We didn't think we'd be sharing another backpacker couple interview with you right now, but the coincidence of travel encounters has decided otherwise. We met Emilie and Taylor in autumn 2021, during our 2 months roadtrip in Brittany while we were writing our new book Beer Hiking in Brittany.
They were just coming back from their round the world trip, made in the middle of the Covid pandemic, and they contacted us to offer us to have a drink in what turned out to be the best craft beer bar in Brittany (the Mar'mousse in Saint-Brieuc). They didn't need much more to convince us and we suggested them to join us for a beer hike in Saint-Brieux to get to know each other better.
The feeling is really good between us and they invite us again at their place the next day (and cook us the best pancakes of our trip with home made salted butter caramel please!). We spent again a great evening to exchange on our travel experiences around the world, to laugh, to drink some beers… We have to admit that we missed this kind of spontaneous encounters during Covid!
So, as Émilie and Taylor are among the few people to have been on a round-the-world trip in the middle of Covid, we thought it would be interesting to ask them a few questions and have them share their travel experience with you.
Backpacker's experience with Émilie and Taylor
Hello you two,
Could you quickly introduce yourself and tell us what you did for a living before your round the world trip? Did you already travel a lot before this?
So we would first say that we are Breton! Ah ah! We were 29 and 30 years old when we left. Émilie had been working for 6 years as a childcare nurse in a hospital. She quit her job to leave. Taylor was a school teacher specializing in students with special needs, he had an leave of absence.
Taylor had been travelling around quite a bit : Japan, Rio,…
Émilie a little less even if she had visited the French overseas departments and territories and some big European cities.
We had known each other for 3 years before the trip and had not traveled much together. The first time was during a week-long vacation in Italy in 2018. At first we were only supposed to see Rome, but we discovered ourselves the same passion to explore the surroundings by taking the local transportation. In the summer of 2019, we decided to go hiking in the Pyrenees. Our tent and our stove in the trunk of the car, we developed a taste for roaming, hiking in the mountains and bivouacs.
So that our readers can get an idea more easily, could you quickly share with us the itinerary of your trip (country, duration) and the budget you had before leaving? Since you left in the middle of COVID, did you have an itinerary planned or did you decide to see as you go?
We left in September 2020, after the first lockdown. The sanitary situation in France was rather stable after the summer, life had returned to normal, we had almost forgotten about COVID.
We had a total budget of 22,000 euros for two, for the year.
We started with three weeks in Greece and then almost three weeks in Bulgaria. Then we had planned to spend a month in Turkey, but we shortened to two weeks because the health situation worsened in Europe with the announcement of the second lockdown. We then fled to America, first to Mexico for two months. Then we continued with two months in Colombia, 5 weeks in Ecuador, 3 weeks on the Galapagos Islands, 6 weeks in Peru, 5 weeks in Bolivia and we finished with 2 weeks in Spain in the region of Andalusia to find warmth and to return to western habits before the big comeback in France.
We had not planned any travel itinerary at all. Only European countries were accessible when we left in September 2020. In America, only Mexico was open and Ecuador was just opening its borders.
After Greece, we clearly got more relaxed. Actually, a little anecdote: we planned to go to North Macedonia. We had searched the places to visit, the accommodations, and even a car rental. Everything except for how to go there… When we take the bus for Skopje, we realize that the terrestrial connections between both countries did not resume because of the pandemic! We were at the bus station of Thessalonica, we changed our plan and we went up in the only bus which left this evening out of Greece: towards Sofia and Bulgaria. Maybe not a coincidence, we had just arrived to Thessalonica by hitchhiking with two Bulgarians!
Once in Mexico, we checked which countries were open in the weeks before the departure and we advised according to the availability. There weren't many and they changed regularly. Guatemala was on our radar with its open land border, but we chose Colombia which had just reopened its air borders. This country was on our list from the start, and we had contacts there.
The situation of each country was very variable, we always booked our plane tickets at the last minute. For example, Peru reopened its borders in December and then closed them again in January before reopening them in March. A real emotional roller coaster. Every morning on his phone, Taylor would check the front pages of the local newspapers to keep up with these changes (he's really improved his Spanish). We also watched the news on some backpacker websites, which listed the opening/closing of borders all over the world.
Finally we did not cross any border by land except the Greek-Bulgarian and the Bulgarian-Turkish. We always had to take a plane, that affected a lot the itinerary of our trip. We couldn't afford to change countries too quickly because of the costs involved.
What were your motivations/expectations for leaving on a round the world trip? Was there a specific element that triggered you to embark on this adventure? I think, Emilie, that you said that it was your idea at the beginning…
Émilie : We both wanted to travel a few months after having had our diplomas around our twenties but we did not take the plunge. (Maybe because we didn't know each other yet!)
It was actually me who first talked about it, about two years before we left, after our first vacation together in Italy in 2018. The idea and the desire to share a crazy experience like a long journey was really appealing to me.
But it was an absolute no from Taylor, he doesn't remember, but his response was, "If I left now, it wouldn't be with you, it would be with a buddy!" It's funny looking back on that today! I brought up the idea again a year later during our vacation in the Pyrenees, and to my surprise it was not the same answer!
We were planning a three weeks vacation in Peru in July 2020, so why not go for a whole year in South America? The project was already born in our heads.
Taylor : Indeed, at first, sharing such an experience was rather scary. But the idea gradually grew in my head until we started the adventure for good.
The idea of spending a year in Latin America was very appealing to me. The culture, the landscapes, the Andes, the Spanish, the soccer… So many things to discover, that was my request when the idea of the trip was launched. Not to try to visit the whole world but to focus on this continent that made me dream so much.
Often the reactions to the announcement of such a project are quite contrasted… How did your family and friends react when you told them that you wanted to travel around the world during Covid?
Émilie : The reactions were generally very positive, especially from our friends. Among our families too, but our parents were not expecting such news. They had imagined other more conventional projects like having children.
There were also some doubts and fears especially about the cost of the trip, our jobs, and our safety in foreign countries. But your book "Destination Tour du monde" answered many of my mom's questions!
Taylor : The reactions are very different depending on the person, but once the surprise of the announcement was over, they were all very positive. I think the phrase we heard the most was: "you are right to do this now while you can, while you don't have children…"
We managed to make a nice party the week before our departure with almost all our friends and as the pandemic seemed almost behind us in this end of August 2020 nobody worried too much about that.
Before leaving, did you have any fears about any aspect of this trip? I imagine that the Covid did not help you to prepare this trip with confidence…
Émilie : For my part, I think that what I was most afraid of was that we wouldn't come back from this experience together! As we told ourselves: it's a case of "make or break". We talked about it a lot. A friend of Taylor's told us that we were crazy to try this when we had only been living under the same roof for a few months.
Of course there was the fear of the unknown, but the stories of other travelers and their pictures made me dream so much! The pandemic didn't really worry us, we projected ourselves in many things: to make a tour of Europe, to leave for a season in the mountains, to leave by car hitchhiking from home and to see where it would lead us, to make the way of Saint James, in short it was bubbling in all the directions. The important thing at the time of the departure was really to be able to live differently during one year, "one year without a roof" as we had called our Instagram account
Financially we had succeeded in putting a fair amount of money aside, notably thanks to the first lockdown. We succeeded in renting our house easily, we were rather reassured in this respect.
I concentrated on the preparation of the backpack, and all the paperwork around the departure: travel insurance / bank
Taylor : The biggest fear for me was that I wouldn't be able to live on a different schedule for a year and that I would have to come home early (because of COVID but also because of homesickness or something like that). I think I would have experienced it as a big defeat.
We spent the months before the departure preparing our bag and following the evolution of the health situation in the different countries. It was very difficult to find information but we quickly understood that it would be impossible to follow our original "itinerary".
The project was to start in Argentina, travel down to Patagonia and then up through Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. All this while crossing the land borders. As you have understood, the plan has changed a lot over time.
You started your trip with Greece and Bulgaria… I imagine that Covid has something to do with this choice. Often backpackers head directly to the other side of the world at the beginning of their trip.
Taylor : It is indeed a choice linked to the pandemic. Until ten days before departure, we didn't know where we were going to go. All we cared about was making it through a year of roaming. We took our tickets to Greece because our families and even our friends were worried that we didn't know where we were going ten days later, when we were supposed to be going on a one year trip! When we chose the destination, we saw that there was the possibility to do a beautiful hike in Greece with the mythical mount Olympus, perfect to test all our hiking gear.
Émilie : It was funny this kind of anxiety and impatience of our entourage. So, to reassure everybody, we sat down in front of Google Flight on a Sunday afternoon, we checked the destinations and especially the prices. Athens was the best offer with the best projections for the future. We thought we could go back to North Macedonia (a Taylor's whim), Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, go to Austria, why not go back to Italy and take a plane in Milan for South America in December. This helped us to project ourselves a bit more and to reassure everyone. Finally, hardly three weeks after our departure, we did not follow this itinerary at all!
How was the beginning of your trip? I remember on our side that we started our trip at 200 km/h and then slowed down…
Émilie : Oh yes, at the beginning it went very fast!
Taylor was very impatient to leave Greece to see another country, he was always one step ahead of thinking about where we were going to go next. We didn't stay long in the places, we went on a series of hikes, visits, like a vacation pace.
We slowed down once arrived in Mexico, the plane tickets were very expensive (we had modified them at the last moment to escape the second lockdown) and we realized that we made savings by travelling slowly. In addition, we were following our initial motto: "take the time to take the time".
Taylor : Curiously, the beginning of the trip was rather difficult psychologically. We had the impression not to fully enjoy the moments. There was a lot of frustration to not succeed in putting ourselves in "travel" mode as we had imagined. Concerns, such as budget management, outweighed the fun. In my head I thought that once we had landed, "the magic of the trip" would work and that we would immediately be in the mood. In the end, it took a while to really get into the swing of things.
With hindsight, we should have anticipated a little more the first month in terms of accommodation and destination. We lived a real emotional rollercoaster, the moments of happiness were multiplied by ten but the moments of frustration equally. We learned to manage them little by little.
The daily life during a long-term trip is very different from the daily life of a working person (or even during a more "classic" vacation), what did you like the most in this way of traveling? On the contrary, are there things that you didn't like?
Émilie : I repeat a little what Taylor said above, at the beginning dealing with questions about our budget was difficult. We had a big unknown: how to live with 22 000 euros for two people for a year?
We were in Greece, I had not had a vacation for several months, the desire to have a drink on a terrace was very strong for me and therefore the frustration of not doing so compared to the budget. The first three weeks were a bit complicated but in the end we had no regrets because these savings allowed us to travel as long as we wanted and to enjoy ourselves in the end. I caught up with my mojito quota in South America!
This experience was amazing, I loved to have time, to be able to rest when I needed to, and to discover new places almost every day.
I regret that our relatives could not join us as they would have liked during this year. We would have liked to share a part of our adventure, to make them discover how we managed with the locals, in the buses,… All the things that we cannot show in photos or in video.
Taylor : One of the most striking things about the daily life we have here in Brittany is the fact that we meet new people every day. Whether it's other travelers you meet in the hostels, cab drivers, guides, people who are in charge of the accommodation… All these meetings make every day different and interesting.
What a pleasure to have the time too. To be able to say to yourself that if you don't do something one day, you will do it the next. That if we like a place, we can stay there for 10 days instead of the 3 days that were planned. This is the difference between a vacation and a longer trip
What is perhaps more difficult is the lack of reference points, even if our backpack follows us everywhere, and the lack of French food. In fact, during the last month in Bolivia, 80% of our conversations with other travelers were about this topic!
How did you experience the trip as a couple and the fact of being together practically 24 hours a day? Was it a challenge at times or did everything go smoothly?
Émilie : I think I can answer for both of us, it went very well! It was hard to imagine before we left, I was afraid of it. So indeed it was not easy every day. But this trip allowed us to discover ourselves in another way, we lived things that we would never have lived as a couple in "everyday life". I find that during the trip the emotions are multiplied, everything is felt more strongly. Sometimes just with a nice room or even discovering that the seats of the bus lay at 180 degrees when we are going to spend more than 12 hours there, it was like winning the world cup.
In the difficult moments, of doubts or of decision making, we noticed that we were really a team and that we balanced each other out a lot. For us, dialogue and communication were the keys.
Taylor : It was one of the apprehensions before the big departure. We were leaving together knowing that anything could happen. Even if we hoped to return together, we had considered all the eventualities before leaving. Finally, in spite of some arguments, everything went well and I think that we made progress in our communication.
And now that we are back, we realize the common experience we have. Talking about the trip is not an easy thing with the others but between us we can go back to it and understand each other.
What amazed you the most during your trip? On the contrary, what shocked you the most?
Émilie : I was shocked by the poverty in some areas, especially in Colombia. Several times we saw hundreds of people on the side of the road, entire families with their suitcases. They were Venezuelans who were fleeing their country.
I was also shocked by the completely different health care systems compared to France. In Ecuador we saw oxygen bottles for sale in the street!
I was amazed by the nature, the beauty of the various landscapes, a real crush in front of the immensity of the Uyuni Salt Flat and the thousands of stars above our head when we woke up there. I was also very moved by the kindness of the locals, the very warm welcome we received hundreds of times. One meeting particularly touched me, it was during a trek to the Ciudad Perdida in Colombia. We talked with Petrona, a young indigenous woman from the Kogi people who still live in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
Taylor : If I had to keep a place of wonder it is the Cordillera Blanca in the north of Peru where we had the chance to spend five days hiking, really cut off from the world because we met almost nobody. A real feeling of wonder for these landscapes from morning to evening.
What "shocked" me the most was the atmosphere in some cities of the South American continent, the very pronounced inequalities and the insecurity that can be really felt in some neighborhoods.
Concretely, what impact did Covid have on your trip? (everyday life, organization, tests, transportation, hospitality…) I imagine that it was not easy every day… But on the other hand, you could certainly enjoy some very touristy places all by yourself.
Émilie : When we returned to Europe in July, we were shocked by the restrictions in place. But not shocked in a good way... It had been 9 months that every time we wanted to enter a store or a public place, someone was there to disinfect our hands, to take our temperature. There were disinfecting tubs for the shoes (often too small for Taylor's feet 😉 ), sometimes even disinfecting tents with a spray from head to foot.
In Peru you had to wear two masks and a protective face shield when traveling, in Colombia you could only enter the store on certain days depending on the number on your ID card (even and odd)
Obviously, depending on the place (roughly countryside and city), this was more or less respected. But on the other hand, there was always something to wash your hands and the containers were not empty!
We didn't find it really difficult, you have to abide by the rules of the country. There were sometimes curfews or lockdowns on weekends. It was necessary to make antigenic tests for some bus trips, but everything was set up to make a test before getting on the bus!
Overall, nothing too annoying. Finally we lived the reality of this special moment at the heart of other countries.
One of the positive sides was that there were few tourists and mainly backpackers, so we ended up in the same hostels. Everybody knew a little bit everybody. There was a great mutual aid thanks to the social media. In Peru for example, the youth hostels that we all aimed at were full. On the other hand, the other accommodations, like hotels, which were a little more expensive, were not full at all. It was therefore very easy to negotiate big discounts in some rather luxurious hotels. We made ourselves some small treats. Our best negotiation: to pay 30 dollars a room displayed at 90!
Taylor : The main impact was on border crossings. Indeed, land borders were closed within Latin America for the entire year 2021, so it was necessary to fly + do PCR tests which added to the budget.
On the other hand, the pandemic allowed us to visit places in unique conditions, notably Machu Picchu that we visited one Sunday that was the second round of the Peruvian presidential elections. We were more than 40 minutes, only the two of us on the observation platform. Quite a crazy opportunity according to the people who work there.
At a time when the issue of environmental protection is on everyone's lips, do you think that the benefits of such a trip compensate for its negative impacts on the planet? (obviously we are not in a position to judge you but the question deserves to be asked and we are interested in your opinion on the subject)
Émilie : It is clear that in times of pandemic with closed land borders, we are in a very bad position when it comes to these environmental issues.
Taylor :The environmental question has often caught our attention in Latin countries. Their concern is very, very different from ours. They don't see the problem at all in putting each vegetable in a different plastic bag, some of them don't understand at all that we don't want to use a bag.
It's also totally normal to throw your bag of chips and your can out of the bus window once you're done. But what impact does this really have on the planet compared to the planes we took?
In short, we have indeed asked ourselves many questions but we have few answers…
We may have read on the internet that returning from such a trip can be difficult, but it is not necessarily easy to prepare for it until you have experienced it… How did it go for you?
Émilie : We came back by surprise two weeks before the date we had fixed when we left. During 3 weeks we saw our relatives little by little while making surprises, it was incredible!
For my part, I found it difficult even though we both wanted to go back. It is a big step, kind of a mourning. We even had the impression at times that we had never left! That it had been a dream…
It was hard to see Taylor go back to work, he had everything mapped out, I had nothing. I had quit my job so I could leave.
It took a few weeks to get over it. Everyday life is coming back fast, it's crazy. We didn't think it would come back so quickly.
Taylor : Our surprise return allowed us to keep the flame and the excitement of the trip during the three weeks that followed. What feelings to find our relatives and especially our parents in these conditions.
The surprise allowed us to make this phase more motivating, we were back in Brittany but almost never at home. This shared happiness of the reunion is really part of the trip for me and I am happy that we managed to make it last in order to enjoy it as much as possible.
Over the last few weeks, the desire to come back was starting to grow. We had the feeling that we had enjoyed it to the fullest and that adding other destinations to our journey would not make it any more beautiful.
If you had one lesson to learn from this trip, what would it be?
Émilie : We are lucky to be born in France and to live there!
Taylor : It is that one should not try to anticipate everything, one often took more pleasure in front of the unknown than during those things that we had too much anticipated. For example, as time went by, we checked less and less travel blogs and we didn't look at pictures before the visits. We trusted the advices given by locals or other travelers and we were always positively surprised.
If you could go back in time and slip in one piece of advice right after you made the decision to leave for a round the world trip: what would it be?
Émilie : Don't try to check off all the boxes, take the time, accept that you can't see everything.
Taylor : Not everything may seem perfect in the moment but the experience is so wild: don't forget to enjoy every moment.
Anything to add? Do you plan to leave again someday?
Émilie : Yes !!!! But maybe not in the same way, not necessarily backpacking. It will also depend on where we go. Maybe with a vehicle? Not necessarily a year either. But since we came back we have a lot of ideas in mind, nothing fixed, but we feel that we want to get back on the roads.
Taylor : Everything is said: of course we will travel again! Since we came back we have many ideas but we have to take the time to sort them out. We met so many people and so many different ways of travelling, we know that it will always be possible at any moment of our life. It's up to us to give ourselves the means.
Émilie and Taylor :And a big thank you for having helped us in the preparation of our trip thanks to your blog and your book. These readings have really given us a boost. It was a real pleasure to be able to share some time with you shortly after our return.
This is the end of our 5th backpacker experience. We thank Emilie and Taylor a lot for having taken the time to answer all our questions and for having welcomed us so warmly in Brittany. We wish them all the happiness in the world and also wonderful travel projects to come. And as always, if you have any questions to ask them, don't hesitate to leave a comment below 😉
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