In order to meet the local people around the world, I chose to use hitchhiking in all its forms to get around (car hitchhiking, boat hitchhiking, etc.) and tried to realize the challenge of "closing the circle" without spending a cent on transport (except urban travels). No expression can better summarize my vision of hitchhiking than that used in the Diario del fin del mundo, an Argentinean daily newspaper based in Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego that, on November 28, 2003, titled an article about my adventure, "Asistiendo a la mejor escuela de vida " ("Attending the Best School of Life").

The best school of life. Hitchhiking permits, in effect, 2 individuals who know absolutely nothing about each other at the start, to get to know each other rather well in the space of a few minutes, hours, or sometimes even days. To my taste, travels are only interesting if they are punctuated with meetings with the local population. Hitchhiking allows these encounters to happen. I have often considered that each one of the some 1,300 drivers who picked me up during my 5 years of hitchhiking around the world (plus the more than 100 who picked me up during my previous tour of Europe ) had something to teach me. By hitchhiking, I was able to compare my point of view with that of people with very different pasts from mine. Further, I was able to learn many things about the countries I crossed and see them through the eyes of the locals.

But beyond hitchhiking and after 5 years of touring the world, the 2 words that I most want to say today are : NEVER AGAIN

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