San José

Costa Rica

It’s a rainy day in San José! Which is sometimes good because I’m always behind with administration and blogging for instance. Many things have happened since my last entry dated way back on July 12th.

I am writing my second book so the stories are all saved but that’s all in Dutch for now. In the meantime we have started working on the translation of Streets of the World - Asia into English. Hopefully soon all the English speaking followers of this project can read all about the crazy stuff I got myself into during the first phase of the Streets of the World project. I’ll keep you posted through the site!

After a great time filming in Mexico I traveled south to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Not such nice capitals I have to say. And it is somewhat sad I don’t have time to discover the better things that all these countries definitely have to offer. But that is the pace of Streets of the World and I’m definitely not complaining.

In August my little brother Wouter got married which of course was a very valid reason to go home for a couple of weeks. I also had some cool interviews including one on Dutch television. In Holland the project in the meantime is very well known. It sometimes feels I’m actually starting to become somewhat of a celeb. I’m starting to meet Dutch people on the road who have heard about Streets back home. It’s great to see how far we’ve come in such a short time. Check out the press page on this site if you want to see what already happened. Some stuff is in English too.

In September I started in good old Rio, a place that I have really embraced by now. But I was in Brazil to take the Brasilia photo of course, which is the capital. It doesn’t come anywhere close to Rio put it mildly…

From there it was all the way up to Bogotá, Colombia, which for me is a somewhat special place because my father, who passed away in 1998, was born there. Apart from taking the Bogotá photo I was very keen on finding the exact house he was born. This was difficult for I had only half an address from 1940 and the vague description from a very old neighbor. But after two days of searching I actually found it. There’s a video of that moment on the Streets of the World youtube channel. For me it was a happy and inspiring moment.

The trip went on in the style of a mini intermezzo with a very Dutch feel to it... I traveled to Curacao, Aruba and Suriname. All former Dutch colonies with strong ties to Holland. In all these places Dutch is still spoken and I have friends there with whom I had a great time. It does feel more like home somehow. Especially Suriname was very interesting to me. I had the funniest radio interview with Uncle To, as he is widely known, and I’ve met lovely people, one of whom particularly stole my heart. It was hard to leave.

Including Guyana that marked the end of South America! Another phase of Streets completed. I traveled back to Central America where I have 4 countries left. The first one was Panama. A notable one because Panama actually is the 70th country I’ve done. Since I am now going to do 210 countries that means with Panama I am at exactly one third of the project! Amazing how fast it already went!! To celebrate this overwhelming fact I spent some days on a tropical beach with good friends and no Internet, contemplating all that happened so far.
Combined with a few cocktails and lovely tropical sunsets, not a bad way to celebrate at all!

Today is the first day in country nr. 71: Costa Rica. I’ve been here before with my good friend Justus. That was in 2003. I remember us making a list back then of 10 things we really wanted to do in our lives. I think we can both say that we’ve come a long with our lists in 8 years. Let’s all keep up making our dreams reality!

The rain has stopped so I have to hit the streets again, looking to find that one special place and that one special moment that I can capture of San José, Costa Rica. The place where my grandfather Swolfs, who moved here 60 years ago, lies buried.