The dream of going to the Bahamas is common among the Portuguese, even for those who don’t know how to locate the group of islands off Central America on a map. Ana Santos also dreamed and fulfilled it. For five days he exchanged the crystal clear waters of the beaches of Tavira, where he is from, for the turquoise waters of the Bahamas. “It was a transformative experience”, he told POSTAL.
He had finished his master’s degree in digital marketing when he decided to take the trip. It’s been two years. However, without waiting, the five days he spent on the different islands of the Bahamas ended up helping him chart the direction he wanted to take in his life after finishing his studies. “I went there without any expectations and after returning I was so impacted by what I experienced, that I wanted to create a website”, he reveals.
From hobby to business
At the age of 23 at the time, the creation of the Travel Seeker Abroad website was the beginning of a new cycle in his journey. From the beginning, the objective was to gather as much information about the Bahamas as possible in a digital space. However, what started out as just a “space for people to find out about the country”, is also becoming a ‘place’ where anyone interested in visiting these Central American islands can buy a tailor-made travel package.
Two years after the trip that “transformed” her life, Ana admits that she has only just started “looking at the project from a business perspective”. A greater investment in the project also implies greater availability of time and this was the permission for the woman from Tavira to leave her full-time job, also in the area of digital marketing, to dedicate herself to the website. “I started by combining it with a full-time job and at the moment I combine it with freelance work”, he admits in statements to POSTAL.
Get ready to return to the Bahamas
Now with more time for her personal project, Ana is almost packed to return to the Bahamas next December. To get there, a first flight to Miami is approaching, followed by another air connection to one of the islands. Instead of five days, it will stay for three weeks and is already trying to close partnerships to have more content to feed the Travel Seeker Abroad website. “Negotiating with companies is always a time-consuming process and I am currently trying to close several partnerships”, explains the woman from Algarve, assuming that the process becomes more “challenging” due to the fact that she scheduled the trip during the high season.
It will be even more difficult to overcome the hurdle of your first trip to the country. It was during her stay in the Bahamas, in 2023, that Ana Santos swam “with sharks and rays for the first time”, in addition to having the opportunity to go “to a remote sandbank, with no one around”. “It was also where I caught my first ride in my life, as I had never accepted one in Portugal”, he tells the POSTAL between laughs, assuming that “I was in on the adventure”.
In the three weeks she will spend in the Bahamas in December, the now 25-year-old Tavira native intends to explore the islands with more time and collect new memories. To achieve this goal, she goes on a trip with a friend and does not neglect any detail in the preparation, especially because Ana has type 1 diabetes and needs to take additional precautions. “I have to carry insulin, batteries, catheters and I always have to have food with me”, he highlights. “I used to eat a lot of sugar when I felt bad and now there are sweets that replace it and that I have to bring”, he adds.
“It made me have a much greater desire to have experiences like this”
What is certain is that the trip that gave rise to the website was also the escape that Ana found to “feel freedom and make the most of life”. From the moment she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, at the age of 13, Ana stopped “doing things she wanted”. “This made me have a much greater desire to have experiences of this kind”, he concludes.
Having fulfilled her dream of taking a big trip, the 25-year-old girl now “inspire others to visit the country”. Despite being aware that the Bahamas’ main market is the American one, Ana Santos also wants to “inspire the Portuguese” and that is why, through her page, she offers the possibility for anyone to access the free guides she has developed with various information about the islands.
Even though Ana now spends her days focused on the Bahamas, not only because of the experience she had there, but also because of her work on the website, she never forgets her Algarve origins. Since he knows that not everyone will have the opportunity to visit the Central American country, especially due to the high financial investment, he did not finish the conversation with the POSTAL without first suggesting a place in the Algarve where everyone can ‘escape’ the daily stress for a few hours. “I choose Quinta do Lago because I love the environment, the nature and I go there several times to walk on the walkways because I feel good there”.
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