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 âTe quiero AmĂŠrica inesperadaâ on August 20, 2007.
I was fascinated by the idea behind Te Quiero AmĂŠrica, a segment Denise Fraga made for FantĂĄstico, where Francisco, a laid back and alternative traveler, and Maria, an adventurer on her first trip, work their way across the Americas looking for each other and for themselves.
Since I’m fairly offline from television I missed several episodes, but luckily I recovered them on the internet. Globo has some of the episodes up, along with a blog where Denise wrote about the trip, which they have unfortunately since taken down. Plenty of books kept her and the crew company along the way, and some traveling thinkers get a word in at the end of the episodes.
A life, abridged
One of the challenges of that format is talking about the places visited in a few minutes while also developing a story between the characters. It’s a challenge that keeps getting more common, and not only on television. It happens to our own lives, experiences and ideas, and these films keep getting faster and more heavily summarized.
Because the challenge is so hard, it’s sadly noticeable that the segment took painful cuts. Denise Fraga says so herself, and I’m sorry about it too. I’m going through the same thing at the moment, reviewing some things and trying to summarize my own ideas. It isn’t easy at all, but let’s leave that one there.
Unexpected experiences
The main point, which I should have focused on from the start, except my serious problem with wandering off the subject never leaves me alone, is the unexpected experiences that happen to us on trips. They usually make up the best stories and they rarely get cut from the film of our trip through here.
Good or bad, they leave deep marks that can change the direction of our lives. It isn’t only Francisco and Maria. It’s easy to find drastic changes in the routes of great adventurers because of unexpected events, and the shove of an unplanned occurrence always enriches our baggage and helps on the climb to the top.
Anyway, I’ll repeat Francisco’s words from the first episode, that he has only a backpack, and that his entire life fits inside it.
Nobody abridges that backpack and nobody takes it from me. I’m leaving it in the hands of the unexpected life.