Hitchhiking from Zagreb to Bora Bora

 
 
 

 

As strange as it might sound, that has been a big dream of mine for many years. I used to tell my friends and family how I was going to hitchhike to Bora Bora, but no one believed me. I was not joking though.

 

In the spring of 2013. my international client closed down the office in Zagreb due to financial troubles. It affected the business that I had with my Austrian business partner, so I closed down our office and decided it’s time to turn another dream of mine into reality.

 

3 years and 8 months later, 25 countries, many kilometers and numerous jobs, 7 months of hitchhiking the same boat, several trips to the police stations, few illnesses and countless encounters of sadness, happiness and everything in between – I finally reached Bora Bora. This journey was not just a trip. It became my everyday life.

 

Why Bora Bora?

Because it is far from my country and it's not easy to get there by hitchhiking only. It has a funny name, it is stunning and it's known as a posh getaway for the rich people. I'm not materially rich, so it was a fun challenge to try to get there by hitchhiking only.

 

Why did it take so long?

Realistically, it didn’t have to take 3,8 years to get there. I could have done it faster, but in that scenario I would miss out on many amazing experiences. I didn’t want to hurry, because this journey was not a race and I appriciated every second of it -- all the good and bad included.

 

Status of the challenge:

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

 

This is the map of my planned route before the trip vs. the map of my actual (completed) route below.

 

 

 

This blog is only 3 years old, you can find my whole hitchhiking journey from day 1 on Facebook. Only few months after returning home from Bora Bora, I hitchhiked back to French Polynesia - but this time from the other side of the world. I lived there for 14 months and wrote about the whole experience in my book that's coming out on February, 2019.