Raul Guizzo

Hey there! Have a seat and let me tell you a little about myself. Although born and raised in the USA, I've spent the majority of my life abroad in different countries across Europe, Asia and South America. This international experience has been driven not in pursuit of a particular career or better quality of life, but rather a deeply personal and intellectual curiosity in culture, language and ways of being. With inspiration from my travels, I've explored these themes through poetry and short fiction, which I believe provide a firm foundation for my travel writing. I strive to write engaging content that is a pleasure to read, full of helpful, practical information for fellow travelers that eases the burden of planning and decision-making, so they can focus on the true essence of travel — rushing headfirst for an adventure into the unknown.

Before learning how to walk or talk, I was already accumulating stamps on my passport. At nine months old, I boarded (or rather, was brought aboard) a plane in Miami bound for Montevideo on my first international trip. The seed of wanderlust planted on that journey has been growing ever since, its branches extending further and further across the globe. In the USA, I've visited most of the states, ticking off many of them during a 7-week roadtrip circumnavigating the country from south Florida up the East Coast to Boston across the Great Plains to Yellowstone before whipping down and around Las Vegas, until ditching the car in Dallas and flying back to Miami. Later, settling in Spain and Portugal as home bases, I was able to travel quickly and conveniently across Europe by planes, trains and automobiles. This was followed by a stint in Singapore, which unlocked southeast Asia on the map with nearly every country in the region visited at least once.

You might've assumed that my Great American Road Trip would top the list for best travel experience, but no. If I have to choose one best travel experience, it would be riding an electric scooter among the pagoda-dotted landscape of Bagan in northern Myanmar. Funny enough, this was a quote-unquote bad experience, because the scooter ran out of battery right as we started heading back to the hotel at sunset. My passenger and I huddled together and stubbornly soldiered on at a steady tortoise pace of about 5 kph until we met a possibly friendly but certainly reckless local biker who insisted on helping us the best way he knew how — by propping his foot on the front interior of my scooter and taking off full-speed down the dirt road as I focus all my energy on keeping the wheel straight so we don’t turn and crash into this human tow truck. Check out my travel blog for the complete tale and to find out if I made it back to the hotel in one piece.