AFP, posted on Sunday, March 13, 2022 at 5:29 pm.
They left for six months, the journey of a lifetime, they return 22 years later, after a lifetime of travel, four children born along the way: an Argentine family makes a rare and somewhat crazy trip to Buenos Aires on Sunday, with the ingrained belief that “humanity wonderful”
At Gualeguaychu (northwest of Buenos Aires), one of the last stages a few hours and 230 km from the end of the journey, Herman Zapp wonders if he should say to himself: “My dream is over” or “I have reached my goal” . dream.” In the end, it doesn’t matter. “Everything turned out to be more beautiful than we imagined.”
In the beginning there was a couple of 31 and 29 years old, making good money, a house in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, the desire for fatherhood. But shortly before that, he had an old dream for two: a six-month tourist trip from Argentina to Alaska with $4,000 in his pocket. And then…
And then someone offered them this old collector’s car for sale, an unlikely vehicle: a 1928 Graham-Paige, wooden rims, “that wouldn’t even start,” but which they fell in love with. Therefore, the journey must have been made in antiquity.
Ah, Graham Page… Much like Zapps — “The Family Travels the World,” as the sticker on the car says — she is the star of a 362,000 km trip to 102 countries. . Even if she skated only a few hours per stage, and not every day, out of respect for her advanced age.
– A car that opens doors and smiles –
“It doesn’t have the best seats, it doesn’t have the best shock absorbers and it doesn’t have air conditioning. It’s a car that makes you alert (…) But it was great,” sums up Herman AFP. “Door opening machine”, smiles, helping hands.
He, of course, changed from the first kilometers – he drove only 50 on the first day, January 25, 2000, until the first breakdown … I had to take on mechanics, albeit hard work: increase the car, add 40 cm to it as the family grows. Pampa, now 19, was born in the US, Teue (16) upon her return to Argentina, Paloma (14) in Canada, and Wallaby (12) in Australia. Not forgetting the dog Timon and the cat Hakune.
Often the car was the “primary residence” where the children slept in a tent on the roof, the parents inside, and they were all surrounded by a large tarp for privacy. “The house is small, but the garden is huge, with beaches, mountains, lakes. And if you don’t like it, you can change it!” jokes Herman.
But in truth, the Zapps mostly slept with locals, guests in more than 2,000 homes around the world, by their estimates.
“We would never have thought that people could be so beautiful in the world. This humanity we live in is incredible,” Candelaria, 51, still cannot believe. Meals, lodging, free repairs… “Many people helped us because they wanted to be part of the dream.”
– Discovery is people –
Of course, things were not so rosy. Distracted several times by conflict, crisis, they lived in Asia with bird flu, in Africa during Ebola, in Central America with dengue fever, Herman caught malaria…
Every three years they allowed themselves to stay for 2-3 months in Argentina to see their family again. Then they left, attracted by something other than the scenery, from Namibia to Everest, from Egypt to Peru: “what we found were people.”
It’s hard to imagine a future after two such full decades filled three books – “Catch Your Dream” – selling 100,000 copies, which partially financed the adventure.
Herman talks about “thousands of options”, recalls sailing around the world. Young children are not thrilled with the idea of a full-time college education after years of studying by correspondence or by their mothers. But with unrivaled geography lessons.
A sedentary shift is probably to be expected in a world that seems to be moving from crisis to crisis. For Herman, this should not change the compass. “We are coming out of Covid, we are entering a huge war. If we wait for the right moment, there will always be a reason not to realize our dreams.”