So, after almost 3 years backpacking by land, exactly 954 days, I had to take a flight because my actual health conditions didn't allow me to bear the fatigue of travelling hitchhiking for long time; I had to interrupt my abstinence from planes and my travel marathon by land: a total of over 34 000 km hitchhiking. But about that, soon a new article with a photographic summary of these three years passed hitchhiking. I promise it's going to be very nice! I will first try to see if some magazines are interested in publishing it.
Going back to our trip, we landed in Pisa yesterday night, we went to pass the night to our CS friend Augusto, and already this morning we started hitchhiking toward Rome. I don't know if it's because it was a sunny day after a lot of rainy ones (we were told it was the rainiest March of the last 50 years in Italy), or a new point of view from our side or just luck, but today Italians were friendly! And that's incredible! Usually it's really annoying hitchhiking in Italy, because people are liars and arrogant but today it wasn't a bad experience.
Well, there are still some 50% of the people in Italy that statistically drive the wrong way in the highway, because when you ask "Are you going south?" and south is the only possibility, with a very secure gesture, they point the opposite direction and apologize for going the wrong side. But that's part of the game in Italy: the good part is that the other 50% were very friendly even if they were not going in our direction. We took a first short ride with a nice father with his kid, that would have liked to take us to Florence even if he was not going there, but had to give up because of other duties. Then it was the time of a brazilian guy, ehhmmm sorry Israeli, but he really looked like brazilian. We asked in italian and he replied in Spanish. We thought he was spanish and we started to speak in spanish and he replied in english. Eventually we found out that he was israeli and travelling with the partner for one week in Itay.
They left us before Florence and from there a very helpful chinese man gave us a ride even if he didn't understand a word of what we said. And eventually last ride direct to Rome with a young guy with an unusual job: he was driving luxury cars (BMW, Porsche, Ferrari...) to clients that were renting them all over Italy and sometimes Europe, people willing to pay 30 000€ to rent a Porsche for 2 months and spending 50 000€ on "drinks" for just one night. And they were leaving him not even 1€ of tip! It was an interesting story and a pleasant ride straight to Rome! And by the way, I won the competion 4-0 vs Oti, I took all the rides :)
So now we are back here for some time, as much as I'll need to recover from my B12 deficiency before hitting the road again! I look forward to post more about these 3 years of travel by land!
Davide Vadalà
