This was originally published on my old blog BackpackBook (Livro de Mochila), a project that blended literature and travel, sometimes just traveling in my lucid dreams. It ran as âAventuras na trilha das AmĂ©ricasâ on September 5, 2007.
Forgotten at the end of a shelf I found Roberto and his little Beetle. I opened Na trilha das Américas without thinking about it, and there was a dedication inside written to my brother. What a thing. Into the backpack it went, straight back out again, and off I went into his stories.
A forty thousand kilometre run to the shops
Along with a journalist friend, Flavio JosĂ© Cardozo Jr, Roberto Böell Vaz drove the trail of the Americas in a Beetle called Bumerangue. Money and language were restrictions but never barriers for these two. They went from FlorianĂłpolis to Atlanta and came back, drove day and night, slept in the comfort of that old shell, saw the most varied places, peoples and cultures, and made a lot of friends and very few enemies. Despite a few things lost on the way, the Beetle’s luggage came home a good deal bigger.
Speaking of luggage, travelling for days in a Beetle is not easy, so to take some of the squeeze out of the trip he designed and built a roof rack himself, which made it impossible not to notice these two coming.
This Roberto is quite something, a restless traveller of a very rare kind, because you don’t find someone on every corner with the courage to cross the Americas, more than 40 thousand km, in a game 75 Beetle in order to get attention and give a voice to ecological problems.
I say that because I had the pleasure of meeting him and buying another book straight out of his bag. Even in a few minutes of conversation, the energy and the good humour of this young adventurer are easy to spot.
Roberto Böell Vaz
Currently the captain of Barco de Papel, this adventurer works for a universal cause, the survival of human beings in harmony with their planet. He uses his trips to raise a warning about social and environmental problems and their solutions, always tied to sustainable development, fighting pollution, and using technology to recycle materials.
Travelling with the book in your backpack
Roberto Böell Vaz would like to travel with you and Na trilha das Américas across:
- the Amazon by ferry, spending days on untouchable nature and a river with no horizon,
- a bus seat, remembering how comfortable the Beetle was and losing your ideas somewhere in the landscape,
- the seafront in FlorianĂłpolis, imagining that this was where the trip started and ended, and maybe even making out a small boat in the distance, a paper one, with captain Roberto sailing it.
If my Beetle could talk
The little Bumerangue never said a word. Its companion is still out there today, going round and shouting at the world, an example of a simple person who followed some very unusual dreams. The world could do with more of that sort.