One Apple A Day #148
Carbonera, Silea, London, Kuwait City. from 2014 to 2016
On that day in the pub, we made ourselves a promise.
We were going to fly to Argentina and discover the Patagonia, travelling South on the Ruta 40.
We always knew the why, and now that the what was sorted the focus shifted on the how and when.
It was not an easy journey to set up, especially with families and jobs. And we were a lot of things but adventurers. The only things we had was our friendship, a shared dream and our deep connection for the Patagonia. A land we never saw before, but that was calling us.
It was evident to both of us that we needed a plan. So, we bought maps and books, started exploring the web for info and advice.
After a few unfruitful discussions, we were still without a workable plan, but we found something more valuable. A name.
Giving a name to our dream has been a game changer. First of all, when something has a name, it becomes more real. It becomes alive. The other positive aspect was that it made easier to share our dream with others. It became real not only for us but also for everyone around us.
A few weeks after that promise in the pub Andemo.la was born.
“Andemo la” in our local dialect, means “Let’s go there”, where there it’s the Patagonia, obviously.
But Andemo is also a small word pun being our names Andy and Nemo.
It felt just perfect.
With a cool name and no plan, we decided to make a bold move. We created a website, and we went public. We declared to the whole world our intention. And once friends and colleagues started asking about our trip we realised that there was no way to hide anymore.
It was going to happen. We were going on the Ruta40.
It took almost three years to make it happens. As usual, like got in the way and we had to postpone it a few time. There have been moments when it looked impossible. But we never lost faith.
By the end of summer 2016, the odds seemed against us. More than two years were gone and what we achieved was little more than the name, the website, a map and a few books.
We would have to change something if we wanted to go anywhere.
Somewhere I read about the 80/20 rules. To put it very simply, it says that 20% of the actions lead to 80% of the results.
With this rule in mind, we decided to stop all the discussions about what to do, where to go and how. We shifted all our focus on the most relevant 20%; deciding the days and booking the flights.
This is what we did in September 2016. We agreed that the following January was the right time and we booked the flights.
The trip suddenly became real. And from that moment everything accelerated at ludicrous speed.