"Be bold and hit the road" MartaBotelho's Profile

I started travelling as a kid with my parents around my own country. It is a small country but has a lot to see. From North to South I went to most of the major cities and places. I got in touch with my roots and I spent a lot of years just getting to know the people, the traditions and the arts.
Meanwhile I was studying in a Spanish school in my hometown. With my class all through the 10 years in that school, I traveled around Spain. I went to Madrid around 20 times, saw La Mancha and Leon, went to Santigo de Compostela in Galicia and cruised in Andaluzia. I went then to college and I had to study so hard that I just didn't find the time to do anything else. And I felt something missing... Since I studied Decorative Painting, I had to learn all about European History of Art. I would just see photos and daydream about going to those places one day... On the last year of college we made a field trip to Paris. And I was delighted. What a lovely city. I spent 15 days walking around the City of Lights, seeing all the monuments, gardens and museums. Later that same year I went to the Baleares Islands for summer vacations. My first time on an Island!! The Mediterranean is just so perfectly blue. And the beaches were awesome! I got to go to the Majorica Pearls Factory and drive around Mallorca.
Suddenly I was travelling all around. I went to Firenze, Pisa, and other cities in the Toscany area in Italy. I just loved to meet the Italians and seeing with my own eyes all that I had studied so hard. One year later I went on a sailboat trip to the Morroccan and Spanish coast. 20 days sailing were enough to make me realize that what I really wanted in life was to sail around the world and go to exotic places!

In October of 2002 the company where I studied contracted me to do a restoration work in a Church in Rio de Janeiro. They called me and just asked "Do you want to go work in Rio?" and I screamed YEAH!! I didn't even ask how much I would be payed... I mean... I would pay them just to have the chance!!! So there I went across the Atlantic Ocean for 10 hours and arrived at the city that conquered my heart! I fell deeply in love with Rio and I'm thrilled to go back again (I have another job there with the same company in another restoration work). In Rio I met my boyfriend and after coming back to Portugal in last May, I left a month after to meet him in the United States of America. I stayed in Miami for a couple of days with the feeling of "Miami Vice", waiting to see Don Johnson popping behind some palm tree!!! I went to Naples also and got a glimpse of Florida life. The boat ride on the Everglades was unforgettable. Then I went up to Ohio, to Cleveland. I stayed there for three weeks and went all around. There was a tall boat show at the time and I got to go inside the most mythical sail boats ever built and still floating. The Bounty was my favorite one! Can you image that Anthony Hopkins stood in that same boat years before to film the movie??? What a feeling!! I also got to see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which was a thrill for me, especially because I'm a huge U2 fan and they had a temporary exhibit of this Irish band! It Rocked my life!!
After the States we flew to Ecuador where my boyfriend had his little Catalina 27 sailboat. We stayed there for a while, got robbed, got everything back (that's quite a story!!) and then left after 2 months to Panama. We sailed for one entire week and we did not see shore for that long. Just dolphins, whales, sharks, flying fish and all types of birds! In Panama we sailed all around the southern coast. We even went up a river where we got aground!! But the tide was rising and we got out in 30 minutes! Then we went to Panama City and visited every place there was to visit. We crossed the astonishing engineer work that the Canal is and went also to Colón and to the Black Christ Festival. We were ready to leave once again when we were hit by a Cargo Ship in the middle of the Canal. What a disaster!!!
We were broke and we had to sell the sailboat to this German kid. We flew to my country with tears in our eyes to spend Christmas with my family. He's back in the States and working as much as I am to get money to buy a new sailboat! Soon I'll be leaving once again to Rio and I can't wait for it!! I wonder what will come next... but the sailboat is in our dreams and we just want to sail to Hawaii!!
In all these countries I made very special friendships with whom I still keep in touch. In most of my experiences I wasn't just passing by, I was actually living in those places, making my money and trying to live just like everyone else around me on a low budget. But that did not stop me from seeing what I have seen so far, and that keeps me focused on going further and going wilder!!