Nycka, the Nomad ©

I was asked how to overcome shyness. I am not a psychologist, but I will share my experience with this. Unfortunately, I was born at a time that apparently it was super normal for parents to be authoritarian and to force children to be obedient and meet their parents' expectations. And for some reason I was not supposed to live up to my expectations and I lived most of my life with my maternal grandmother. I don't know where I lived when I was 8, but an incident happened at school that made me carry trauma for thirty years and from then on I stopped answering roll calls at school. So I considered myself a shy person, although if I go to analyze it in depth, maybe I was an extrovert with problems of self-esteem. After that incident, I changed schools and two years later I changed again. And in this school where I studied from the age of 11, the slow transformation began. In the first year I didn't even leave the room during the break. And a gentleman, “Seu Cecílio”, came to ...

I don't go backpacking. Sometimes people ask me for tips on this type of travel and cheap trips, but it's not my thing. I have a travel experience that led me to prefer comfort and privacy above all when I travel. When I was studying business administration, I took a vacation trip to Porto Seguro, a beautiful city on the Brazilian coast, in the region where the country was discovered by the Portuguese. I had already been there on another occasion. This time, I went with my family on an excursion. And I regretted it a few hours after we left home. I lived at the time in Montes Claros, about 850km from Porto Seguro. We went by bus. And before the bus reached Salinas, 280km from the origin, it broke 3 times! The third was night, and we were there on the road, in the middle of nowhere. I cried. I asked to be dropped off in the first city so I could take a bus back home. We hadn't made a quarter of the trip and there were so many problems that it seemed impossible to reach the ...

Non vado zaino in spalla. A volte le persone mi chiedono consigli su questo tipo di viaggio e viaggi economici, ma non fa per me. Ho un'esperienza di viaggio che mi ha portato a preferire il comfort e la privacy soprattutto quando viaggio. Quando studiavo amministrazione aziendale, ho fatto un viaggio di vacanza a Porto Seguro, una bellissima città sulla costa brasiliana, nella regione in cui il paese è stato scoperto dai portoghesi. Ero già stata lì in un'altra occasione. Questa volta, sono andata con la mia famiglia in un'escursione. E me ne sono pentito poche ore dopo la nostra partenza. A quel tempo vivevo a Montes Claros, a circa 850 km da Porto Seguro. Siamo andati in autobus. E prima che l'autobus raggiungesse Salinas, a 280 km dall'origine, si è rotto 3 volte!!! Nella terza volta era notte, e noi eravamo lì sulla strada, nel bel mezzo del nulla. Ho pianto. Ho chiesto di essere lasciata nella prima città per poter prendere un autobus per tornare a casa. Non ...

Eu não faço mochilão. Às vezes as pessoas me pedem dicas desse tipo de viagem e viagens baratas, mas não é minha praia. Tenho uma experiência de viagem que me levou a preferir o conforto e a privacidade acima de tudo quando viajo. Quando eu estudava administração, fiz uma viagem de férias para Porto Seguro, uma cidade muito bonita no litoral brasileiro, na região onde o país foi descoberto pelos portugueses. Eu já tinha ido lá em outra ocasião. Desta vez, fui com familiares numa excursão. E me arrependi disso poucas horas depois de partirmos. Eu vivia na época em Montes Claros, a cerca de 850km de Porto Seguro. Fomos de ônibus. E antes do ônibus chegar a Salinas, a 280km da origem, ele quebrou 3 vezes! Na terceira era noite, e ficamos ali na estrada, no meio do nada. Chorei. Pedi pra me deixarem na primeira cidade pra eu pegar um ônibus de volta pra casa. Não tínhamos feito um quarto da viagem e já eram tantos problemas que parecia impossível chegar ao destino. Aquela foi a última vez...

To travel by myself has some risks. When I plan my trips I have some standards in mind and sometimes to keep them I try some hotels from some group I had experienced before. But this is not a guarantee of quality, unfortunately. That’s why I am risking a bit more in small hotels sometimes. Curiously most of my bad experiences are linked to the experience in the hotel. All the rest usually is good enough. For me, hotels must offer privacy (no thin walls, please!); a well trained team (once I was sleeping completely naked and someone tried to enter the room, maybe to clean it. Fortunately the door had a lock that I used before to sleep); comfort (a queen size bed and an excellent shower are the minimum. Something to keep a nice temperature inside the room is also necessary); security (a place to keep precious things like jewels and the laptop without the risk to be seen by the staff); and currently be pet friendly with nylon webs on the windows for my cat don’t escape, and a staff train...

Brazil is a big country and the variety of typical food travellers and nomads can find here is enormous. Brazil is much more than feijoada and caipirinha. This post is to talk about the food in the northeast region, which includes the states of Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, Pernambuco, Piauí, Maranhão, Bahia, Alagoas, Paraíba and Sergipe. This region offer typical food mainly with seafood and fishes, as most of the touristic attention is on the beaches, but the other cities have also interesting options to try, considering culture, art and gastronomy. Some of these foods are found in restaurants in other regions too, but the originals are always more interesting. One of my favourite desserts, which is often found for breakfast in hotels in Pernambuco, is "bolo de rolo". Pernambuco have one of my favourite gastronomies in Brazil. Bahia is other state I love from this point of view (the culture, art and natural beauties, too, for both of them and Minas Gerais). In the northeast...