Meet the Nomads – Will Peach of My Spanish Adventures

Will would probably be one of the newest travel bloggers that entered the blogosphere with a bang! One of his projects, TravelSexLife created quite a stir on it’s launch. Will also works for a variety of online projects, while travelling, learning Spanish and at the same time maintaining his own blogs. Yeah, he’s one heck of a very busy man.

As I read Will’s blogs, he reminds me that life should not be taken that seriously at all times. He’s really funny.

Will is the site editor at GapDaemon.com, a gap year travel site for young independent travellers. He also heads up a blog about overland travel and runs TravelSexLife.com, a site dedicated to love and sex abroad. He currently lives in Granada, Spain.

Get to know him more and visit his blogs.

But before you do that, check out my short interview with Will.

How did you discover your passion for travelling?

“Hey Mr. Flip! Let me first start off by saying what a tight ship you run at this ‘ere travel blog. It’s always great to read about other misfits, erm I mean “travel bloggers”, such as myself. Thanks for having a sex-crazed, pasty-white Brit such like me join your superstar ranks. I’m still hunting down Gary Arndt and Matt Kepnes as we speak. I will have their heads!

Anyway back to the question – I’m sorry but you’ll have to excuse those random outbursts. So I first discovered my passion for travelling when I was a wee nipper around yay high. Hopping on family holidays around the globe I was one of those fortunate and snotty-nosed kids who went abroad to places like Australia, America and Europe every year. Now I want to keep doing the same, except not be chained to a 9-5 job like my workaholic father was, who did that in order to keep his son in fashionable Levi’s. The ungrateful little shit.”

What’s the most horrible experience that you’ve had on the road?

“It’s a “toss up” between having a blind Vietnamese masseuse try and wank me off and having an aging Vietnamese peasant rest their gnarled feet on my stirring loins on a 30-hour train ride from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. I’d probably go with the first one, which happened at age 22 in a blind convent in the heart of Saigon. Laying his crisp hands on me I was only expecting a back-rub, so when he went down south with his little mitts, my eyebrows naturally rose a little.

We didn’t get to the point where he finished me off. Shame that.”

What’s the best travel experience that you’ve ever had?

“Well the blind masseuse story had its “ups and downs” naturally but it would have to be something special for me to have considered it the “best”. I’d say the most significant travel experience I’ve ever had is yet to “come”. I’m still holding a candle to it.

Up there in the fond memory stakes come spending my birthday and Christmas at Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, bathing naked with a big bunch of hunky men in an Icelandic hot spring and getting my little pecker out again on a Brighton nudist beach (that one wasn’t really travel-related as I was a student there).”

What’s the biggest realization that you’ve got out of travelling?

“Probably that humans are humans wherever you go. Everybody wants the best for their family, everybody wants the basics: happiness, food, shelter, love and that there isn’t much more to life than that. Growing up in the UK it’s easy to get sidetracked by the conventionalities of modern society: the consumerism, the greed, the needless time wasted doing meaningless tasks – travelling has taught me to take a step back and just connect. The art of conversing with people, finding out about the philosophies and perspectives of those around you is, for me, the most interesting thing about travelling.”

What keeps you going? What keeps you motivated?

“Meeting new people, challenging myself to learn new things about a place and about its history. Running blogs and writing about my experiences definitely also keeps me going, keeps me hungry and adds fuel to the fire.

I don’t ever really get tired with travelling as I’ve lived on the other side of the fence too (the 9-5) and found that to be much more exhausting. Every day I wake up abroad I feel privileged to be living a life of full-time travel. The fear of it all finishing and having to go back keeps me going.

Oh and the weather is crap in England too. The sun elsewhere is a big motivating factor!”

This is a silly and hypothetical one. If you would be given a chance to travel with a popular person or a celebrity, who would it be and why?

“Genghis Khan. We’re being strictly hypothetical right? That guy knew how to travel and get his end away in the process. I bet there’d be no shortage of girls, parties and wild nights abroad with that dude. Language might be a barrier and I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him either.”

Where’s your favourite place in this planet and why?

“Jesus I have to think long and hard about this one. Right now I’d probably name a coffee shop called Liceo, which sits in the heart of Caceres, a Spanish town in Extremadura. I arrived in that place six months ago knowing hardly anything about the language, the culture or how I was going to survive living in Spain.

Liceo became a sanctuary for me, a place I went to grab a lunchtime coffee and tapas with my Spanish grammar book in hand and a painful headache from the confusion and stress of having just moved out there. I’ll forever hold that place close in my heart even now as I continue to live and travel in other Spanish cities.

I’ll definitely go back there for one last coffee too!”

What’s your best tip for newbie traveller?

“Don’t worry about things so much, let your travels take their own course and pack plenty of lubricant.”

What’s the funniest and silliest thing you’ve ever done while travelling?

“I remember (rather painfully) when I was 12-years-old diving to the bottom of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, trying to complete my PADI Open Water Diving Certificate. Settling on the bottom and having been asked to take my respirator out and switch it for the second one, I screwed up and put it in upside down. Not being able to take in air I freak and bolted to the surface risking air bubbles in my blood as a result. I was punished by having to sit it out in a decompression chamber.

Perhaps not silly, but a lesson to you all: always stick things in your mouth the right way round. That goes for all things you hear?”

What do you think about yourself?

“I think most of the travelling crowd probably think I’m a sexpest – and interviews like this probably don’t help. The truth is though that I’ve got nothing on Anthony from Man Vs Clock, that guy is the Gene Simmons of travel bloggers.

But in seriousness I’d like to think I’m a pretty friendly and approachable guy – although not nearly enough travel bloggers get in contact with me. Note to them: if you do send me an email saying hi I’ll send you a full frontal shot signed me in return. Let’s call it a token of my appreciation.”

“DontFlyGo.com is my new blog baby dedicated to environmentally-minded travel ideas and overland methods of travel. I just finally got it off the ground in February and I’d love people to send in guest post submissions and the like to help me flesh out the site!

Gap Daemon is a blog dedicated to gap year travel and young independent travellers heading out to see the world. I’ve worked for these guys for the last year and a half and it’s been one hell of a ride.

TravelSexLife is my most successful baby and a blog that just keeps going from strength to strength. It’s all about love, romance, and yep, you’ve guessed it, sex abroad. Check it out and let me know what you think. I’ve had quite the response – good and bad!

Also worth a shout out are other blogs I help run and contribute to. They include by living in Spain blog and the online travel guide Vagabundo Magazine.” – Will Peach

Editor’s Note: All pictures are provided by Will

Next: Daniel Nahabedian of Canvas of Light. Previously: Michael Schuermann of Easy Hiker. For more interviews with travel bloggers, check out the archives of Meet the Nomads.