Around the World in Ten Years: The Independence Book reviewed by Overland Journal Magazine

Reviewed by Jeremy Edgar, for Overland Journal magazine

I had the pleasure of meeting Pablo and Anna at the 2011 Overland Expo, then of having them as guests in my home a week later. After five continents and eleven years on the road, they still have beaming smiles as if they were still on a “honey­moon”. En route they’ve published two books about their travels, and their decision to leave their formal lives in Spain for a bohemian life on the road –living out of an old Mitsubishi 4WD van that they have lovingly nicknamed La Cucaracha. These are the first Spanish books Overland Journal has featured and are worth learning the lan­guage to read. A quote near the beginning of both books tells all: “The only thing we knew about the future was that almost all countries were connected to each other by a road… May all the roads in the entire world begin at your front door.”

El Libro de la Independencia, details Pablo and Anna’s mild-to-wild drive through countries from Spain to Egypt. We learn about Pablo’s hilarious Aladdin-style pants he wore in Turkey, and enjoy his funny play-on-words for the police in Kurd­istan. Pablo spent the first 23 years of his life in Argentina. Having lived there for a year myself, I appreciated the Argentine sense of humor and attitude that comes through in his writing: everything from a comical commentary on the chosen mous­tache style of Arab men, to encounters with border guards and customs agents. This overland autobiography will leave you laughing aloud, inspiring you to get out and experience another part of the world –one that is well outside your comfort level. If learning Spanish is on your bucket list, then be sure to jot down these books on that list as well. (ISBN: 978-8461386789)

Historias en Asia y Africa, a quick read at just over 100 pages, is a backseat ride on a modern-day hippie-van trek from Europe to Southern Africa. It is interspersed with wonderful prose, at times bordering on poetry, into the wonders of humanity and culture, and the deep effects it has on one’s self. The reward to the reader is inspira­tion. It closes with: “For the first time in my life I know that it is possible to live life with an intensity that I never dreamt was possible.” (ISBN: 987-0520820)