Adventure: The Spanish woman and the Sherpa who have set out to clean Everest of trash
Interview: The adventures of the young Spaniard who travels from Barcelona to Australia on foot
This story begins with a ten-year-old boy who, dressed in gaudy shorts and a fanny pack in the glory of the 80s, wandered deep into a pyramid in Egypt.
And in that moment, he decided what his destiny would be.
Egyptologist
, entrepreneur and writer,
Tito Vivas was
born in Madrid "in a clinic on the Paseo de la Habana, almost at the same time as
Indiana Jones.
He came to the screens in 1981. Me, in 1979. You will understand that, with those wickers, was doomed to Archeology, like many other young people of my generation ".
But
Spielberg
wasn't the only one to blame for
shaping
his calling.
"When I was nine years old, the sudden death of my grandfather, who was at the same time my guardian, friend, teacher and patron, left me very touched. Doctors and pediatricians set about trying to correct my sorrow. And between books , comics and movies, managed to divert my attention. My father took it so seriously that, with only ten years, he allowed me to
live one of those adventures
of my idols of the cinema live and direct ".
And there we have young Vivas walking through the temples and dreaming among pyramids.
Passionate about
History
as much as about
travel
(before the pandemic he spent a third of the year away from home), Vivas is the founder of Sociedad Histórica, an agency specialized in
historical travel
based in Madrid that was born in the summer of 2013. "I had been involved in the tourism sector for a few years now, working as a creative for private travel and as a consultant in the Middle East, especially in Egypt. But the priority for tourism companies was to cut costs or partner with each other. In this context, the dream of an Egyptologist and adventurer who wants to drag other travelers along in his adventures did not seem to have a place in any
business plan.
So I rolled the blanket over my head and set up my own project ".
Egypt is the flagship product of the Historical Society agency SHUTTERSTOCK
And he confesses that it was not easy at all: "I am not, or at least I was not, a businessman. I was a scientist, and more
of a field rat
than a bookworm. I came full of dust, from rolling up my sleeves in the
excavation
and crawling through
ancient tunnels.
But along the way I have been learning from everything that has come before me ".
His Historical Society is a "
small
project
, almost personal and with limited resources
."
Its merit (and main success) lies in the fact that Vivas and his team show clients that there is "another, more interesting, deeper and also more fun way to interact with their vacations. One based on the model of
19th century geographic societies. ,
which invite you to become something more than a simple traveler ".
The star product of its extensive catalog -and the most requested- is
Ancient Egypt
, with different programs lasting eight to 15 days starting at
2,450 euros.
"We have already accumulated three decades of
travel, expeditions, archaeological missions
and study in the country and the world of the pharaohs. It is our best letter of introduction."
Although the project of the Historical Society has led Vivas to "live adventures that would never have occurred to me: from discovering the figure of Coronado in San José,
Costa Rica
to chasing Ruy González de Clavijo through Samarkand in
Uzbekistan
."
EXPERIENCES NO: CREDIBILITY
The world of travel has been about experiences for years.
And Vivas is forceful in this regard: "I have spent many years organizing trips and if there is something I do not understand, it is the
concept of experience.
All agencies sell you experiences. All travel, now, is experiential. For me, a experience is a test, a trial. And an experiment can
go well or badly.
I cannot and do not want the trips of the Historical Society to go wrong. What we can guarantee is a
deep knowledge of the destination
and its history, because
we are academics .
And that brings credibility ,
"he says before adding" not everyone is passionate about crawling through a hole 30 meters from a
closed tomb
to the public, almost airless, to reach a burial chamber, or sit on the patio a house to eat with your hands a traditional Egyptian cheese that
is served with worms.
And yet, many travelers value these events. Because what everyone is grateful for is that the information you provide them enhances their knowledge
".
Tito Vivas tasting camel liver at a street stall in Cairo.
Their clientele does not necessarily include cultural elites.
"They
are traveling people
, who have tired of having to endure the traditional tolls of tour operators, and who demand quality in all aspects, not only in the hotel or in transport. They are a traveler who values not what they are told, but
how they are told
", clarifies Vivas.
THE STORY IS A BRICK.
OR NOT?
In front of those who think that History is a brick, Vivas is clear: "Put the complete history of Ancient Egypt in writing and, at the very least, you get a
thousand-page billet.
Now multiply by historical periods and diversification of contents.
Make yourself a chalet
with those blocks. Or go into a classroom with fifty other sleepy students to listen to the teacher. But now change the classroom to the
original site,
with you
in situ
, at the foot of the pyramid; change your computer or
tablet
for your Travel diary, in the purest style of Indiana Jones's father, and change the boring teacher for a good communicator who will take you into every mystery, every detail and every trace of the adventure. Isn't he a brick anymore? Well, add to it the
discovery
. Because, in the middle of the journey, you don't learn from what they tell you, but from what you discover. And that's when something changes in you. That is being an explorer with the Historical Society. "
Pioneer in offering
tailor-made historical trips
, the Historical Society prides itself on "receiving proposals from experts on different topics of History, to design their expeditions and trips. We must wake up the entire generation that we have studied History reluctantly, with fear of those who said that it was a career without exits, and who now think that they cannot go beyond a position as a secondary school teacher. I have always been clear about it: there are no careers with exit, there are
people with exit
".
You live on an expedition to Lalibela (Ethiopia) in 2017.
As a result of the pandemic, Vivas and his team (he surrounds himself with academics like him as well as correspondents at the destination) have taken advantage of the break in confinement "to think, plan and work intensively and even launch
new ideas
that have been very well received, such as the
specialized
transformation
courses
[
120 euros
], created to transform our travelers into specialists in the history of Ancient Egypt before embarking on their journeys ".
"The
pandemic
has been one of the greatest challenges" that it has faced so far "and what it has done, above all, has been to invite us to accelerate those processes that will soon bear interesting results."
Attention, sailors, because the Historical Society of Travel and Expeditions already has an
irresistible calendar
planned
for 2021,
from Ethiopia to Nepal without forgetting, of course, Egypt.
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