Ricardo Pocholo interviewed Tito Rosemberg for a 2019 post on Pocholo’s Global Overland website. A few other comments, taken from Rosemberg’s Instagram page, have been added. The text here version has been translated from Portuguese, shortened, and slightly edited.

Do you remember the first time you saw somebody surfing?

Yes. The first time I saw a guy riding a wave I said: “This is incredible, I want to do the same thing.” It was 1962 and just a few people were surfing in Arpoador, and nobody else was surfing elsewhere in Brazil, or maybe just a person here and there. But in Arpoador, for those few, it was already becoming a way of life.

How did travel come into the picture for you?

I was lucky to realize at a young age that I didn’t want to take a traditional path. I didn’t see a future studying, my friends going to study architecture, medicine, law—I just wanted to catch more waves. But of course I needed a job. So in 1964 I became a journalist; my father knew people at 

 magazine, and I got a job there, my first job.

Weren’t you already making surfboards at that time?

Yes, in 1962, at the age of 16, a friend and I wanted to buy boards, but our parents didn’t want us to be surfers—so we made our own, out of plywood.

In December 1968, after AI-5, I decided to travel. Nobody pursued me, my political activity was minimal. 

[Note: Brazil’s Institutional Act Number Five signified a new and more repressive era for the country’s military dictatorship, which targeted journalists and artists, among others.]

 I left for London. I had a friend who had already landed there and was washing dishes in a restaurant. I said: “If he can do it, I can too,” so my life of independence began. I ended up staying for a few months enjoying the fantastic London scene, King’s Road, Carnaby Street, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and a lot of craziness.

You’re known for having incredibly well-outfitted trucks and vans.

No, that didn’t happen for a few years. But right from the beginning I knew I didn’t want to travel by plane or bus or train, so obviously I needed a car. Washing dishes in London, I saved enough to buy a tiny Austin Mini 850, and in the summer of 1969, along with three Argentine cooks who worked in the same place, we left London for the continent—France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

We brought two guitars and sang folksongs in the streets. We made $50.00 a night in tips, and that was more than enough! In fact, we ended the trip after six months, in Barcelona, with extra cash. I continued on along to Biarritz, to surf, and I met people there who I am friends with to this day.

In 1970 I flew to California, and the first thing I did was buy a VW van, which were everywhere at the time. I was hitchhiking, a guy picked me up, we started talking, and he asked if I wanted to buy his van. I said I had no money. He asked me how much I had. I said $500.00. He said he’d give me the van for that much, but obviously that was no good, it was all the money I had. We settled on $300 and closed the deal.

I lived in that van for almost a year, and on the beaches I found these sort of hippie communities who lived in their ultra-adapted campers. Hanging with these people I realized that there was this mobile lifestyle, the new gypsies; gypsy 2.0. So I got it. And I’m still into it! I’ve spent more than 12 years of my life living on tires. Seven different vehicles. I spent three inside a Land Rover 109; almost three years in a motorhome parked in the back of a friend’s house in California. On and on.

Did you get to know Dorian Paskowitz? He was already living in a motorhome with his family at that time.

I didn’t know Dorian at the time he made that decision to live on wheels with the family. But I met him later, after he got out of the car. But yeah, he’s a great example of what I’m talking about, living on the margins of society.

When did you start traveling through Africa?

I decided to go back to Brazil to make surfboards, and I ended up in Recreio dos Bandeirantes, not too far from where I grew up. This was 1971, and suddenly there were a lot of people traveling through Brazil in their vans, Europeans, Americans, all different nationalities, sleeping in their cars or on the beach, and that ended up getting in the way of me making boards. I wanted to live like that!

One day a guy drove by in a red two-door Land Rover 109, and that really caught my attention. I could not forget that car. Earlier on I’d had something kind of similar. My first car, bought in 1966, was an old Jeep Willys, in which I explored several beaches such as Saquarema and Búzios. So having another 4×4 was already in my head.

Yes! I stayed in Brazil, making boards, from ’71 to ’74, and saved enough so that when I closed the shop—which I sold to my good surfing friend Rico de Souza—I was able to buy my first Land Rover. By mail! I wrote to the factory, they sent me a catalog, and I got to customize the whole thing myself, everything I wanted.

$3,000, which to me was a fortune! I still have the invoice. It was six months until the car was ready; I flew to London to pick it up at the factory and then added even more stuff—a winch, luggage rack, just everything.

Morocco. I rented a workshop there and made a camper, put in cupboards, a fridge, a bed, a sink; I did everything myself. Then the money ran out, so I went back to Europe, stored the car, flew to America and worked for six months, then flew back to London.

You drove that Land Rover for three years, right?

Yes. I stayed in Morocco, Mauritania, Western Sahara, and Senegal. When I was in the south of Morocco there was an invasion of Western Sahara so I had to go back to Spain to take a boat, go to the Canary Islands, and from there to Senegal to go up to Mauritania.

I finally just got tired of the game and sold the car in Liberia.

Good! In these three years I pretty much only had one problem, in Mali, where the roads were so bad I had to take a jump about a meter high from the road into a ditch, and that crushed the bearing and bent the rear axle. I bought a new one in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and kept going.

How did you meet Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson from SURFER Magazine?

I met them in Morocco. They were looking for waves in the area, and so was I, so it was bound to happen that we’d eventually find ourselves on the same beach. They were returning from Liberia, and had actually crossed the Sahara by taxi, and then by hitchhiking. They’d just left an Aussie couple and were kind of lost on the beach when we met, and I invited them to continue the journey with me. I was alone and had plenty of space. We ended up becoming great friends; we traveled and surfed in Morocco, and Western Sahara.

What happened after you sold the Land Rover?

Back to Brazil, but things weren’t working out very well there, then back to California, to live in another van. “When life is tough, your best friend is the van.” It was for a monastic life, and in a monastic life the answers always came.

Yes, two. I did seven more years in Europe in a 110, and revisited Morocco three times in that one. Then later, back in Brazil, I bought an 88 and spent two years in that looking for a place to live here in the Northeast.

Of all the places you’ve visited, which one would you go back to?

Probably the Sahara. In the old days, we traveled by compass, which brought on a lot of insecurity. The Sahara is “where the boy cries and the mother doesn’t see.” I’m fascinated by deserts. The favorite thing for me, without a doubt, is to live near the sea but have the ability to walk around the desert.

What have you learned from all your travels?

Most people work, save money, come up with a travel project, make it happen, then come back and just keep working. I don’t have anything. I never wanted to buy property, because I never knew how long I wanted to stay one place. This commitment to mobility made me give up a lot of things I would’ve liked to have. On the other hand, I learned something very important from California in 1970 with the hippies, which is the idea of ​​“small is beautiful.” This became my family coat of arms.

What books have influenced your thinking?

 by Thoreau. They taught me that life goes through a lot of phases, which is probably why I’ve had 30 professions.

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