Ro & Gi: Sometimes You Find a Beautiful Friendship without Even Expecting It

“Traveling isn’t holidays for us. We travel without planning anything, making sure that we spend the least we can and trying to explore the culture closely. So everyday there’s a new challenge to face. Sometimes we don’t even know where we will sleep that night, which gives us an adrenaline rush that makes us feel alive.”

Trip and holiday planner Sygic Travel asked travelers Roger and Gisela a few questions. Check out their blog called “L’art de volar” or follow them on Instagram.

What are your names?
Roger (Ro) and Gisela (Gi).

Where are you from originally and where do you currently live?
Roger is from a very small town called Santa Eulàlia de Riuprimer, located 60 km away from Barcelona. And Gisela was born in Badalona, 10 km away from Barcelona. Right now we live together in Sentfores, a town near Vic.

How would you describe yourself in 5 sentences?
Good question, we are an adventurous couple. We hate the routine and if we are at the same place for a long time, we start dreaming about faraway places. We both love nature, getting to know new cultures and being able to have an interesting conversation. We are simple people, we enjoy the little things. We take our time to do things. This is the way we appreciate each moment and we manage to learn something about every one of them.

What was the moment you decided to become travelers?
It’s been 2 years ago since we started spending one half of the year traveling and the other at home. Roger started traveling on his own just one year before (so he decided to become a traveler before I did) and Gisela went on a trip to Argentina when she was 19 years old. Even though she started her studies after coming back from that trip, she already knew that she wanted to keep traveling in the near future. But in the end we decided that we didn’t want to be globetrotters, adventurers, travelers or whatever you want to call it. We just want to follow our hearts and we won’t let the society consume us or break our dreams. We decided to live this way and that’s how our desire to live adventures or share a different kind of life appeared.

Do you always travel together?
Yes, since we are a couple. However, more than once we’ve traveled with our friends or family for a short period of time. We always share long trips as a couple.

What is your greatest personal accomplishment?
Well, we can give two parallel points of view separated by time in order to answer this question. On the one hand, we can refer to the personal accomplishments we have achieved in the past. Then we both agree that our accomplishment was to know how to love, respect and share consciously. Traveling together taught us how to be oneself and part of the other at the same time. We understand that this how the close relationship between two travellers works during long trips. On the other hand, we can talk about the dreams and personal accomplishments that we are trying to achieve. Those are numerous and different for each of us, but we will summarize it with something that we love: traveling around the world in a self-sufficient way.

What do you love the most about traveling?
We actually love a lot of aspects. Getting to know other ways of thinking, behaving, eating, dressing… this changes your point of view about the world and, more importantly, it transforms you. That is what we like the most about traveling. We also enjoy marvelling at the beauties of nature all around the world and, of course, the sense of freedom.

What is it you don’t like about traveling?
What we don’t like about traveling is being far from our loved ones, but nowadays technology really helps… Another thing we don’t like very much is depending on others (public transport, someone to pick you up...) when you are backpacking from one place to another. This is why we decided to continue traveling in our own van from now on. :)

What is the most common misconception about being a full time traveler?
The truth is that we aren’t sure, but we are used to listen to this kind of comments: “What a life! You spend 6 months of holidays.” Traveling isn’t holidays for us. We travel without planning anything, making sure that we spend the least we can and trying to explore the culture closely. So everyday there’s a new challenge to face. Sometimes we don’t even know where we will sleep that night, which gives us an adrenaline rush that makes us feel alive. However, that adrenaline can also tire us out in the long term.

What is the best way to experience a foreign culture?
We think that the best way to experience a foreign culture is to fully integrate. You should stay in a country for a long enough period of time. In addition, we think that couchsurfing is perfect to share your stay with a local. Another way to explore a new culture is just speaking and talking with people on the street, at hostels, at restaurants, in buses, in trains… Sometimes you find a beautiful friendship without even expecting it.

What are the five things you can’t travel without?
Just a few things like passport, some money and a good mobile phone. Everything else isn’t totally essential. Well, in our case we would never leave at home the camera, a small first-aid kit and, of course, the van.

Which destinations are at the top of your bucket list right now?
There are a lot destinations we haven’t visited yet, from Croatia, Albania, Iceland, Madagascar, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Greece, Norway… to the nearest ones like Asturias, Galicia and Portugal. We would like to explore the continent of Africa too. As you can see, it’s very difficult for us to prioritize because we would love to visit almost every place in the world.

If you had an unlimited travel budget for 24 hours, what would your itinerary look like?
Just 24 hours? We would probably do an expensive adventure activity, those you don’t usually try because your budget isn’t enough. This is the only 24 hours plan that comes to our minds.

If you should decide today, which country would you pick for retirement?
Right now, if we had to choose from one of the places we’ve been to, we would pick the Andaman Islands, the paradise in India. Or maybe a random paradise island which isn’t very crowded. Living a simple life in harmony with nature and near the sea.

What is the most overrated country or location you’ve been to?
We’ve been to the Dominican Republic separately and we both agree that it may be overrated. But it’s just our opinion. The only reason is that we don’t like the kind of tourism offered by this country.

What is the most underestimated country or location you’ve been to?
Instead of a country, we choose a region. Everybody knows that Peru is very popular among travelers, but most of them visit the same 3 or 4 places located in the South and they forget about the North, a beautiful area frequented by much less people.

Thank you Roger and Gisela!
Lina from Sygic Travel

Sygic Travel has been helping people plan travel itineraries since 2011. Millions of people all over the world use their web planner as well as their iOS and Android apps.