh and I had with us served as our bible, as it told us everything we needed to know, the highlights in each country, how to get around from place to place, and of course where the cheapest places were to stay. Most travellers were using the same guidebook and so we would often bump into the same people along the way. Despite the fact that backpackers came from all over the world, they were mostly all just regular, every day kind of people wanting to get out and discover the world, and to do this as cheaply as possible. The funny thing about backpackers was that they would often travel on the cheapest bus, sleep in the shittiest hotel, perhaps even go without a meal here and there to cut costs, but, no matter how tight their budget was, there always seemed to be enough money when it came to having a few drinks in the evening. I guess backpackers were, in many ways, just like university students. However, unlike university students who were getting most of their knowledge through books, backpackers were getting it through firsthand life experience.

  CHAPTER 3

  If Josh hadn’t picked up an eye infection along the way, we may well have stayed at the kibbutz in Israel longer than we did. Still, our five-month adventure through the Middle East had done its job in that it had not only sparked the travel bug in me and opened my eyes to a whole new world, but so too had it brought out the best in me. For one thing, it showed me how open I was when it came to all the different people and cultures we met and experienced along the way. Yet, even more than this, our time spent in the Middle East had awakened a deep yearning within me to grow and better myself. For now my growth was going to come largely as a result of all of the adventures that I would go on, but in a few years’ time the focus would shift from what was happening in the world around me, to what was happening in my mind. This was all still a long way off, however; for now the only thing I was interested in was travelling. After so many years of having little direction in my life, I had finally found something that made me feel alive and gave me a sense of purpose. In Greece it had all been about the party and the girls, but now all I wanted was to explore and see as much of the world as I could.

  ***

  If Josh and I were going to keep on travelling, then we’d have to make some money as we were both almost flat broke. Working on the kibbutz in Israel hadn’t helped our cause, as we got paid the equivalent of one dollar for a day’s work in the banana fields. We needed to find somewhere where we could save up good money, and quickly. While in the process of trying to figure out what to do next, we happened to spot an advert in the newspaper that said that they were looking for people to work at Mt. Snow, a ski resort in Vermont on the east coast of America. We had no
other options and so we applied right away.

  When we arrived at the ski resort at the start of the winter, we were placed in a house along with seven other people. The house, which was a wooden cabin out in the forest, was only a fifteen-minute bus ride away from the mountain. Josh’s job was to teach snowboarding, whereas mine was to teach toddlers at the ski school how to ski. On top of my day job, I tried to find any part-time work in the evenings to help me save up a little extra money. You name it, dishwashing, baby sitting, private ski lessons, waitering – I did it all. When it came to working hard at my studies, I had never been much good at all, but when it came to something that I really wanted, such as doing well at sport, or in this case, travelling the world, I was one of those people who would then put absolutely everything into it. Yet as good as I was about not wasting money and saving up as much as I could, the money still didn’t seem to be rolling in quickly enough. Then several weeks into the season Josh and I hit the jackpot. We found a job at a local hotel working as a valet and bellboy. For a few hours work in the evening, we would often walk away with over a hundred dollars in tips. It all added up, and by the end of the ski season Josh and I had both saved up several thousand dollars for our next adventure.

  Now that the season was over, Josh and I and a few friends of ours decided to buy a second-hand Volkswagen van and do a road trip across America. The adventure came with its moments. Staring out into the Grand Canyon, driving through the desert in Utah, getting in the car and not knowing where the hell you were going to go from one day to the next, these were all incredible experiences. However, what our trip across the States clearly taught me was that backpacking through third world countries was far more exciting and unpredictable for me than travelling through first world countries in which things generally worked well.

  ***

  For some time Josh and I had been saying that right at the top of our list of places to go was South America, and so there was little debate as to where we were going to next. After crossing the States in our beat-up van, Josh and I packed our bags and set off for Central America and the Amazon jungle in South America. As awesome as it was to have our packs on and to be back on the road again, by the time we reached Cuba and Mexico I was already starting to think about a different kind of adventure. I was by now a little tired of moving from one place to the next, sleeping in one backpacker hostel after the other. I didn’t just want to follow the same old tourist trail that everyone else was following. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew that I was looking for something more, something bigger. Of all places, I found the answer to what I was looking for in an airport in Guatemala.

  We had some time to kill before leaving the airport for Antigua, a well-known backpacker spot a few hours from the airport, when I happened to notice an English newspaper on the seat next to me. What caught my attention was the picture on the front page of a Western lady on her bicycle. The bike was kitted out with pannier bags on both the front and the back wheels, a sleeping bag and a tent tied on top of the rear pannier bags, and a Canadian flag attached to the back of the bike. Intrigued, I picked up the newspaper to take a closer look, and in no time at all I sat completely spell bound reading the story of what this lady was doing. I was so engrossed with the article that had someone picked up my backpack from the seat next to me, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed.

  The Canadian lady in the picture had started her bike trip in Alaska and was on her way down to the southern tip of Argentina, a total distance of 25 000 kilometres. Even more impressive than the huge distance that she was cycling was the fact that she was doing it all alone and without any assistance at all. It just so happened, that she was cycling through Guatemala at the same time that I was there. In the article that I read were various quotes from Paulo Coelho’s well-known book, The Alchemist. The hairs on my arms stood on end when I read about how the book had inspired her to follow her own dream, as The Alchemist was a book that I had read more than once myself. It was as if something in me just clicked. In all my life I’d never had such an enlightening moment as this. I knew with total clarity that this - a long distance cycle - was what I had to do next.

  ***

  I had a few different ideas of where I wanted to cycle, but eventually settled on the idea of cycling across Canada from coast to coast. I decided on Canada for a number of reasons. The first was that I’d never been to Canada before and what better way to see the country than by bicycle? Secondly, being a first world country, I knew that Canada was bound to be cycle friendly and safe. And the third reason was that I was looking for a real adventure, and not something that would be over in a few weeks. If I averaged 100 kilometres per day the 9 000 kilometre ride from coast to coast would take at least three months for me to complete. As sold as I was on the idea that I wanted to cycle across Canada, Josh, however, didn’t have the same passion that I had. Sadly, after having been through so much together, it was at this point of our travels that we went our separate ways. Josh went off to live his dream, which was to sail on a small yacht across the Atlantic Ocean, and I went back to the same ski resort in the States to save up the money I’d need for my up-and-coming bike adventure.

  ***

  During the winter, Jerome, a good friend of mine who I had lived with for two years in a student residence at university, came to spend a few days with me at the ski resort. Jerome had grown up in Mauritius, a small French island off the east coast of Africa, and was one of those social and energetic kinds of guys who were always the last to leave the party. When I told him about the bike trip I was planning to do the following summer, he got excited and told me without any hesitation that he was in.

  “If you’re going to cross Canada by bicycle, then I’m coming with you,” he said enthusiastically. One thing led to another, and by the time Jerome left for London we were planning to not only cycle across Canada, but then to spend a few months afterwards backpacking through Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia and South East Asia.

  By the end of the ski season I had saved up enough money for our trip. However, Jerome and I had only planned to meet up in Vancouver in June, and so I had to keep myself busy until then. During the season I had taught a little boy at our ski school called Matthew how to ski and had got to know his parents, Tom and Sally Jackson, in the process. When I told them that I was thinking about heading to Alaska at the end of the season to find work on a fishing boat for two months, they told me to come and live with them at their home in New Jersey instead. They would set me up with a landscaping job through a friend of theirs, and then after this I could go and work on their cousin’s fishing boat in Long Island up in New York State. I got on very well with Tom and Sally and had such a good feeling about them that I took them up on their offer right away.

  For the next six weeks the Jackson family, a normal, everyday American family, took me in and treated me so well that you would have thought that I was part of the family. In the mornings Sally would send me off to work with my lunchbox, which she had prepared for me the night before, and then in the evenings the family and I would all make our way upstairs to the TV room for the evening’s entertainment. As great as the Jacksons were about making me feel perfectly at home, like a pet dog who knows its place in the house, I knew not to go anywhere near the long three-seater couch in the TV room, as this was Tom and Sally’s territory. With a thin blanket to cover themselves with, Tom and Sally liked to snuggle up and get cosy before the start of Big Brother, or The Amazing Race, or whatever reality show it was that we were watching that evening. My couch was the Lazy Boy next to theirs. Having spent the winter all squashed up in a house with eight other people, a night on my Lazy Boy in front of the TV with the family was just about as good as it was going to get for me.

  Working on a fishing boat turned out to be a big letdown after having had such a great time with the Jackson family, yet I wasn't there long as it was soon time for me to pack my bike and set off for Canada. By the time I left the States I had saved up over $15
000, which was more than enough money for me to travel for the next two years without having to work along the way. The secret to backpacking, I had discovered, was to first save up money in a place where you can make good money quickly, and then to spend it travelling through third-world countries, or on trips that wouldn't cost you too much. This way your money will go that much further.

  CHAPTER 4

  The first challenge for Jerome and I was to cross the Rocky Mountains. What didn’t make things any easier for us was the fact that both of us had bought our bikes only a few days before leaving for Vancouver. This meant that neither of us had done much training and had both gone there with the laid back attitude that we would have plenty of time to get fit along the way. This may have seemed like a laugh in the beginning, but now that we were in the Rockies and cycling up mountain passes anywhere up to 35 kilometres from bottom to top, it wasn’t so funny anymore. My legs were burning, my back was on fire, and my butt was absolutely killing me. After only a few days into the trip it had become so unbelievably painful for me to sit on the saddle that I’d had to resort to using an inflatable ‘U’-shaped pillow to sit on, the same kind of pillow you take with you on a plane ride. This was far from ideal as I kept sliding all over the place. Just to balance on the thing was a feat in itself. But with my backside as sore as it was, it would just have to do until I was able to find a bike shop and get myself a proper gel seat cover. The first few weeks were therefore tough going, especially for me, but once we’d built up our fitness and got everything we needed along the way, from then on it was a breeze. Eight hours in the saddle would feel like taking a walk in the park.