Life's a highway for young Valley globe-trotter

While backpacking Fernando Martinez-Pechs had already faced his fair share of bumps in the road when he found himself strapped for cash in Uyuni, Bolivia, last summer. He and three friends, fellow travelers he had met a few days earlier, set out to find an ATM. But one thing stood between Martinez-Pecsh and the money he needed to survive for the next few days: the local ATM was broken, and repair was still three days away.

“What we did with the few cents that we had (was) buy bread and butter, and that’s what we ate for two or three days,” the 25-year-old recalled.

The group found a hotel that charged $5 a night, explained their situation to the staff, and were able to pay for their rooms later.

“A lot of people would say that’s crazy, but you know what? It was fun,” he said. “If it happens again, I would say let’s do it again.”

Every summer since he was 18, Martinez-Pechs has left home with little more than a backpack, his passport and a general idea of where he wanted to spend the next three months. In the last seven years, his travels have taken him through South America, Europe, parts of Africa, and even China and Japan.

His first experience traveling alone was from his hometown of Mexico City to visit family in Venezuela. However, he considers his first true experience as a globe trotter to be a 2005 semester spent in Bordeaux, France. From there, he moved on to Eastern Europe and Northern Africa.

The only plan Martinez-Pechs makes while backpacking is to end up at the same airport he landed on any given continent, but even that isn’t set in stone. His no-itinerary policy is the very reason why he has traveled so extensively.

“That’s the beauty of backpacking: You never make plans,” he said. “You have an idea of where you’re going to go, but you never make plans.”

Before ending up with only pocket change in Bolivia last summer, he had spontaneously trekked through four more countries than he originally intended to with people he had known for only a few days.

“I thought I was only going to do Chile and Peru, but some friends that I met convinced me to go to Argentina,” he said.

For Martinez-Pechs, making friends out of strangers is the routine, not the exception. When far from home, people tend to open up about their lives.

“Hostels are the centers of knowledge for people,” he said. “I have seen that just from knowing a person two or three days, this person is going to care for you in a way that no one else has in your own hometown.”

While on the last leg of his South American tour in 2007, he found himself in need of money once again with three days left before his flight home. Thanks to the kindness of a new friend he met in Venezuela, he was able to survive until he left Bogotá, Colombia, and returned to Mexico City.

“I didn’t even ask,” he said. “In that moment (of need), that person is going to become your best friend, your brother or your sister, and even your father or your mom.”

Martinez-Pechs found himself caught up in a short romance with a Canadian backpacker he met in Morocco in 2005. They got acquainted while checking in to a hostel in Tangiers, and he learned later that day that she and a friend were going to move on to Fez the next day.

“My plan was to stay in Tangiers just two days and go back up to France, but I just went with them,” he said “You just need to bond, and it just happens automatically. When you’re traveling, it’s easier than where you live.”

The pair spent three days traveling together before parting ways. They crossed paths again when he spent three weeks with her in Montreal, Canada, the following summer.

“She cooked for me; I met her family, her friends, everybody, after just meeting for three days in Morocco,” he said.

In addition to friends, the traveler said that he has encountered a few people with assumptions about him based on nationality. On several occasions, locals and travelers alike have assumed that he was traveling in search of work because of the Mexican flag he pinned to his backpack. He recalled one such incident during a conversation with an Israeli traveler he met in Peru.

“He said, ‘You are not from Mexico. You speak very good English,’” he said. “(He had) the stereotype about the mustache and the donkey.”

In the end, he tries to take it all in stride.

“You need to be open-minded,” he said. “The most important things in people are character and personality.”

Journeying alone to other countries has made him open-minded to different people, cultures, religions and colors of skin, Martinez-Pechs said. As the broadcast journalism major finishes up his degree at The University of Texas–Pan American, he is certain that his backpacking days are not over. He is looking forward to making his way across Africa, India and Southeast Asia and also has dreams of operating his own hostel in Latin America.

“I need to keep traveling and discovering places,” he said, remembering a saying by his cousin in Spain. “He said, ‘You are what you have traveled.’ I’ve been to 40 countries in my life, and there are over 200 countries left to visit.”