A couple of years ago I was surfing on YouTube and saw an interesting video on my screen… It was about a man who was intending to set a Guinness record for visiting every single country in the World, without leaving land surface, within a year.
Before I continue, Let me ask you… How random could the possibilities be to get to know a person after watching his video on YouTube? We may calculate it, I guess. However, the story is that after I saw this video I realized that this person was coming to the Dominican Republic, where I resided at the time. I kept visiting his website regularly, and it’s curious that a couple of days after I watched his video, I saw a post on his website entitled: Help, stuck in Santo Domingo.
If you are not familiar with The Odyssey 'man of the world' from NatGeo Adventure, let me introduce you to the epic adventurer called Graham Hughes. He started his journey around the world in 2009, and he made it… Graham is the only traveler who proudly hangs on his wall a Guinness Records Certificate that states he’s the man who has visited the most countries in the world (133) without ever leaving the ground! That’s a major goal! For Dominican folks, I guess we can relate his record with somewhat like trying to visit the whole earth using a “Carrito Público” (shared taxi).
When Graham arrived in the Dominican Republic, he got stuck for a couple of days. Although I did not know anybody with a boat nor had any idea about ship transportation, with the help of Social Media and Search Engines I sussed out a timetable for every cargo going in and out the DR. We set up a meeting at DR1 offices, I shared with him that information and that’s it. We talked for a while and now I'm humbled to see that Graham put me on the “heroes” section of his website, and even put me on a YouTube video.
In conclusion, I’d like to ask you… How small the world is? How the Internet has changed our way of living? Do you have any unbelievable story that happened while surfing the net? The truth is that this world is becoming a “global village” faster and faster, this is the moment to start thinking in ways we can improve our society, considering this BIG resource in our hands! For instance, our friend Graham completed his goal while he gathered funds for WaterAid charity, Bravo!
So long and thanks for reading! I encourage you to visit The Odyssey Expedition website and also please share with me your comments.
Note: This article was written a long time ago, some facts about The Odyssey Expedition and Mr. Graham Hughes may have changed.