How to wrap up a one-year-long, life-lasting adventure such as this? hell if I know, I don't even know where to begin, what to say. I guess the best way to summarize it all is by saying that I have fulfilled the goals and expectations I had when I began this crazy trip. Funny thing is that, to be completely honest, I had no expectations whatsoever beforehand as I had no fucking clue how all this was to end up. But now that it's finished, now that I have gone through it all, I realize that everything has fallen in place the way it was meant to, both the positive and the negative points. I cannot understand how come I hadn't figured out prior my departure conclusions that now seem obvious to me. Have I learnt anything from this world tour? well, I think I am basically the same person in the core, but I also think that it has broadened my approach to a handful of important points. I think that my social skills have improved. Granted, I am still shy and self-conscious but I do think I have shrugged a bit of that off my shoulders. Also, I have come to appreciate to live and enjoy the right-here-right-now moment. So many of my friends back home have effusively expressed how much they envy me for what I have done while they have stayed working 9-to-5 day after day after day. Now I know that there is no point in giving up the present for a hypothetical future. I heard one interesting quote not long ago: Today is what's passing us by while we worry about tomorrow. Isn't it so? I had always been one of those rational guys thinking everything over, always having a b-plan just in case shit hit the fan and whatnot. I'd like to think that I have relaxed down a tad, and I now take decisions on the fly just for the fuck of it, because I feel like, not because I got to or because my brain cells tell me so. I don't know, but this trip has taught me that few of the issues we worry about on our daily lives are actually that crucial, and that we should loosen up a bit and enjoy the moment with what we got. It really doesn't take that much nor it's that difficult. Have I gotten a bit hippyfied maybe? I don't know guys, I had prepared a mile-long speech for the epilogue section and now, at the keyboard, I am wordless. I guess it's still difficult for me to accept that the journey has finished. The thing is that, now that I am home, it feels like I had never been away, like this journey has been a dream or a book I read. Nothing has changed here in my home town, my old friends and family just like they've always been. So much has happened to me during this last year and now that it's all passed I have nothing to show for it other than memories and few CDs worth of digital pictures. Is that all what it's meant to be reduced to, memories and pictures on a website? Yup, you guessed it, I'm feeling a bit confused, nostalgic and overall weird. I need to grab back a daily routine in order to settle down all this muddy emotions because I am starting to get pissed off with all this crap haha. Easy Hector, it will take a while I reckon... What else, what else... oh yeah! Travelers say that backpacking is like a drug and I very much agree. I do intend to continue backpacking over the following years. Of course, it won't be a titanicesque endeavor like this one, but I am already planning a one-month trip for the next year to Tanzania if I manage to save up some cash. Also, a bit further away in time, I plan on undertaking two long-haul drives: one across USA coast-to-coast from New York to Los Angeles and another one across Central Europe: Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, etc. But who knows when it's gonna happen, perhaps in long years to come. No rush, no stress, right now I have other projects to focus on. So, what next now? well, I will spend a week or so at home with my parents, grandma and visiting my old friends. You know, a bit of the very needed ole'good decompression. The next week I will fly to London and afterwards to Paris for about two weeks total to deal with some personal affairs and also to visit few friends I made while traveling. After that I will return back home to start all the preparations in order to shoot off to wherever I decide to live in the near future, probably Buenos Aires, a city I enjoyed greatly, where I will be studying stock trading on my laptop for the following months. And, other than that... only God knows. Or I hope he does 'cause I got no freaking idea myself haha! Posterior note, one year later: that one-week trip to Paris changed my plans completly. In fact, I stayed there for one full year... read all about in the Expat Chronicles section! That's about it folks - time to find myself a new reality to fuck around with. So let's get a move on, shall we not? PS: Do you have anything to say? so contact me.

What's been the very best of this journey you ask? simple: the tremendous self-confidence boost. Prior to my departure, I had some existential doubts about my life and the rocky path it had be progressing on thus far. In fact, I had shipwrecked in a sea of doubts and "ifs and buts". I was basically lost beyond recognition. Going out there, traveling to foreign countries on my own, meeting new people at every country, going through both tough and sweet moments, managing my way onward, etc has delivered a feeling of self-suficiency. I now have the feeling that I could go anywhere in the world, either to travel or to live, with as little as my passport and a few thousand dollars in the bank and I would find my way around just fine. I used to be one of those guys that always needed someone to do stuff with; not anymore. I read an excellent quote a while ago: Never not do something just because you don't have anyone to do it with. So true, so true. Now I am perfectly comfortable being by myself, less bored, more confident, more adventurous, etc. Overall, I would say that, while this trip has not transformed me, it has given me an intrinsic edge I didn't have before: call it self-confidence, call it experience, call it "been-there-done-that", whatever, but I truly feel more capable of undertaking projects and activities that, one year ago, would have had me shitting down the pants.

The world itself. What a wonderful place we live in, for fuck's sake. Now I realize what a shame is to miss wonders like the Wadi Rum desert, the Aitutaki Lagoon, Machu Picchu, the Himalayas, New Zealand's south island, Angkor Wat, Salar de Uyuni, Yangshuo's karst formations, Hong Kong's skyline, the Arab bazaars, Central America's rainforests and colonial towns, etc etc. There is so much beauty in the world to be awed at that feels like staying at home and not seeing them is like reading only the first chapter of an excellent book, missing out the whole rest.   The people and backpackers I have met during my trip. So many of them, and so many extraordinary people who have made this experience so very much more fulfilling. People like Mark (from USA and met in Turkey), Guillaume and Francois (from France and met in Syria and later in China), Pum (from Thailand and met in Thailand), Pili and Paola (from Spain and Chile and met in Thailand, Cambodya and Vietnam), Martien (from Holland and met in Vietnam), Carol (from UK and met in Vietnam), Leila (from Morocco and met in China), Lynn (from Hawaii and met by email), Hans and Elles (from Holland and met in Indonesia), Tamara (from Canada and met in Australia), Felix (from UK and met in New Zealand), Victor (from Spain and met by email), Karen (from Holland and met in Guatemala), Mar and Isabel (from Spain and met in Costa Rica), Garreth (from UK and met in Bolivia) and a looooong etc of amazing guys and gals. I can certainly say that I have made more friends during the last year traveling than in the last 10 years at home. To the lot of you: it was a great pleasure indeed folks. I hope our paths cross again in the future, and if so, we'll go out for a beer! It is amazing how many backpackers there are out there. I though I was doing something special with this project, but I was soon to find out that backpacking is a world-wide movement with one of the best, healthiest and friendliest communities ever.   Working on this website. I cannot fully express how rewarding it's been to record my journey for you guys. In fact, I have learnt many things about the places I've been once it all had happened and I sat down at the computer to write about it. Granted, I have put hundreds of hours on this website, but something tells me that I will read through it time and time again over the following years. I am a nostalgic freak at the end of the day hehe. I hope you all have enjoyed it too.   To learn about other cultures, other ways of life. We are all so different, but by knowing and understanding, I feel that we are all part of one single spices, of one whole collective. Well, chinese people might be the one exception hehe. My favorite people have been the Thai, the Indonesians, the Argentineans and the Australians.   Some of the questions I was seeking at the begining of this trip have been answered, like for example what will I do and what do I consider important profressionally wise. Plus, of course, some others in the personal/sentimental department, even some issues I didn't know I had and that were discovered on the go. I can safely say that traveling for such a long time has allowed me to do quite a lot of introspective thinking from different angles.   After a whole year trekking up and down moutains, deserts, rivers, valleys, cities, roads, beaches and a thousand places more, I have never been this fit, tanned and healthy in my life.   And now I finally have a good story to tell, when the day comes, to my grandson. And that truly is something important.

This trip, what it meant, its influence over me, the resolutions I came up with, and being away from home for such a long time, added to other already-existing factors, eventually utterly totaled the six-years-running relationship with my now ex-sentimental partner. That is the only real black stain on this journey around the world. I guess only time will tell whether it was worthy or not...   The slow-down shock I am suffering right now upon return as I write these lines. Re-entry shock they call it. After having lived at such a furious pace for a year, seeing incredible things on daily basis an meeting kick ass people, landing at home was tough. Well, not as much as going back home but rather the inner feeling of emptiness swarming over me, like sedating me. I cannot really understand what's going on, but I hardly feel like meeting old friends or hang out at the pubs I used to. All I know is that I want to go somewhere else to live, somewhere abroad. Settling down in Madrid (my home town) right now is unthinkable, at least for the near future.   I have gotten homesick on occasion during this year. Not as much as missing my family or friends but rather the small day-by-day details like arriving back to your apartment after a busy day and sit back in your couch with a cup of steaming coffee knowing that tomorrow you got to catch absolutely no early morning bus to anywhere else, nor you have to beat the streets searching for a budget hostel, etc. One full year on the road has been psychologically tiring and should I have to plan this trip all over again, I probably would cut it down to 6 months. But then again your cannot go around the world in 6 months, so... Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't give up this experience for anything in the world, but I doubt I will repeat such a journey ever again; it simply is too demanding. I guess that's why they call them a once-in-a-lifetime thingy hehe. In fact, rather than homesick, I would say that in a couple of occasions I was more than ready to go back home and to resume my life where I had left it (basically in the middle of a mess) specially because, like I said before, I had found a number of answers and projects I had been searching for and I couldn't wait to put them to work. But I am now glad that, in those few situations, I pushed myself to keep going.

See you out there, fellows!