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Name: Adriana van Deventer
Superpower: Slow travel expert and leap taker
After a busy career in social work and couture fashion design, Adriana left the skyscraper rat race with her partner, Tertius, to discover ‘slow traveling’. What is slow travel? Adriana describes it as being ‘in your surroundings at a relaxed pace, just living an almost normal life in new destinations’.
She’s been on the road since 2015 and visited 17 countries so far. Yes, 17! That was quite some dream to take a leap for and follow.
Adriana’s seen a lot, tried a lot, and experienced a lot along the way. Today, she’s here to share her slow travel stories and some tips on how to make all traveling a little easier for us.
Hi Adriana!
I’m very interested to hear where and how the travel bug first bit you
I spent my high school years in Nylstroom, or rather Modimolle, as it has been known since 2002. When we first moved there, we drove past the iconic ‘mountain’ nearby. My dad asked me to look at the mountain and then said, ‘Close your eyes’. A few kilometers further he said, ‘Open your eyes’.
The mountain had changed shape from a pyramid to a miniature Table Mountain. This natural hillock called Kranskop (cliff head) never stopped intriguing me and I realized there was a lot to discover in this world.
Adriana enjoying the magical beauty of this castle on a hill in Dolceacqua, a little town in the Liguria region in Italy, not far from the French border. Her father told her to close her eyes and open them to see a completely different view of the same mountain when she was young, and now she spends her days discovering many mountain views in many different countries.
Did you start traveling right out of high school?
No. After finishing high school I obtained a degree in social work. My first job was at a maximum-security prison. It was a rather bleak environment, where I worked for 2 years.
Soon enough, an artist friend convinced me to study fashion design and I completed my diploma at a college in the center of Johannesburg. Traveling on the bus to town and back every day gave me plenty of time to think, and 3 years later I started my own couture business.
Wow, that’s quite a jump in careers! How did you enjoy it?
I loved designing and creating bespoke women’s clothing. After 15 years in the business I felt the urge to return to social work, albeit part time. I also started a private practice, concentrating on child assessments and therapy.
In 2009, I took up a part-time position as a social worker at the Teddy Bear Clinic and decided to further my studies. I obtained my master’s degree in forensic social work in 2013. I then worked for the Department of Justice (DoJ) until May 2015, where I acted as an intermediary assisting child witnesses to testify in court.
During my time working at the DoJ I had to appear in many different courts throughout the Gauteng region and thus spent a lot of time on the road. This, of course, provided ample opportunity to ‘close’ and ‘open’ my eyes… seeing and experiencing new places was high on my agenda, and I knew I needed a broader canvas.
Adriana deep in thought while walking along a bridge in the village of Predjama, Slovenia. She thought a lot about her life and made many big decisions while on the road when she was younger, and now she gets to think as she slowly strolls along the streets of Europe.
I see that spending time on the road really helps you think and make big changes in your life. How did you find that broader canvas?
Traveling the world has always been a dream of mine since taking my first trip abroad to Spain and Portugal back in 1991. My life partner and I traveled quite extensively since 1998, all while trying to juggle our lives between work and travel. Every year we would take a 3-week break from the business rat race to swap it for the self-induced travel rat race, trying to tick off every possible sight in our travel guidebook. It was an exciting but tiring way of traveling, and we longed for the day when we could travel more slowly.
Adriana with Tertius, her partner in life and her partner on her slow travels. Here they are on the beach in Choeng Mon beach, Koh Samui, Thailand, to celebrate the start of 2016.
While journeying along these hectic travel schedules, we obviously could not linger too long or see everything on our wish lists. When items on our wish list were missed, our mantra became: We will come back for that.
Truth be told, the pressure of this limited time travel negatively affected some of these exquisite travel experiences… and it faded far too fast when returning to our respective hectic work routines!
But there was a dream all along. A dream to slow down our travels and to visit those ‘we will come back for that’ items. After plenty of hard work and long hours over many years, this dream finally came to fruition in June 2015 when we departed for Thailand on a 1-year sabbatical. The dream continues…
How exciting! Where did you go and what did you do there?
We started off on the island of Koh Samui in Thailand, where we planned to stay for 1 year. Then we found out there was a way to extend our visa to almost 2 years and decided we couldn’t waste a good visa. During our time in Thailand, we also took a month-long side trip to Indonesia and stopped off in Singapore.
While in Thailand – in order to keep me busy while not on the beach – I completed an online TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) course and secured a teaching stint for 1 semester in Nong Song Hong, in rural Thailand. And what a wonderful experience this was to learn so much more about the country, its customs, its food, religion and its people.
In January 2017 we spent a month in a freezing Serbia followed by a month in Montenegro. Then we were off to France, where we stayed in areas such as the Montpellier region, Marseille, Lyon and Paris. Before leaving Thailand, we applied for a 1-year residency in France at the French embassy in Bangkok. This, of course, enabled us to travel unhindered across most of Europe.
So, the world was your oyster. Where to next?
After some time in Paris we travelled to the Netherlands and landed in Amsterdam. From here we took a road trip through 9 countries in 1 month. It seemed like we were back to our old bad habits of hectic traveling, albeit only for a month.
We traveled through Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Austria, back into Germany, and finally back to Amsterdam. We needed a rest and flew back to South Africa to visit friends and family for 4 months.
Adriana exploring Cefalu, a coastal city in Sicily, Italy. From social worker and fashion designer to full-time traveler, no day is the same.
In February 2018 we went back to France as it was time to renew our residency for another year. We spent most of the year in various parts of France, but we also did a 4-month stint in Italy and took a 2-week ‘holiday’ with friends in Spain.
It’s almost 4 years since we left for our ‘1-year sabbatical’ in June 2015, and we’ve thus far traveled to 17 countries if you include South Africa, our hometown. We’re currently still in France and in the process of requesting another year extension to our residency – so further travels await us.
Adriana said goodbye to skyscrapers and the rat race in order to experience views like this every day on her travels. This photo was taken in Varenna, a little town on Lake Como, Italy.
17 countries in 4 years is amazing. Do you have any funny stories for us from your slow travels?
As you can imagine with being on the road for so long, there are many funny stories to choose from. You can just read through the posts on our blog at www.travelandall.com for many of them, but this one definitely comes to mind:
Before we left South Africa on our slow and perpetual journey, we gave away all our belongings. We were a hit with family and friends. The only possessions we had in this life were what we travelled with, which was a rather enlightening experience I might add. Our lives fitted into 2 fully laden travel bags of around 25kgs each and 2 carry-on travel bags that weigh in at around 12kgs each… that’s it!
As you probably know, airlines are rather sticky about luggage weights. These are carefully controlled, especially on low-cost airlines. And so it was that we used a particular low-cost Thai carrier with strict weight restrictions.
If you add and pay for extra weight at the time you make your online booking, it’s rather affordable. If they catch you overweight at the check-in counter, the cost is prohibitive. And, of course, we forgot to click the ‘add weight’ button during our online booking. Realizing that we were overweight, or rather our luggage was, we sweated bullets on our journey to the airport.
When we arrived at the airport, we found a luggage scale and propped up each individual case for assessment. The prognosis was not good: we had to shed 6kgs in 5 minutes.
I opened the suitcases right there for all to see, trying to identify the heavies we could get rid of first. I could feel staring eyes on me, but nothing interfered with my manic mission. The identified items were taken to the luggage scale and weighed… nope, more was needed. And so I did several trips until the scale agreed with our calculations.
While this commotion was continuing, a few Thai cleaning ladies had gathered around me to witness this farang (foreigner) doing crazy. They peeked into our belongings happily advising what else I should part with, or rather what they needed! Amongst the discarded items were sun-block, coconut oil, an old jacket, a pair of shoes, toothpaste, washing powder, and the list goes on…
My partner who was missing in action through most of this miraculously reappeared once the required weight was achieved, mumbling something about a man and his dog he had to see, or something to that effect… Anyway, we checked in without any penalties.
Adriana now stops to smell the flowers along the road – if she can reach them! Traveling has its stressful moments, its funny moments (often in hindsight), its humbling moments, and its moments that make it all worthwhile. Here she is standing next to a tall sunflower in Subbiano, Tuscany, Italy.
That’s hilarious. It’s a good reminder of how important it is to pay for excess baggage when booking a flight, otherwise you will pay for it later or say good-bye to a lot of it!
When I visited Thailand a few years back we had to take a connecting flight from the mainland to an island, but they lost our luggage in between. We were running around the airport trying to find someone who could speak English and help us find our precious luggage before boarding the next plane. That was just a holiday to 1 country, which leads me to ask what challenges you’ve faced while moving through 17 countries and how we can avoid them.
I’ve faced many challenges on my travels. Such as…
Money matters: Not having enough debit and credit cards on us. We thought 2 were enough until we arrived in Indonesia, where both credit cards were refused by the ATM and subsequently blocked by the bank.
Fortunately, we still had a few dollars that we could exchange for local currency. We then bought coffee at a restaurant so we could use their Wi Fi to contact our bank via Skype.
So, my tip is to carry more than 2 debit and/or credit cards with you when you travel. Remember to always keep a few dollars hidden somewhere. Also remember to buy Skype credit upfront and make sure you have a personal contact at your bank who you can phone to assist.
Bureaucracy: Bureaucracy is probably the biggest challenge in traveling. That, coupled with the inevitable language barrier, make for a poisoned concoction. We’ve had to extend our French residency a few times and every time the process has been different, unbeknownst to us.
When applying for our medical cards we got the run-around so much so that we let it be for a year before trying again. And then we finally got it right, making it well worth the effort. Bureaucracy is alive and well, but it works… slowly, but certainly efficiently. The onus is on you to ensure your documentation is 100% correct, so make sure it is.
Moving: To essentially move home almost every month can become tiresome. Having the car now – and thus not having to plan the trip to our new destination around available public transport – makes moving much easier.
Emotions: It is emotionally tough departing every month, leaving behind all the new acquaintances you’ve picked up along the way.
Road rules: There are rules and rules here are made to be followed and obeyed. If the speed limit is 50 you drive 50, not 51, else there’s trouble. If there’s a stop sign you stop dead for at least 3 seconds and then you go, else there’s trouble. If there’s a bus lane and you’re not driving a bus then don’t drive in it, else there’s trouble. If a sign says ‘no parking’ then don’t park there, else there’s trouble. If there’s a road where only emergency vehicles are allowed in high season then don’t drive there, else there’s trouble.
We’ve lived through all of the above and, believe me, it’s trouble. So, just stick to the rules because it’s much easier.
The rule is to follow the rules. Got it. Let’s say I wanted to pack up and do a slow travel for a few months – what should I think about and where should I start?
The magic of slow travel is that the emphasis is less on manic sightseeing and more on taking in your surroundings at a relaxed pace, just living an almost normal life in new destinations.
You get to see new places and explore new cultures in a way that’s less stressful, more respectful of the locals, and easier on the environment and on the budget. Traveling slowly allows you to form a strong connection to the place you’re visiting, which leaves one with a rich experience.
If you’re going slow traveling, you’ll need to consider…
Accommodation: Our slow traveling entails renting apartments, usually for a month at a time. We do most of our bookings via Airbnb and have found that if you book a place for 28 days or more, there’s usually a monthly discount associated with it. We’ve been lucky to have had discounts of up to 65%.
Choice of country: If you intend to slow travel it’s best to make 1 country your base from where you can arrange residency, medical, etc. It’s then also easier to purchase a car, which I feel is a definite plus.
During our first year in France we made extensive use of a good public transport system, but you simply don’t have the freedom that a car provides. We’ve now bought a car and it’s changed our lives dramatically.
Budget: Always work with a budget in mind and stick to it. I’ve created a little spreadsheet on my phone and after each purchase the budget is updated, detailing exactly what has been spent for the day/month and what’s still available for the day/month. It keeps you on top of things.
What would you tell your best friend if she was sitting next to you right now?
Live by the mantra of ‘We live, we learn’. Sometimes we’re too afraid to truly live because we’re too afraid of making mistakes. But you should look positively on mistakes as they are an experience in themselves.
So, get out there. Remember to ‘close your eyes’ and ‘open your eyes’, and to live and learn along the way.
How can we follow your blog online, to read all about your adventures in slow travel?
You can find us at www.travelandall.com
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Adriana, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. It’s such an interesting read from beginning to end, and an inspiration in so many ways.
You’re a great reminder that we should never stop exploring and discovering the world, from sunflowers to mountain tops. Sometimes I feel like we walk around with blinkers on, our eyes closed to the world. But a conscious effort to open them and to push ourselves out of our comfort zone opens a whole new world we never expected.
You also cover a wonderful topic of taking time to think. It’s so important to sit back and let your mind wander and flow. It’s a great guide in helping you navigate through it all and find ways to achieve your dreams.
You are so right, life isn’t always about ticking things off a to-do list. It’s there to be enjoyed and experienced. Life isn’t set in stone like those mountains. No matter where you find yourself, you can always make the decision to change your career, your view, your way of life, and most other things. There are almost always options if you’re flexible and look for them.
As for traveling, we’ve learnt to pack light, respect the rules, and have more than two bank cards. Travel is a great teacher in the rules of life. Luckily, traveling’s easier than ever before with regard to planning trips and accommodation with awesome tools like Air BnB. The world is our oyster.
May your slow traveling be blessed with much adventure and many beautiful encounters. Enjoy the view wherever you’re sitting now and smile, because you’re an amazing woman who has done so much.
I have a feeling you’ve only just begun.
Put on that tiara and shine.
