Michael Wigge traveled 25,000 miles from Berlin to Antarctica and without a penny in his pocket.
To see the Incan city of Machu Picchu, Michael Wigge worked as a porter for a Peruvian adventure tour company. Wigge experienced many obstacles along the way, including difficulty carrying the heavy packs
for tourists and keeping up with the pace of the veteran porters.Michael Wigge traveled 25,000 miles from Berlin to Antarctica and without a penny in his pocket.
“I always wanted to travel to the end of the world,” Wigge said. “It was a childhood dream and, when I was older, I thought why not try this and do it without money like an experiment?”
A well-known media personality in his native Germany, Wigge carefully mapped out a plan that would take him from his comfortable cosmopolitan digs, across four continents and 11 countries in 150 days. He packed his bags, grabbed his video camera and set off on the adventure of a lifetime . . . minus a stop at the bank, of course.
The idea was simple: the award-winning documentarian would mix comedy with travel while doing creatively curious jobs in exchange for food, transportation and places to sleep. He would be authentic and honest while letting people in on his wild plan in hopes that they might help him realize his goal.
Wigge relied on couchsurfing.org, the ultimate budget-savvy website which connects unconventional travelers with free places to stay, and hitchhiking rides in more than 20 cars, trucks and buses plus a bicycle given to him by an Amish family in Ohio.
Clever and resourceful, he held $1 pillow fights in San Francisco and assisted tourists up the city’s famous Lombard Street as a “hill helper” to buy a flight to Costa Rica. He became butler for a day to the German Ambassador to Panama and was a woebegon porter for adventurer travelers en route to the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu.
His hardest job, however, was earning his keep aboard a container ship while crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
“On the huge container ship, it was only men working there and their lifestyle was really tough,” said Wigge of his shipmates who worked long months to earn very little for the families they only saw 3 months out of the year.
“Through interviews, I got to understand them and it gave me insight that affected me quite a bit. To see these people in tough conditions, I realized how good my life is and, you know, sometimes I’m even unhappy, but I could see their tough situation and how these guys were quite happy and satisfied.”
Wigge also wondered how people would react to someone traveling “sans dinero” and the situations that they could face.
“It was quite interesting to be honest. People who experience or have experienced hardship were often the people who were the most helpful. They have the least fear to lose anything,” he said.
Wigge made friends and learned the heartrending story of a 57 year-old homeless Albuquerque man named Joseph. Tired and hungry in Columbia, a family of thirteen welcomed him to stay at their small house. After explaining his story to a bus station clerk and about to hopelessly throw in the towel in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, the woman said that she would pay for his fare because she grew up in poverty and knew what it was like to struggle.
“So many times I had to ask for food and I was so happy to get an apple,” said Wigge, who was fed by the kindness of more than 500 shops, restaurants and cafes during his journey. “I definitely think the first half year after the trip, I started appreciating certain things so much more. Whenever I go somewhere and buy something, I value it automatically and consciously.”
Another awareness -shift for Wigge was his understanding of the world and his safety among its people and places.
“Before I left, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Obviously there can be danger in the world but, if I look back, people were always helpful and not always bad,” he said. “The news tells us the worst things, a collection of incidents which do happen, but I got a much more positive view on the world after the trip. I had the proof that pretty much everybody was good.”
His journey, that is to say, was not without bumps and bruises. Wigge was almost run over by a beach cleaner and had some of his things stolen while sleeping in a tent on a Honolulu beach. He was nearly in an accident caused by an irresponsible and hot-headed bus driver taking him through the Andes from Chile to Argentina. He narrowly escaped a fire at a friend’s apartment in Peru.
“The fire was a really dangerous one but we were not asleep yet. Two hours later if the fire started we would have been asleep and we were so lucky in the end,” he said, telling how the fabric of his backpack had singed by the flames.
Wigge’s happiest and saddest moments happened while working on the expedition vessel, Antarctic Dream, to the last stop on his journey.
“When we went to mainland of Antarctica, at first it was like this great goal for such a long time but it turned out to be one of the worst moments because I was wearing just jeans and rain boots,” said Wigge, sheepishly noting how he couldn’t carry everything for his trip with him from Europe. “It was freezing cold and then water came into the rain boots because they had a little hole and my right foot froze. It was just a nightmare and I was just waiting to back on the ship!”
Wigge turned the film footage from his incredible journey into a documentary series called “How to Travel the World For Free” that aired on PBS stations earlier this spring. He also wrote a book of the same title that takes readers with him along his entire journey. His travels have also been featured in USA Today and the Huffington Post. He appeared on NBC’s “Today” show and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” in July.
“When I did translation [of the book] for United States, I must admit that I was really surprised that people liked the story. I never expected Jay Leno to invite me and I was on the TODAY show on the Fourth of July. I was wondering how many Germans actually live here? It was just so funny and all really cool.”
To learn more about journalist Michael Wigge and his travel adventures, visit www.howtotraveltheworldforfree.com