Daily Writing Prompt: What countries do you want to visit?
I nearly binned this prompt. Travel lists bore me stiff. “Top 10 Places You Simply Must See Before You Die.” Says who? Half of them look like a heatstroke and a credit card bill waiting to happen.
I don’t chase postcard-perfect spots. I chase ghosts. Old places with stories buried under cracked stones and crooked trees. Places where you might accidentally offend a local saint or end up drinking something unidentifiable under a sky so wide it makes your heart ache.
I love warm countries, but not the ones where tourists flock like sheep in rented sandals. No, give me the crooked alleys, the market stalls with no English menu, the old women selling herbs they swear can cure heartbreak. I want to sip dodgy wine in a crumbling bar, listening to a man with three teeth and a thousand stories.
Spain and Portugal call me back – especially the Camino. Not for religious reasons, though I’ll happily light a candle and speak with any saint who’s listening. I walk for the quiet in my head, the ache in my feet, and the way old paths remember you when no one else does.
Mexico’s another one. It hums with a kind of ancient magic I’d like to get lost in. I’ve scratched the surface, but there’s more there for me. And Machu Picchu? Not for the photo op. For the stones. The air. The ghosts. I want to stand where empires crumbled and feel it in my bones.
Who knows where else? I trust the road. The road’s never let me down, even when it nearly killed me. Besides, half the fun is not knowing where you’ll end up or who you’ll become when you get there.
UNDER THE WILL... OVER THE DRAMA... 
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