Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

From sand­board­ing down the side of a dor­mant Nicaraguan vol­cano to tak­ing self­ies with seals in Pe­ru, Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al An­dros Bel­fonte has lived a life that many on­ly dream of.

And he is on­ly just get­ting start­ed.

Bel­fonte works as an en­gi­neer dur­ing the week, but should a long week­end roll around? Well, that is for side quests. And we are not talk­ing about a trip down the is­lands. No, these are trips com­plete with pass­port stamps as proof, proud­ly tak­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go flag with him.

Bel­fonte’s posts from a re­cent trip to Brazil went se­mi-vi­ral as he stepped out on­to the now In­s­ta-fa­mous rooftop of one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest fave­las, proud­ly car­ry­ing the T&T flag. But get­ting that video was not ex­act­ly like walk­ing around the Sa­van­nah.

“You en­ter from the bot­tom, you jump on a mo­tor­bike, and they take you to the top,” Bel­fonte ex­plained.

“There’s a prop­er wait­ing area for you to sit to wait for your turn. Be­fore you had a tent and hun­dreds of peo­ple were wait­ing in that tent in hot sun. Then they put a tent wait­ing for you to get to do this drone shot,” he said.

And de­spite the rep­u­ta­tion of Brazil­ian fave­las, Bel­fonte’s con­tacts there made sure he was safe.

“It’s crazy stuff. I mean, you’ll ac­tu­al­ly see guys walk­ing there with their ma­chine guns. You’ll see men with guns on ta­bles... (But) it was a once-in-a-life­time op­por­tu­ni­ty for me, be­cause I’ve been to Rio twice. I’ve al­ways looked up at the moun­tains. I’ve al­ways seen the fave­las, al­ways won­dered what it would be like to be in there, but nev­er had the ac­cess,” he said.

The re­sult? A video that has been viewed al­most half a mil­lion times on In­sta­gram, boost­ing his per­son­al on­line foot­print and that of T&T as well.

But that pales in com­par­i­son to posts from a sub­se­quent trip to Tan­za­nia, which have racked up more than 200 mil­lion views.

Bel­fonte is now em­brac­ing his con­tent cre­ator ti­tle. He plans to ex­pand his au­di­ence with the launch of his new YouTube chan­nel, where he aims to show­case even more of his ad­ven­tures.

Ac­cord­ing to him, it is all about mak­ing the most of lim­it­ed time.

Us­ing the re­cent Eid and Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day hol­i­days as ex­am­ples, Bel­fonte ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia how he makes the maths work.

“I cap­i­talised on the two Sat­ur­days and Sun­days on ei­ther end,” he ex­plained. “So, let’s say five days va­ca­tion, you get 13 days over­all,” he added.

Thir­teen days to ex­plore a coun­try—or some­times up to six, in Bel­fonte’s case—may seem a bit crazy, but it is some­thing his so­cial me­dia fol­low­ers love.

“When I do a coun­try, I try and kill the coun­try. I re­al­ly try and do the most. Yes, you’re do­ing the tourist stuff but you’re al­so throw­ing a lot of the cul­tur­al stuff. So, you’ll al­ways see me eat­ing the lo­cal food, you’ll see me on the streets. You’ll see me in cer­tain ar­eas that you re­al­ly should not be some­times. I have a re­al­ly im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence when I go to my coun­tries,” he ex­plained.

Bel­fonte’s love for trav­el be­gan at a very young age, when his par­ents took him to neigh­bour­ing Venezuela for the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion.

There, nine-year-old Bel­fonte would take the train for miles, ex­plor­ing dif­fer­ent parts of Cara­cas be­fore re­turn­ing in the evening. Lit­tle Bel­fonte did not know it then, but it would lay the foun­da­tion for the in­de­pen­dence need­ed to trav­el to al­most 60 coun­tries.

And yet, with all his ex­pe­ri­ences, Bel­fonte ad­mit­ted he does not have a set num­ber of coun­tries he wants to vis­it. Just two buck­et-list des­ti­na­tions that he will not re­veal—and Ice­land.

For him, it is not about check­ing off a list.

You are prob­a­bly won­der­ing by now how he af­fords it. Af­ter all, many peo­ple would love to trav­el to far-flung des­ti­na­tions mul­ti­ple times a year—that is un­til they hear the cost.

Bel­fonte’s ap­proach is sim­ple: the word “bud­get” does not ex­ist in his vo­cab­u­lary.

He said, “I al­ways tell peo­ple, for­get the mon­ey. This is an ex­pe­ri­ence. There are cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties that you have to do... be­cause the amount of mon­ey you’re spend­ing to get to those coun­tries, you have to make it all one and done for cer­tain coun­tries. You can’t just do cer­tain things with­in a bud­get and for­get some items there. That will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Whether he is ex­plor­ing the pyra­mids of Giza or tast­ing fried frogs (which tastes like chick­en, ac­cord­ing to him) in Thai­land, there is one thing that is al­ways with him on all his trips—his T&T flag.

But the red, white and black is no prop; rather, it is a mes­sage to all who view his con­tent.

“The flag rep­re­sents pride, iden­ti­ty, and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to in­spire oth­ers from Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­lieve they can see the world al­so.”