The trip ends. You leave people at the airport. On the corner 17 days living at all hours. We have done almost 6000 Kilometers of Namibia roads. Some hundreds also for northern South Africa. You remember when you greeted them there almost three weeks ago. Then there was a question in question ahead: Will everything go well? They climbed the two cars with rush to meet. We were owls, Catalejo and Bitácora. Nothing, nothing less. Manuel, A guy, He is the only one who still stayed with Dani and with me another day in Windhoek. He decided to leave a day later. Manuel is waiting, to let things happen without going ahead of things. Travel in group while traveling alone. It is cult, It is ready, But do not claim space to prove it. I have learned that living with him. Because we have done that. We have lived and learned from each other. Ten strangers as a group, that as such they have known in the narrow arrivals of an airfield in the middle of a desert. This is about this, of living together, among us and with others. They are all others, and all is you. It went well, very well. I breathed when I got to the car back to the hotel. I put all volume music. Sing, of Travis, My fetish song.
The trip ends. There is a WhatsApp chat with jokes. We still use it. Good sign. It was a means to remember things before the trip; It has become a means not to forget after him. Maybe the second will happen, little by little. That chat will be left to congratulate a party, Maybe to suddenly send a photo, And then some joke. And then silent, without wanting to happen but because the maelstrom of today. I have almost 16 years living away from home. You shut up and shut up without anyone wanting to shut up. I reflected recently about that. But we have Luis. Luis always says something. And laugh strong, Very strong. There are people who cheer on others. You always want to have a Luis next to a route. Driving many hours every day is not easy. You are sleepy, You have slept regularly, And in front you have 600 kilometers of dust and blows. And I learned that with Luis it is less smoke, They are less potholes, And they are more laugh with which to wake you. Luis is caffeine, And good vibes, and excessive generosity. "This is the rehostia!”, I released again and again. And by osmosis he infects his enthusiasm. You pay you yawn and fatigue, Almanaques and debts.
The trip ends. I never took so few photos on a route. Rare that I spend in Namibia, The most beautiful landscape I have seen. I have photographed it many times, With some impatience of any of the previous times that I traveled. I saw dry adobe towers to immortalize and in my photos two centsons came out.Once I photographed a clock. I was dead. I asked for the time an old man who held him and looked at me with contempt. No time in Namibia, I said, And I saw a Himba laugh out loud of my stupidity. This time I decided not to bring the camera. It was a sensible decision. I was the guide here, The photos were made by others, And not looking at frames allowed me to better watch your own. And there was Isabel. Photograph the world with the soul. Focus with the mouth, frame, shoot. We were sitting at a bar, already sunset, and listened to his voice saying "brutal". They seemed "brutal" especially the photos of others. I enjoyed seeing snapshots like a girl develops gifts. I knew how to leave spaces from the rest. There is little, I have seen in trips turn the camera into a trench. Isabel is a lovely woman, polite, fun, With the essence of good traveler: He doesn't bother anyone, although that implies that it is the one to bother. Most of the photos of this post are yours.
The trip ends. I write this a 22 July 2025. The route ended the 29 last June. It has been, Dictate my watch, 23 days, six dawn, six decades and 386 Dust clouds. Many years ago, in 2014, I wrote that time in Namibia was measured in clouds of dust. And it is so. Today I decided to send an audio to Federico, The Italian who came to the trip. Until recently we lived together in Bangkok. I moved to New York in April. I miss him, To the city, To the crows who climb fat and old to breakfast with my window. Federico is a good friend. LIVE UNE AND TRAVEL SIGNALA, and traveling through a special site like Namibia does it even more. Now we both know that saltpeter is seal grass, and that where the elephants towers the branches are spears. I hesitated before starting the route of how my Italian friend would fit among a group of Spaniards. Fit how they fit not nationalities, but travelers. The trip is a language that Federico speaks perfectly. You talk with feet and gestures. The world can be crossed without knowing languages, But not without communicating. You return home and you will have done many miles and a few meters. Federico does not fail there, Speak the language of the maps, In addition to speaking Spanish and English. We do not need us to travel, But he if we need us to make the trip go well.
The trip ends and you owe ours. I have several. Some standing food, some excursion without tomorrow, Ever I was wrong without knowing what I was errious ... like that day we got lost in roads. I was looking for Dani's lost car and I first entered a devil, then on a path, And I ended up in a rock labyrinth. We end up going through dried rivers on a ground without rules. It was the land of elephants and mushrooms. Around weeds and trees, as if they push us. I recognize it today, I doubted if there was a way out, And even if I wanted to go out. I will never forget, nor will we forget any of those who were in that Toyota Fortuner, that section that I would not know how to repeat. But my oldest is that Ramón Costas, That day he guided me with the "compass" of his mobile, I would not have come days before to visit Sossusvlei. A virus moved through cars. He touched everyone, But one touched at least he should do it. He got up with high fever, fucking, And he stayed in bed while the rest enjoyed that lie that is a desert of high red clouds. I think Ramón is sick. The same happened in 2014, on a trip that I also guided by Botsuana and Zimbabue next to the other Ramón and Luis. And there you see people. There are those that before adversity surrender, They defeat themselves. Ramón endures, Because he travels to satisfy his curiosity, Not your phone. A thousand questions, He wants to know, Do not make up with the photos, You need to understand them. And I like that intellectual part of the trip, that of the person who intends to know the place where he goes, And that testarian of a guy determined to continue coming to my routes even though I am like a kind of virus for him.
The trip ends and I think we will make more routes in 2026. We will go to Mozambique and Mexico, And we will repeat in Namibia, at least. Yesterday I got up and started organizing Mozambique. i lived there, I got married there, That is not a country for me, It's my life between postcards. In that WhatsApp chat that still doesn't shut up I see that sea, The Galician, I send a beautiful photo of vilanculos, Mozambiqueña coast. He was traveling in 2011. Will not come to the route of 2026 Because the country was already whole. We will miss it. Sea is one of those people who leave absence. Makes more noise when it goes than when it arrives. It is hard as the pumice and soft stone like a sponge. Or so it seemed to me. I liked his idealism without good imposted. In these routes in the car you spend many hours, And it is good to have good conversationalists. Mar liked to walk. She had something left over and soles lacked. The world wanted to jump, walk it. Sea asks for cane. And that motivates. We descend and climb, We stop and accelerate, And my phone's GPS says we saw a country of ocher grass, High curves and hollow rocks. And she was always there.
The trip ends and I think that my great challenge was the dream. I shared a room with Dani, My guide partner, And it was hard for me to sleep some nights with his throat broadcasting noise. That is one of the challenges of a route like this in which the rooms are two. In my case, I have a dream too fragile, my mother's inheritance, that leaves me at night outdoors of stanzas and scorrans. And then I saw Ramón Poza arrive the next morning, accommodate at the end of the car, and fainting regardless of the jolts of the highway's sinks, heat, o Vehicle agitated conversations. Slept as if they went out with a switch. Fuck, It gave me an insane envy. And I understood that Ramón accommodates the world at will. There is no epic, ni selfies, nor the excessive ego of that traveler who travels to talk about their exploits the others, nor do you want them to listen to presume scars. And I like your frankness, Although he brought the virus from Spain to cars, And I hesitated to sacrifice it, by contagious, letting them eat some lions. And when I meditated if I would leave it near the Nossob or Mata Mata camp, In the South African Kgalagadi, I realized that I didn't come in the car, who stayed with his cough sleeping in the bungalow, And I felt unhealthy jealousy. A pool is needed on the route To give space, Not to monopolize verses, and To sit behind and let others go. Generosity.
The trip ends. The first thing I did when I arrived in Spain was going to eat anchovies, some squid and a ration of good ham. Food in Namibia is always a challenge. You don't usually eat very well there, And yet on this trip we have had some memorable pitanza. Some hunger is sometimes spent on a trip with so much car, And more hungry is passed if you travel with José Luis, Coyote for friends and gang. Coyote is a Basque who travels with his gastronomic society in the backpack. His gang understood that it is as sacred as in the years I lived in Mexico I understood that the Virgin of Guadalupe is sacred. And to eat well between them is a trade, Not even a hobby. But José Luis is above all a good and honest man. And those always contribute on a long route. Has some pastor dog. Controls the flock and constantly fixes in the needs of others. And I noticed how I did: accompanied the tired slowing the step, He gave up the site in the car to the mourners, He came to tell me to loosen if someone thought he needed rest ... and I imagine it now eating in his society as Tolosa and telling that in Namibia they destroyed a springbook steak that served carbonized. And controlling, controlling that everyone around them is fine.
The trip ends. I speak with Dani quite frequently by phone. We sent ourselves audios with our gap hours with an ocean in between. Daniel is a friend with whom I have ended up riding a company that goes from some of the things that we have been doing without a notary in between: travel, narrate, write… We do this for Ivan, Paola, María Luisa ..., And of course by Daniel and Javier. We are tenacious and currants. We have spent our life telling the lives of others on a screen and paper. Today we also show it with a car. In our maturity we fell some change, of rowing countercurrent, And we think about converting a hobby into a trade. And in that we are. Futting maps, profileing documentary lessons, editing books ...
The trip through Namibia came out very well, I tell myself from my computer with a view to the Chrysler building in Manhattan. We enjoy, enjoyment, The trip with Manuel, Luis, Isabel, Federico, Ramon, Mar, Ramon, José Luis and Daniel. That's why we organize trips, tell me. We try not to be two guides and eight customers. Or if, But we try that this is the ten trip. And it was. You have to curre the route before, And you have to live it in the during to convey emotions. A team where everyone contributes, where all are part of two cars and a map. We learned that the same trip, With another attitude, other people, It would may have been another. The route is fantastic, We know the country very well, Namibia is beautiful and interesting, Accommodations have a lot of charm… Enjoying like this seems simple, and not do it, Believe me, also.
I put a point and followed on that trip. Namibia, in september 2026, is already underway. Y mozambique 2026 In May or June. And Mexico 2026, In November. Y…
