Tourist are made, not born.

A few months ago I went to Morocco, I climbed the Atlas with my dad and my sister and after we decided to see the desert. Before going to the desert we spend 4 days in the mountains, living with the locals and talking with people from all over the world. Each of us had a different reason to be there. These days were the best part of the trip. After that, it was time to discover the Sahara,I told them that I didn’t want to do the typical tourist thing, but in the end we did. I remembered trying to figure out what was the point of doing that, we didn’t interact with locals, we saw what millions of tourist saw before us… I came back from Morocco and I had dinner with my friends, they went to Morocco as well, they did the same tour, they went during a different time of the year but they saw and experienced the same thing. Since then I have been planning my next holidays and I have clear in my mind what I won’t do/be again: a tourist.

Do you want to be a tourist?

Here is my point: I want to meet with the locals, I want to see how their life is, what they eat, how they cook, I want to spend a few days or weeks working and living in their way, even if I don’t speak their language, I want to be part of their family, I want to get rid of all my western habits during these days. I want to travel as they do, I want to buy a train ticket across the country or travel in their public transport, I want to try to get as close to being one of them as possible. I want to help them and support the local economy, not the big industrial companies that they don’t even belong to that country, as a result we would support local people, real people.

To conclude, I want the experience, the joy, the adrenaline and the adventure. I don’t want to do it alone, I want to travel with a group of people all around the world and as a consequence we would discover a new country. It would be like a culture inside of another culture…

Let’s call it culture exchange or the third half.

#Sport #Sportdevelopment #Football #Volunteer #travel #responsibletravel #thethirdhalf