Meet Heloisa

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heloisa.

Hi Heloisa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up the oldest of four in a house where the dreams were always bigger than the bank account. About ten years ago I decided I wanted to volunteer in India, except I didn’t even have a passport yet, and couldn’t afford the application fee. So I sold chocolate on campus until I could. That trip is really where it started, not with a plan to become a creator, just a stubborn refusal to let money be the reason I didn’t go.

From there travel became the thread running through everything else. I got a law degree and an MBA along the way, and neither ended up mattering in the traditional sense. About two years ago I left the corporate world to work for myself, and it’s been a journey among 76 countries so far, built on storytelling and side quest hunting.

I’m Brazilian born, Vegas by choice now, and ten years into solo travel I’m still mostly just chasing the next story worth telling.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not even close to smooth. Loss doesn’t care about your itinerary, some of my hardest days happened alone, thousands of miles from anyone who could just show up. You can be surrounded by people every single day and still go weeks without anyone who actually knows you.

Burnout looks different on the road. It’s not collapsing, it’s staring at something objectively beautiful and feeling absolutely nothing. Doubt shows up right behind it, asking if you’re building a life or just avoiding one. And somewhere in there you get fluent in a kind of math nobody teaches you, budgeting a trip down to the dollar while still finding the one splurge that makes it worth it. Connections, decisions, fear, safety, insecurities. All as a lesson.

I’ve gotten sharper because of all of it, not softer. The feed just doesn’t show the spreadsheet, the grief, or the 4am flights that made it possible. But they were part of the process, for sure.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a travel storyteller, not a reviewer. I make short pieces about places rather than checklists of things to do there, built around a specific moment. Connections, people, places. How does it feel rather than it looks. I specialize in what I call side quests, the stuff that doesn’t fit neatly into a destination guide: motorbiking the Ha Giang Loop solo, living with eagle hunters in Kyrgyzstan, trekking Everest Base Camp in seven days in a leather jacket I still wear, for example.

I’m known for finding the story other people would have scrolled past. To be random, to take the chances, to make the impossible and insane look cool.

What I’m most proud of has less to do with any single post and more to do with the fact that I got here on my own terms, ten years of saying yes to the harder version of the trip. What sets me apart is that I’m not selling an aesthetic, I’m collecting a life, and it shows because none of it is staged to look easy.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
it’s been more of an accumulation. Strangers who let me crash on a couch when I had no plan B, other creators who shared a hard truth, brands who took a chance. Even the people who said no taught me something, usually about how to ask better the next time. Not to mention my forever support net made out of friends and family.

If there’s a through line, it’s that almost everyone who’s mattered showed up in a moment where they didn’t have to, and I’ve tried to build that same instinct into how I treat the people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.whereishelo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whereishelo_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whereishelo_