Daniel Moore

My first international travel required legal permission from my parents to leave the country, as I was under aged. It was a journey to the Southernmost tip of the South American continent, to the town of Punta Arenas (Chile). It was there that I learned first hand the true meaning of the word "seasickness". Navigating the rough waters of Cape Horn - where the Atlantic meets the Pacific - it's been one of the most feared sea routes since 1616. Even in today's high-tech age, it remains a dangerous place. Chile welcomed me on several occasions after that. The most memorable one was the month-long journey to Easter Island. As the years went by, mostly traveling on my own, I joined a three-month expedition to travel South America overland. It included the 1,500 miles journey to the mouth of the Amazon river in the Atlantic Ocean. Australia provided me with the most fulfilling and enriching experience in my life as a photographer. Spent three months with the Walpiri tribe in the Tanami desert of Central Australia while working on a photo reportage about Australian Aboriginals. Many other travels followed, through Europe and the US and Canada. And many more to come. So, stay tuned!

I was living in Rome when the idea of having an Internet presence for my travels began taking shape. It finally matured in Dublin, where Unique South America Travel Experience was born. I submerged myself in every technical aspect involved in building a website, from HTML to JavaScript and CSS. Search engine optimization (SEO) was another challenge I truly needed to understand if I wanted Mr. Google to rank my pages. But the part I enjoyed the most was the stopover in Brazil on my way to Buenos Aires, a yearly occurrence to visit my family as well as doing research and taking pictures for my website. Eventually, I moved to Fortaleza - in the Brazilian NE - to be closer to my sources and a daily climate of 30ºC year round that Ireland couldn't provide me with. The Coronavirus crisis found me in Buenos Aires. Unable to travel and to move freely around, I felt like a bird in a cage. I was shocked and sad by the amount of lives and dreams destroyed by Covid. I became depressed. In the midst of searching for a new meaning to my life, I remembered an Albert Einstein quote:  “in the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.” ArtTeeShop was born as a consequence. Creating an e-commerce site is not easy-peasy, but the WordPress platform and WooCommerce plugin made it possible. I immersed myself in the art of the greatest painters in History, enabling everyone to bring art to their daily lives in the form of t-shirts, sweatshirts, pictures, phone covers, and a myriad of other uses and products. ArtTeeShop is up and running, so feel free to visit it if you wish to do so.

To me, there isn't such a thing as a favorite destination.  Whether having an early cappuccino at Piazza Navona before the crowd arrives or lighting a fire on some remote beach for grilling the catch of the day, each and everyone had left an indelible mark in my life. Of course, the human factor had played a very important role as well, for what is life about if we do not share? Whichever your approach to travel is, I hope you never experience what the guy in this story went through: "A cruise ship passed a tiny, isolated island. Everyone on board could see a bearded man on the island, shouting and desperately waving his hands. "Who is that man?" a passenger asked the ship's captain. "Why is he so upset?" "I have no idea," said the Captain, "but every year when we pass by here, he goes nuts."

I could try and answer this question to the best of my knowledge and experience, but there is somebody who did it wonderfully and in front of this definition mine would look incomplete or, at least, insufficient. Needless to say that I entirely agree with Pico Iyer when he wrote: “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”  Pico Iyer - Why we Travel. And you, what motivate you to travel? Surely, if you hang around the JoinMyTrip platform is a sure sign that you've got bitten by the travel mosquito too. We'll meet again as soon as I put together some adventure trips that will surely water your mouth. I can't wait to see you on the road! ....and remember, the first round of Margaritas is on me!