He was a legend among many motorcyclists, his journeys legendary. But today is the last trip of adventurer, journalist and writer Paul van Hooff. The Noord-Hollander who lived in Bolivia for years, but especially pledged his heart to Drenthe in recent years, died last Friday at the age of 61.
The peace here in the countryside, the people who are so common, people who help out of love and don’t want to see anything in return. After years of lived in Bolivia, where the term Manana Manana (Do it calmly) seemed to have been invented, Van Hooff was shocked the times he came to the Netherlands. The moment he got out of the plane at Schiphol, he ended up in a whirlwind. People who are in a hurry, spoke against a phone everywhere and all rage along the highway. Nothing for Van Hooff, who felt completely in his element when he was sitting on his Motoguzzi V70, looking for what was behind the horizon.
Van Hooff started his career as a journalist for motor magazines. He wrote stories, tested engines and in this way also got to know the TT Circuit well. But for the general public, his breakthrough came from 2005, when he decides to leave the Netherlands behind and go on a world trip. He starts in the northernmost tip of Alaska and drives to Ushuaia in a few years, the southernmost city in Argentina. Along the way he keeps a blog about his journey and writes columns, who quickly become popular among motorcyclists and adventurers.
“As a child I lived in South Holland near the sea. That sea always attracted me enormously. I wanted to know what was at the end of the horizon,” the adventurer told me several times. Well, behind that horizon turned out to be no lack of adventures. Van Hooff drives through Bear Country, as Alaska is also called. He gets a double -running gun with a big caliber in a pub. One shot to kill the bear. If that doesn’t work, use that second bullet for yourself, he gets as a tip.
His journey takes him to Colombia, where he gets a relationship with the wife of a commander of the rebel organization FARC. Unwise. He comes to Bolivia, where he falls in love and his girlfriend soon turns out to be pregnant with twins. Van Hooff finishes his journey to the southernmost tip of Argentina, but then returns to his girlfriend and becomes a father. He writes a book about his motorcycle adventure, Man in the saddle. No travel story, but rather a shell novel. A book that gives you the feeling that you experience the adventures of Van Hooff yourself.
But life for a Dutchman in Bolivia is difficult. There is always a lack of money. To maintain his girlfriend and his sons Santiago and Sebastiaan, he goes on a world trip again. Again on Guus, as he calls his decaying Motoguzzi. The journey brings him from here to Tokyo, literally. His adventures are again legendary, the book that follows another source of inspiration for many.