Hey folks, Rob here. I do not usually introduce myself into one of the many stories that have landed on our website. Although I have written, helped write or edited most of them, this one I couldn’t touch. Most of us, if we got into this much detail of our lives no one would read, but as he would say, “it’s a long one”.  Karim Abu Bakr is, outside my immediate family, the best thing that has ever happened to me and this company. He is my brother and my best friend. For our company he is the “G.O.A.T.” There is an old clip from the T.V. show Saturday Night Live, about a product that is so versatile it can be both a dessert topping and a floor wax. Well – that is Karim. 

South America is not a traditional destination for Russian travelers. Spanish is not a foreign language commonly taught in schools of Moscow city. However I got into a public school with deep studies of Spanish and Hispanic Culture. I got fascinated by stories of Spanish navigators and “conquistadores”, consequently fell in love with The New World’s civilizations like Mayas, Aztecs and Incas. It’s funny, though, the first Spanish explorer I ever read about was Francisco de Orellana, the first European to sail the Mother of All Rivers and give it the name we use today – the Amazon. By the time I was fifteen I spoke both – English and Spanish – the latter I handled well enough to win a literature contest devoted to a great Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez. My prose was based on memoirs of Pablo Neruda – my father’s favorite author. My father was an Egyptian communist, so the fact he married a Russian woman, got a PHD in Moscow and loved a Chilean author opposed to the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet is not a surprise. I was born a year before Soviet Union officially fell apart, grew up in the bizarre Russian 90ies and got obsessed with Chile just because I loved the mixture of indigenous and European cultures.

As a result of my history and literature interests I ended up enrolling in the Faculty of International Journalism at MGIMO – Moscow State University of International Relations of Russian Ministry of Foreign Affair. Three things happened there. Number one – after 6 months at the University I got invited for an internship at ITAR-TASS (Russian info agency) in Santiago de Chile. Number two – I learned all I could from the best professionals in journalism, PR, Marketing and Business Management with a wide access to national and international media. Being at a prestigious University like that in Russia meant a ton of open doors – I got to spend time with correspondents from CNN, BBC, Russia Today and folks from Madison Avenue. Number Three – I learned French. As much as I was undisciplined I was in love with that language, but still, while my fellows were turning their habits into European French style, I was looking for a way to keep the Latin American Dream alive as well as maintain all three foreign languages I was speaking by the time –English, Spanish and French. That meant moving my attention from the southern tip of the continent to North – the Caribbean. At some point I came across a historical Novel by a great French journalist Albert Londres – “Adieu, Cayenne” that told the story of the man who escaped the Devil’s Island – French Penal Colony in Cayenne, French Guiana. The book changed my life.