Latin America was an interesting, exotic but far away continent for me, which I always wanted to visit. While living in Spain, my friends were telling me stories about their journeys, experiences and family-ties in the continent. Sometimes it seemed to me if Spain were a “joint” former colony of Latin American states. J After the Hungarian government announced the new policy “Opening to the South”, the Institute of Foreign Affairs and Trade was starting to organize a conference and a training program regarding Latin-America. During these events we realized that Hungary absolutely lacks young expert of the region with a good command of Spanish and/or Portuguese, with academic background and field experience. As an economist, who sees niche in the market, I started to soften my bosses in the Institute that we need a good Latin-America expert, who could be eventually me. This was the easy part. They accepted and supported my efforts to organize a study tour during the summer, when I have no courses at the university (I am associate professor at the Department of World Economics, Corvinus University of Budapest).

The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Hungarian embassies and consulates, furthermore the embassies of the target countries in Budapest all helped me organizing official visits to partner institutes, think tanks, universities and to the Hungarian communities in the region. I got a lot of help from my friends in Spain (Gracias a Carmen y Fede! J) Perhaps the most important part of my trip will be - next to the official visits – that I will be able to get know the different cultures, habits, dialects, the regional and local histories and stories of families, business culture and political life of the people. To be able to achieve my goals I have chosen to organize the trip as a backpacker. During most of my trip I will use bus and train connections, however sometimes due to spar time I will consider some flights as well.

We decided with my bosses in the Institute in mid May 2015 that my trip has green light, so I had a bit more than 3 weeks to organize the main points of the tour and first stops For physical preparation is too late, I am in good shape anyway, for mental it is never enough. That will be my first long backpacker journey nearly alone in a faraway continent. I am more than excited. Finally we decided the following rout:

8-28 June: Brazil;

29 June - 14 July: Argentina;

15-30. July: Chile;

1-12 August: Peru;

13 August - 1 September: Ecuador