When I was a child, I spend hours looking at the enormous atlas we had at home, which had belonged to my grandfather, whom I never met. Planning trips has always been an activity I enjoyed. Many times, one had to wait until work or economic circumstances allowed for them; but in every case, everything had already been planned in advance. There were also unexpected situations, the most traumatic being in 2008, when I was deported from Mauritius because the British Embassy had given me an incorrect information about my visa. That deportation was to South Africa, from where we “jumped” over the Indian Ocean and ended up circling the world through the Southern Hemisphere. I have always marked the routes I took on maps, and whenever I revisited a destination, I looked for alternative itineraries. Since 1975, I have traveled almost always with Beatriz, except on trips that were strictly for work. Since the year 2000, when she spent the summers working in Uruguay, I took a few short trips on my own to rather complicated places.

We never went to a travel agency and never bought a tour package. We have always tried to travel comfortably but without luxuries. In the records I keep of each trip, one can see a reflection of Argentina’s turbulent economic situation. Periods with few trips indicate that the Argentine currency had little value or that work was scarce. Periods with many trips, on the other hand, reveal that the exchange rate was artificially high at that time and this always came at a heavy cost for the country. All the photos on this blog are “at the moment,” and always with one eye attentive to the local architecture.
A long time ago, when renewing my Uruguayan passport (with which I traveled for several years), they still had to fill in by hand the details pre-printed on the personal data page. After the names, dates of birth, etc., came “marital status” and “profession,” and the clerk filled it out as follows: MARITAL STATUS: Architect; PROFESSION: Married. I thought the man was right, so I didn’t ask for a new passport.

HOME 2025

This site began with a brief account of a visit (which we made in 2017) to a preserved forest in the former East Germany called “Hakel” that is the same name as our family surname. Later, I began adding files from other places we had visited, and it gradually became an interesting collection.
The last three sections I added this year are summaries of several places I did not want to leave out of this record. These three sections are “Collections from the Americas,” “Collections from Europe,” and “Collections from Asia, Africa, and Oceania.” Some of these collections go back more than 25 years. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that there are hardly any tourists in the photos of the Great Wall of China and of the Easter Island.

CONTACT:
My personal email: 123gbh@gmail.com
My WhatsApp: +54 911 49984000

I will reply to all messages or comments I receive.