Working Abroad and Volunteering to Transitioning into a Nomadic Lifestyle

Hey Nomads, welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast. My name is Annik Klaassen and, together with my co-host, kendra Hasse, we interview digital nomads. Why? Because we want to share stories of how they did it. We talk about remote work, online business, location independency, freelancing, travel and, of course, about the digital nomad lifestyle. Do you want to know more about us and access all previous episodes? Visit digitalnomadstoriesco. All right over to Kendra for today's interview.

Welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast. My name is Kendra and I'm your host today. Today I'm joined by Esperanza and we met in Palomino, a beach town in Colombia where she works as a yoga teacher, tarot reader and as an astrologist, and there she told me so much about her traveling story, what really inspired me. So I thought, okay, she needs to come to the podcast and share it with all of us. Welcome, esperanza, it's amazing to have you here. Hey, welcome. So maybe let's start with your traveling story. When was the first time you started traveling?

Immediately after finishing my military service in Israel, I was 22 years old. I was 22 years old, I went off to Finland. I lived in Finland for one year, I was working in a cosmetic company and after a year, with all what I saved, I traveled to Nepal. I traveled to Nepal and I started a seven-month trip in all the area of Southeast Asia. I traveled in India, in the Philippines, vietnam, cambodia, thailand, sri Lanka. Even the Maldives was an unexpected destination that added to my trip, with my sister joining me, and that was my first deep of fire in the life of a nomad and I absolutely fell in love with this lifestyle, got really passionate about just traveling and seeing more and more and more places around the world beautiful.

So and in the so, in the beginning you were not working.

You were like really traveling from your savings yes, for the first years of traveling I was always kind of had periods of working hard somewhere, recoll, recollecting all the money, then period of traveling nomad and living on my savings. But all the time I was working in between I was always living in places outside of my country. So I lived in England, I lived in Finland, I lived in France and that was still an experience of traveling. Although I was settled in one place working, I still felt like I'm traveling because I was abroad and different language, different people and always new sights to see.

Amazing, and what kind of jobs did you do? I'm asking because some of our listeners maybe are thinking, oh, I want to travel, but then there's the money off, so I need to work again. So what kind of job did you do? Then, to make the money.

I was working as a waitress, I was working in a shop of cosmetics, and when I traveled to South America, that's when I started to adopt a lifestyle that was a bit more. I was working. For example, I play music. So I was just sitting in the streets with my guitar. All the coins I had in my wallet I put it there on the street, inside, like a hat or in the case of the guitar, and then I bought in the shop like strings. I made bracelets, I sold bracelets in the case of the guitar, and then I bought in the shop like strings. I made bracelets, I sold bracelets in the streets and I started to volunteer. I started to volunteer in hostels or using couchsurfing.

So I'm listening that like it's just like you just went with the flow, like every challenge you had or any opportunity you saw you could use to work, like at that place.

yes, and I volunteered in hostels, for example. Yeah, I volunteered in hostels beautiful.

And then when was like this time, this transition where you said, okay, now I will have like my own work I can do like in the country where I am. When did you really because I understand, now you're working as a yoga teacher and now you're like more settled, like more time in one place and when was like, how was this transition from your traveling lifestyle into a little bit more like a nomadic lifestyle?

So when I traveled in South America, I started to see an opportunity to live abroad and to live a different lifestyle than I ever thought I would have. That is more close to earth, close to nature, more sustainable. I saw more options and I had it in my mind as a seed that I was still not ready to plant. I was still passionate about traveling and seeing places and I think the transition happened to me as it happened for so many people around the world. Covid-19, the quarantine where I have found myself.

I was living in an indigenous village, a fisherman's village in the north of Colombia, with the tribe that is called Wayuu, and that was, for me, actually forced to settle down for the first time in maybe seven or eight years that I stayed more than one place, even more than my own home. I used to come back home for maybe two months before, like in between, but then I stayed in that village for around 10 months without getting out from there. It was an amazing experience and it was exactly what I was manifested without knowing, because we lived close to nature, without light, with very limited amount of water, living from fishing basically. So it was that I always wished for, but it came just in the completely not expectable way. Completely not expectable way, no, as one plan.

But that was the point where, after the quarantine in Colombia after 10 months was open, I already felt something within me is asking for more stability and also it was not clear if it's safe to travel again, if it's not safe to travel again, if any moment COVID could have come back and the airports got open and closed in different countries and and I stayed where I was and I had in my mind kind of a flash memory that I used to want or to plan to study yoga, and because I heard about a lot of no-weds actually that used to live from yoga, as just you know, moving around and carrying their talents with them and giving classes wherever they are or exchanging their classes with sleep or with other service they need.

And that's when I started to research around and I have found a yoga school, which today I also teach there, called Omen Flow, and I got a scholarship I was sharing my story about. And that's when I got I shared my story of the traveling lifestyle I used to have and mostly of the last 10 months of my life in the indigenous village and after more or less three months. I got an answer from her. I got a scholarship into the course and that was a very intensive course of one month of 12 hours of studying every day. In the end I got a certification of profession and that was the first time I had something in my hands that all the friends I have around me maybe used to have it a lot before and like this type of paper you know, that gives you a title, that gives you a certification that you are.

And that was my first time experiencing that and immediately since then I started to give classes, First to my friends, hostels around, as I came back to the same village where I used to live in Cabo de la Vena. There was a lot of tourism there around the kitesurf and this is where I offered Every night, walking between the tourists, offering yoga classes to stretch the tight muscles from the practice of kite surf, and I started to give classes in mornings and afternoon. And as the rainy season came, I arrived to Palomino and the same there I started to give classes there, Maybe they make.

Because I have now the question I think a lot of people ask before we go on what was the story you shared to get the scholarship? Because we already listened a little bit. But let's go a little bit back before we go back to Palomino and yoga how was it living this almost one year, 10 months with a tribe? What was this experience there? Maybe you can take us a little bit with you to that memory.

Wow, first of all, when it all started, it kind of felt like the end of the world. It felt illusional, it felt surrealistic, it felt for me, to the soul. I feel to the soul, or to the sake of the spirit.

It was an amazing experience. It took me to, I mean, the villagers themselves. They said that it feels like we came back 20 years backwards. Right, we, we came back to to just live from fishing and the fishes we sell and what rests from the fish we, um, we buy rice and we buy oil and we buy coffee and, uh, it's a desert. So the amount of water is very limited and all life got kind of a different perception and what I got to share is with people who maybe doesn't have so much in a material abundance, but they share everything they have always and they are kind and they are warm and they open their arms and their doors to me like I was their daughters and until today, when you hear me and speaking about them in Palomino, I call them like my aunt, my ma, my grandpa, my grandma, my nephew, my cousin, because this is what they are to me until today.

It was an experience that felt divine, felt felt like it was meant to be, while so many people were literally quarantined, stuck inside of four white walls, I felt free. No, we have wind, we have water, we have sand. We maybe don't have a lot in material, but we learn to appreciate what we have water, we have sand, we maybe don't have a lot in material, but we learn to appreciate what we have and to appreciate what nature has and we learn to appreciate the relationship between us and kind of this spiritual abundance around us that we are free, that we share, that we laugh. And it was an amazing experience that built my life and changed my life completely, my perception of life and determination of abundance.

What is maybe one key memory you can share with us, if you say it changed your life completely. What is this one thing, or maybe two or three, that make you change your perspective about life?

I learned that we, maybe the meaning of life, is kind of in the experience. Maybe I was always this kind of person who is looking for growing, for transforming, for expansion, and I found it in the most unexpected place with people that they actually live that and they didn't never have to go to workshop like we do. They never have to go to do any conscious activities of writing, of meditation, of yoga or, for example, astrology and tarot and et cetera. They live. They live it, they are happy, they smile and they live every day. They just live every day with happiness, with warmth. They share everything they have.

And I think I learned also to enjoy the moment, to not think too much about the future, to not attach too much to what will be tomorrow, because we never knew what's going to be tomorrow, we never knew what we're going to have tomorrow, but what we have today, we are going to enjoy it and to get the maximum potential of it. It taught me a lot about also the value of family, of relationship, of being a companion, of being had. That was something that for me, was very, very meaningful Until today. Those people, for me they are family. They are family for each matter.

Thank you for sharing. So would you recommend, if people have the opportunity, that you really should live a certain time in a native tribe who simply is in this people? Is it something you say you would recommend to all of us?

I think it's kind of a good idea to maybe detach a little bit from the concept that we have in our mind of how it's supposed to be and how it is it and also is to just stay to be, act as we are. You know, sometimes we can be surprised of actually how many similarities and non-difference there is in our experience, in our life perception. There is not any difference, basically, and we can find so much in common just bringing ourselves how we are and not treating them in any other special way, right.

Beautiful. And if you say like to finish like this, talking about the tribe, if some of our listeners are like, okay, I really would like to spend some time in an indigenous family in a tribe, do you have any recommendations on how people can find this and how can we make it happen Possible? Or how did you end up there? How did you find them? Or was it really through COVID that you were traveling there and then happened the quarantine and you needed to stay?

Yeah, for me it was just. I mean, when I arrived there, I started to volunteer in a kite school which was sustained by a local family, and when COVID started, the situation basically looked like okay, this girl has nowhere to go. In my perception, it was always. Also I didn't feel it's urgent to go, because I didn't really see the point of going back to my country to stack myself in a wall with all those rules, with all those tapabocas, the face cover and yeah, I mean it happened so randomly, people just accepted me in. But I also am speaking about a community that is so, is very open and warm. It's a place where whatever person will come there and will open his heart with authenticity and with love, then he will be received. Heart with authenticity and with love, then he will be received. And all the communities that lives in that area they love to share, they love to open themselves and they they're very kind and very warm are also in the Sierra Nevada, where, where we met, right.

So for the people who don't know, we are currently talking about the north of Colombia, by the Caribbean Sea, like Guajira Cahualavela, where Esperanza was, on the Sierra Nevada, the Santa Marta. So then, like coming back from this tribe, you then started. You got your um, your veka, your scholarship for being a yoga teacher, and then this helped you a little bit to leave this um travel lifestyle. You didn't go back to travel lifestyle, but you stayed in columbia to work as a yoga teacher, right and Mm-hmm.

And you are also like a child reader and an astrologist. You said yeah. So basically, what is it like what you are doing there now? Like how is your lifestyle now? Like what is the work you are doing as an astrologist or child reader? So you have like private one-on-one readings. So how can I imagine?

Yeah, so today, actually, I still kind of travel in Colombia, although I try to look for stability, but I find myself keep moving after my passions. Right now I am near Bogota, teaching in the yoga course, in the yoga formation for instructors. From here I'm going to go to Cali, following about another dream that is related with dancing, and so what I do, also in Palomino and also in wherever I go, I spread my letreros, how do you?

say letreros Like flyers.

Like flyers with my name, with my details, and I provide also yoga classes and can be group, can be private, can be in presence, can be online via Zoom and sessions of a natal chart, reading the natal charts and in astrology, and for those who doesn't know, the natal chart is the ubication of the stars, of the planets, in the moment where you were born, and it's not related to prediction or telling the future or anything like that. It's a kind of a tool to have outer reflection, outer observation for our process. It will be like having our energetic signature to our gifts, to our lessons, to our qualities, also to our challenges. Something that we can learn more about ourselves and expand our awareness to our qualities, also to our challenges. Something that we can learn more about ourselves and expand our awareness to our life path.

This is a session that I do always one-on-one. One needs to have his date of birth and the hour of birth and the other tool I work with is the tarot cards, which is the same concept but instead of working with the planets and the signs, it works with traditional images that represent archetypes within us. And the same concept looking into the light and shadow in our personality and learn how to grow from them. What is the medicine within each one of them? So this is something that also I can live with when I live in Palomino, when I travel around and through online, I can offer it as well, and that allows me to keep moving and sustaining myself.

And I hear, like when you're talking, this duality between stability you know you're saying like when you're in Palomino, you want to stay and all of this freedom traveling around. Do you say there's this kind of this duality? Like nomads deal a lot with Like, on the one point, we want to be stable, but on the other hand, we want to be stable, but on the other hand, we want to be able to be spirit, keep discovering and living adventures, or what is it something that you're observing? How do you steer with this?

I think that's when we are travelers, when we travel or for long term, especially if something in our digital nomad lifestyle we are still kind of committed to to work and I feel like we move. But every time we arrive somewhere, we, we want to make this place our home. We, we want to have this place to put our clothes, to put our candle, to put our our things. No, I have a little altar I carry with me to wherever I go with my cards, with my little crystals, with my symbols, and I think that we, we need we need to feel this stability, to feel at home, to get to know the local people, right that when I go to the shop in front of my house, the, the woman, the seller, already knows me and she knows my name and she smiles to me and and in a way, yeah, we keep move between places, but each place we want to feel at home, we want to become part of the community and I can, I can hear you and also with the stability it's like kind of this routine we need.

You know, like we are looking kind of for a routine and then maybe in some point this routine gets too much in the routine that we feel, okay, we need to go on. But then when we need to go on and also as we met when you needed to leave Palomino, how does it feel then? We are always. Some of us might also struggle because we need to leave the circle of friends we made. We like the routine but somehow something is still like pushing us to go on. How do you experience it like every time when you go out of your stability again into freedom?

It's wow, it's an amazing experience. I can't even explain that to myself. I feel so hard within me, that conflict. I declare I'm looking for stability, but I can't stop moving and every time I move I feel so much maybe regret or some kind of this. I don't want to go and then so why do I go then? But then it's, it's very, it was very hard for me to live now.

It was very hard and I kept trying to remind myself that, first of all, as we digital nomad, we we need to live from something. And I'm going for the sake of working right, I am getting my tickets paid, I am getting my accommodation paid and I'm gonna do what I love. Basically, I love teaching yoga. I feel that I really fulfill my purpose when I when I teach. But yeah, I made friends and I made community, which was so hard, hard, even heartbreaking to leave. And now when I go to Cali it's going to be my second time in Cali. I know people there and I remember the last time I was there, I felt just the same. It was harder to leave. I built people that surrounded me. And why am I going if I don't want to go? But still, always, you have this you know why you go, you, you connect with the needs that you fulfill in your journey and with the purpose of your trip, but at the same time, you want to stay there and you find yourself sort of opening roots everywhere you go.

And there is this sentence I don't know if you know, it's like a meme on instagram you would never feel at home again because everywhere you go you, you leave a part of you, a part of your heart and I like really this concept or what, what is helping me finding home within me, home in my heart, because I, I, I see it's also beautiful that we don't want to leave from one place, because that means that we enjoy it right. It also would be sad somehow if you say, oh, finally I can go on, but then always like knowing that it will be beautiful at the other place as well and also knowing you can always come back.

As you said, made already a little bit community in canada, you will meet, yeah so then for me it, what helps me, is finding my routines I can have at every place, my routines that hired me to feel home within me and knowing also what do I need to feel at home. So building a little bit home within us. What do you think about this?

Yeah, it's kind of these safe spaces within you, when you always have the safe spaces within you and the same routine that you already know to link with safety. Finally, stability and grounding is all about feeling safe in a certain place, and that could be very diverse from person to person, but when, finally, it's something that we, that we manage to cultivate wherever we are through our daily practice, through our daily habits, it can be to prepare ourselves local food, for example, or traditional food that reminds us it can be walking barefoot on the ground in order to connect with the new place you just arrived yeah, for me it's like also having this morning time to say hello to myself, to my heart, to understand how am I really doing right and like with journaling, with conscious dancing.

So I feel also like the benefit of being a nomad building home within us. Needing to leave so many times our comfort zone to start over again also helps us to travel within us, to get to know ourselves better, to get to know to our yeah, get to know our core authenticity, esperanza. I have like a one more like as you traveled so much like seven years Asia, latin America what would you say is something if, like, you would not, would, you would not like to miss, so something you lived in all those years. You are so grateful for that. You are so grateful for that. You say, wow for this, it was worth it. This is like that memory. I'm so grateful for all this learning.

The first thing that comes up in my head is maybe the fact that you know, when we are traveling to so many places, we are dealing with choices every day. Should I stay with this group of people I just met and I like, or should I stick to the plan? Should I stay here less time than I wanted because there is more destinations I want to see, there is plenty of choices we have to do and it can be something so stressful and even cause anxiety. Anxiety and I remember myself struggling hard. Sometimes. I planned something and things changed, and I think that every time that I managed to finally take a decision that maybe was following my intuition, I could observe afterwards that, thank God I made this decision and not the other one, because, if I would do, the fact that I decided to stay it made me to meet this and this person that I wouldn't meet if I would stick. The fact that I decided to stay, it made me to meet this and this person that I wouldn't meet if I would stick to the original plans, and the person that stayed with me for life.

I think mostly it's always about people. I feel like, looking backward, the experience that remains is a lot about the people you meet in the way and not so much the views or the experiences that we we think they are the goal. But but for the long term they're, they're not the goal and they were not the goal. It's the people we met on the way and the connection we did with ourself, like you say, the growth, the transformation that the external conditions, the externals, were just providing the conditions for us.

So, following my intuition, always afterwards I could just be grateful that I took this decision and yes, yeah, and this, I feel, also shows us that we are, then, on our journey, on the path we should be on, like this feeling of we are co-creating with the universe, following our intuition, our hard voice, also remembering us maybe always that we should just live in the present moment and not thinking about what, if, if I should have done this, you know, or if I would have done this, but being then they're present and you say it's all about the people, but but you also say it's like we are, we are, we are deciding, based on, maybe, some landscape, based on what we expect in this country, so, as it's so, so many countries in the world, what like now for our listening, what are the countries you recommend to go like? What is a country we all should have on our list, or maybe, or it's a place where you remember this meaningful thing I think that for me, as I was always speaking spanish south america, south America I felt at home immediately.

The people are so warm and kind and I managed to hold the lifestyles of a traveler. I did things to the people in this continent that kept opening their doors to me, picking me up on the roads while hitchhiking, sometimes driving me a little bit farther than they were planned because they just wanted to help, or inviting me for lunch or for breakfast, and it gave so much more taste and expansion and richness to the experience to get in touch with the local people, to the experience to get in touch with the local people. The countries I think I enjoyed the most from that experience were Colombia and Argentina. That were two countries that I felt so close to the culture that the people themselves used to tell me that I am already they say, argentinizada or Colombianizada Kind of integrated myself there. And, yeah, the landscape of Patagonia are the most beautiful views I've ever seen in my life. So much diversity, beautiful ever seen in my life. So much diversity and beautiful. South america was, for me, definitely made me feel at home and, yeah, there is from everything.

No, there is beach, there is snow, there is mountains, there is a jungle and it's all in the same continent country in colombia yeah and in colombia and like, like finishing up this interview, anything I should have asked you, anything you fear you still want to share with our listeners, anything that that you still? Yeah, that's the burning on your heart.

I think that the deepest process that my journey took me to is for the acceptance and surrender. I feel like sometimes we are seeking for those experiences in order to maybe improve, maybe change, maybe transform, to add to our life Something that we feel, that is not there, that is missing to us, and I think that we sometimes learn so much About ourselves During During these Sessions of our life Traveling. And to learn to surrender, to surrender to our patterns, to accept to it's okay when things are not okay, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be stressed, it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be frustrated and we don't always have to to feel trust in the process and always to feel that we know that everything is for the best and we think positive. It's okay to surrender to those emotions, to the acceptance. This is where we grow.

For me, that was the biggest change to really let go of control and understand that, just like in life, traveling is part of life, especially for long term. So there is ups and downs, and sometimes we are sad and sometimes we cry, and the meaning of self-love that we all seek to find within us when we go outside is there. It's in the acceptance to all those moments that are not shining and brightening, but they can be dark, they can be scary and and we still hold that space for us to to accept. For me, that was the my biggest lesson of my life and in the last years.

It's beautiful and I feel I don't want to comment on this, just invite all of our listeners to just stay with it and inhale it. It was beautiful. Thank you for sharing and we will put your Instagram in the show notes. So if someone wants to go deeper in it or even maybe wants to book a yoga session with zero-tarot reading, they find your Instagram in our show notes. Thank you, esperanza, for sharing your story with us.

Thank, you, Kendra, for inviting me.

And that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it very, very much. I would appreciate it even more if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts for listening. I appreciate it very, very much. I would appreciate it even more if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts for me. That way, more people can find this podcast, more people can hear the inspiring stories that we're sharing, and the more people we can impact for the better. So, thank you so much if you are going to leave a review. I really appreciate you and I will see you in the next episode.