Konstantinos Tucker and Nicky Koumandraki met in Thessaloniki and for the last four years they have been living in Latin America, while almost half the time they have no permanent residence, living a nomadic life.
Known on social media as HAHA NOMADS, the young couple shares their daily life and experiences of the places they visit with the thousands of people who follow them on them.
The two spoke to SBS Greek about the trigger that prompted them to embark on their journey into the... unknown.
"We were in Rio de Janeiro, where Konstantinos was working in a British school as a maths teacher, and slowly we started to work on the idea of travelling permanently, because during the pandemic we were 'stuck' in Brazil and that allowed us to visit 14 states in the country, which made us so excited about travelling that we started talking about it: "Maybe we should leave the job that Konstantinos is doing now, because I wasn't working at the time, at least not officially, and start traveling permanently and working online," said Nicky Koumandraki, while also referring to the benefits of such a lifestyle:
"The most important thing is the new people we meet and their cultures and traditions. What they teach us stays with us and changes us as people. Every country has something different to offer you. Every people has its own way. And when you take a piece of each and hold it inside you, you become more of a citizen of the world and less of a citizen of a country. There are so many positives. That's the one that I keep inside me the most. The exploration of new places and peoples," he noted, with Konstantinos adding:
"You see life in a very different way when you are in a country. What is considered foreign in your country is normal and everyday in another country. For example, we stayed in some favelas in Rio de Janeiro.
Οι Κωνσταντίνος Tάκερ και Νίκη Κουμανδράκη ζουν νομαδική ζωή τους τελευταίους 20 μήνες Credit: supplied: facebook.com/hahanomads
"One extreme incident that has never happened to us before was when we were sitting in a somewhat infamous area of Cartagena in Colombia and two tables over, a young man appears holding a pistol and grabs a girl by the hair and puts the pistol to her head and says: "Give me your purse." This happened very close to us and we had never seen a gun in that way before. We had seen in the favelas people who actually provide you with security with their guns. They don't rob you with them. This time it was close enough to say wow, it could have happened to me," said Konstantinos Tucker.
Among the challenges the Greek couple have to face are the frequent "moving" from house to house and for another reason, according to Nicky Koumandraki.
"We have to put all our stuff back in the suitcase from scratch every three and a bit. Because we change accommodation ourselves every four days. In the last 19 months we have visited Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Paraguay and we change accommodation every week. So that's the plan, but because sometimes unexpected things happen, the average has come out to four days, which means that every now and then we put all our clothes in the suitcase. Then we take the bus, we go to our next destination, we take the clothes out of the suitcase and then after a while we put them back in again and that process is time consuming. Of course some other people may have other obligations that require a routine, but we have this let's say making and re-making our suitcase," Nicky says with Konstantinos, a mathematics teacher himself, giving the exact number of this "equation": "In the last 19 to 20 months we have made our suitcase about 285 times."
When asked if Konstantinos and Nicky intend to end their travels, the answer we received was no, but we tempted them to choose which country they would choose as their windward port, if they ever decide to do so.
"Brazil is the country that has enchanted us and as a country of natural beauty and culture we are the closest. I think as Greeks we are closer to the Brazilian culture. Brazilians in general have taught us how to live in the moment, how to enjoy the company of our fellow human beings without thinking about the obligations of the future and how to be a little more united with each other. People there dance, eat, party and don't "mingle". People may have problems because there is also a lot of social inequality in Brazil, but they will not grumble, they will not show it, they will not give that feeling to the person next to them," said Nicky.
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