Ever dream about dropping everything and becoming a full-time nomad? A young couple has been doing just that since early 2019 and have been documenting their visits to destinations around the world over the past two years on YouTube.
Ernestas Tyminas, 28, and Darina Karpitskaya, 30, the creators of the Dream Team Travels channel, recently passed through Mexico for the first time and made a video about their experiences in Mexico City. It has been viewed over 33,000 times.
The couple, currently in Malta, said they were enchanted with Mexico City’s culture, food, architecture and the kindness of its people.
“We spent one week there, and we don’t think we visited half of what we wanted to,” Tyminas said.
In their splashy, jump-cut video, the couple takes viewers to various tourist sites — riding the boats in Xochimilco; visiting Frida Kahlo’s house, the Metropolitan Cathedral and the zócalo; and sampling mezcal for the first time at the Museum of Tequila and Mezcal. Throughout the video, the couple express an almost wide-eyed appreciation for what they described as the city’s beauty, cosmopolitan setting, its friendliness and culture.
“Mexico City was very beautiful and a unique destination,” Tyminas said. “We were impressed by the architecture, the size of the city and how much there is to do! The people were also kind in Mexico City and tried to chat with us.”
A highlight for them was Frida Kahlo’s house, where they loved getting to see the artifacts of her life there with her husband, Diego Rivera. What surprised them about the city, Tyminas said, was the number of police on the streets.
“It was a lot more than anywhere else I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Unlike many such travel videos, they also showed glimpses of the poverty.
“We know that it may be controversial, and locals may not like that, but we try to just show what we see,” he said.
Mexico City is just one of 21 countries the couple has visited. They began traveling in the summer of 2019 after meeting by chance in Beijing.
Tyminas, then a marketing manager for the Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper, was on vacation in Southeast Asia while Karpitskaya, a native of Ukraine and a flight attendant for the Emirates airlines at the time, was on a layover in the city.
The two got to talking and hit it off so well that they kept in touch, and Karpitskaya eventually joined Tyminas on the rest of his vacation. The life-changing experience inspired Tyminas to quit his job and move back to Europe. (He is originally from Lithuania.) Karpitskaya kept her job but began traveling with Tyminas whenever possible.
“We traveled through Europe together as well as the Middle East, and then the pandemic hit,” he said.
Tyminas was visiting his grandmother in Lithuania when Europe began to lock itself down. Meanwhile, Karpitskaya found herself trapped in Dubai, where she was still based due to her job, when the nation banned entry to foreigners. The couple was separated for three months in 2020 until Dubai opened up flights into the country again and Tyminas booked the first flight he could catch.
Karpitskaya, on extended unpaid leave from Emirates, decided to quit her job, and the couple’s full-time adventure began.
“In August, Croatia opened its borders, and we decided to head there,” Tyminas said. “From there, we realized we could drive into the European Union, and thus our nonstop traveling together continued.”
The pandemic influenced their decision to begin filming their journeys and posting the videos on YouTube.
“When we came to Croatia during the pandemic, we realized that no one was traveling, and we decided to share our trips and all the beautiful destinations we were able to explore,” Tyminas said. “A lot of travel vloggers were at home or making vans to explore their own countries, and we felt like people were not getting to see beautiful travel videos to help them with their wanderlust.”
Their travels haven’t stopped since. Travel in the Covid-19 era has been a challenge, he admits, and they have often had to choose where to travel next based on what was open to nonessential travel and where the spirit took them. They check every week online to see which countries are open to travelers and always wear masks and use hand sanitizer wherever they go, Tyminas said.
Tyminas said they will keep on traveling full-time for another couple of years.
“We would like to have a home base,” he said. “Maybe in a year or two, we will find this perfect destination to call home.”
Mexico News Daily
