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"We've been talking about this trip for three years..."

INSPIRATION: Zack Hill and Tip to Tip

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YOU CAN'T LOOK AT THE END AS THE DESTINATION...

LIZ: What do you think the most difficult part of the trip will be?

ZH: I think physically, the most difficult part will be getting from Central America to South America, and that will be mentally difficult, too, because we’re planning on taking an automobile. We’ve heard nightmares about getting a car from one continent to the other, because of the different political situations.

I think probably the initial stages of the trip will be really hard, just all of a sudden being in a traveling situation, where you’re not stable, you’re not settled. But, you know, as a traveler, after a while you lose that and you get really comfortable with the situation.

And I think probably the end of the trip will be hard, too. I’ve been talking with a guy who walked across America, and he was saying that, “You can’t really look at the end as the destination, the destination of the trip IS the journey, what you’re experiencing AS you travel.”

But I think the end will be really hard, when we’re finally coming to the end of the road and we have to sort out our ways and figure out how we’re gonna get home.

LIZ: What did you do to prepare for this trip?

ZH: We’ve been talking about this trip for three years, been planning our itinerary the whole time, but not a completely “set” itinerary. And all of a sudden it’s become a reality, so now the intensity is really starting to build up.

I’m literally on the phone to my partner in New Mexico, an hour and a half to two hours a day: talking about logistics, talking about money, talking about who we’re going to try to meet, what we’re going to do when we get back…

It’s been a lot of planning, but I’m hoping that once we’re on the trip we’ll have more time to think, because we won’t be having to deal with our daily life as far as working and dealing with other people, things like that. I’ll be a lot of work, too, but we’ll have more time to focus.

LIZ: What kinds of equipment are you taking with you?

ZH: We’re taking an Apple laptop computer, three cameras--we have these cool little “lipstick” cameras that are really discreet, so you can set them up in the car to film passengers--our last trip we had some really interesting passengers. I’m bringing a super eight camera, an old film camera and a bunch of film, and we’ll probably bring two 35mm cameras with different lenses--that’s our film equipment.

And we’ll bring camping equipment, and surfboards and a couple skateboards, hopefully try to give some stuff away to kids. And my friend’s an avid rock climber, so he will be bringing some rock-climbing gear, and I will be filming him because I’m scared to death of heights!

LIZ: What kinds of travel have you done in the past?

ZH: As a team, we did a road trip, driving from San Francisco to Costa Rica and back. I’ve done a lot of traveling in Central America--I’ve been going once a year for the last five or six years now.
I’ve traveled in other parts of the world--I’ve been to Australia, New Zealand, I got to spend some time in South Africa, which was really neat.

But I haven’t explored Europe--that’s my next destination. When I was little I went there, but I haven’t been there since I was like eight years old, so hopefully one day, Europe.

LIZ: Well, I can certainly give you some advice about that!

ZH: Definitely!

REALIZING HOW LITTLE I NEED TO BE HAPPY...

LIZ: How do you think these travel experiences have changed you?

ZH: I would say, it’s really humbled me in a lot of ways… and it’s really opened me up.

It’s been a humbling experience in that it’s taught me a lot about different cultures and how to be a chameleon: to mold into different scenes, and feel comfortable and not be the sore thumb.

Americans have such a bad stereotype as travelers, you ask anyone. It’s nice to form into a community and try to integrate as well as you can, but you can never completely integrate, because people are obviously going to notice that you look different.

It’s been an eye-opening experience, in the sense of learning about other people and relating that to my own situation at home: realizing how lucky I am to be sitting where I am right now, how much I have and how little I really need to be happy. When you go to poorer countries you really realize how materialistic the United States is, how “Oh, I need my special cup of coffee in the morning so I can deal with life.”

Also it’s taught me a lot about languages: it taught me how to speak a different language, which has been a tremendous gift.

LIZ: It does open up whole new worlds when you can communicate directly with other people that way.

ZH: That’s for sure.

LIZ: How do you get away from that “Ugly American” stereotype when you’re traveling?

ZH: I try to avoid doing what I’ve seen other Americans do in “ugly” situations. Like, for example, at a restaurant, someone not speaking the language and ordering in English, and being completely rude about the person when they don’t understand what you’re saying.

What I try to do is be really up-front about where I’m from, not specifically America, but when people say, “Where are you from?” I say, “I live in Davenport, California, which is about an hour south of San Francisco, which is California, which is in the United States. I think it helps let people know that I’m not really trying to represent an entire country, but more a specific place.

So that has helped, and then just being really polite and as helpful as possible, trying to set a positive example for who I am. I’ve spent so much time defending “the people,” [of America] because we don’t necessarily represent the [whole] country that we come from; we do have our own outlooks. It’s true we are responsible in some respects for our country’s actions, but rather than spending a lot of time defending politics, I’d rather be explaining the positive aspects and the “people” side of things.

That’s something that gets overlooked, when you look at politics, you think of the “machine,” and you don’t think of the people that are underneath, underlying what’s going on. I try not to get too much into politics, whenever possible, because while politics can be an interesting subject, it can be a sour subject in some respects.

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