WELCOME TO HEAR THE EARTH BLOG!

Hi! My name is Criss and this blog is a dream come true! I’m a regular girl, majored in Photography in 2014, started to live on my own trying to build a freelance business, dealt with personal issues like everybody else. I never thought of myself as brave or adventurous but I came to realize that I needed a change.

My mother died in 2014 after 6 years of suffering an early dementia. Me and my sister took care of her with all the love we had in our hearts. After 1 month of her death, I was fighting a depression and having a hard time in general with all the aspects in my life. I had just majored in Photography at that time but I felt miserable, lost, grieving.

With time, things didn’t change and my boyfriend was worried and supportive so he suggested we could make a trip together. We had thought about it before but I didn’t want to leave my mother while she was sick, I was too afraid that something could happen to her when I was not around.

4 months after my mom’s death, I decided to go backpacking for a month because I was struggling with the grieving process. When I came back, I realized I was trying to reconstruct my life and needed to build and do something different.

Me and my amazing mom back in 2009!

I spent a lot of time analyzing what I was missing and reflecting upon my personal loss. I came to realize how fragile and short life really is. We spent most of our time working, studying, worrying about banal and superficial things like cars, houses, clothes. I started dreaming on something else and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I was missing of the world: life was passing by and I felt I needed a radical change. I wanted to go back and explore, to have stories of my own, to take a risk and live fully. I started to watch NatGeo and follow amazing bloggers that lived travelling and I dreamed about how would it be to do it.

I spent three years thinking, craving about it, reading their stories, watching their pictures and videos. So I realized I had to do something. That’s when Hear The Earth Blog appeared on my mind but I had personal issues that needed to be solved first.

My mom’s disease was the hardest lesson I’ve learned in my life and I accepted it with time. I worked hard on myself and realized as well that the trip to Europe gave me the impulse I needed to put my stuff together. It wasn’t easy, I fought depression for 3 more years until I finally looked for help and started healing the wounds I had.

While I was in that personal process, I didn’t stop wondering about travelling and became an obsessive travel hunter. In 2015, Avianca and Copaairlines sold a ridiculous promo to Perú: roundtrip tickets for only 100$. I bought it without thinking for two family members, my boyfriend and myself. I saw in that risk an opportunity to bond with my sister and cousin that were also having troubles with finding their way in life.

So almost half of Costa Rica bought it and the peruvian embassy collapsed. There were no yellow fever vaccines, we got our visa a week before travelling and we were out of budget. But in the end, we discovered an amazing country together, I tell you all about it here.

2016 also surprised me with another trip to Guatemala. There were offers with Volaris and I took advantage of it in an attempt to share time with my dad, my sister and my boyfriend. Life didn’t stop surprising us on the journey while discovering another country full of nice people, incredible volcanoes and culture.

I realized that every time I came back to my apartment, I felt the need to travel again. So I made a promise to myself: I would do my best to put my life together as much as I could and start the blog; but I actually couldn’t. I got doubts and started overthinking with: what if…something go wrong/ it doesn’t work / I get tired to quick / I come home older and with nothing…? So, you know what happens when that’s on your mind: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

2017 started so good: On February I had to travel to Miami because of work and from May to June I went back to Perú and visited Bolivia as well. I got tickets for New York to document the wedding of an amazing tica model and in November I returned to Miami for another photographic project.

On December I sold everything I owned to travel around the world for a whole year (at least that’s the goal, everything can happen). On March 12th, 2018 I took a flight to New York City and will be travelling to Iceland, Scotland, England, Spain, France, Germany and much more. I want to share with you how a regular girl can take control of her life and decide to start a project that's been a dream for so long, how you can travel on low budget, how you can overcome fears (yes, I have them too, I had an anxiety attack the night before taking the flight), but above all it’s a way to tell stories, to show you through images the beauty and the contrasts of the world. It’s an attempt to inspire people, to go out of the comfort zones and taste the culture and nature in a deepest way.

You will find a lot of photographs, audiovisual content and also will be able to follow my journey in here or read travelling tips and advices of what I’ve discovered as a backpacker here.

I hope you enjoy it! Let’s Hear the Earth together!

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