Raquel Escudero Villaverde, Spain

Raquel and Alicia are laughing. Again. Great roars of delight that momentarily subside into a helpless giggle. They lean towards each other, touching foreheads briefly in a tender gesture while they catch their breaths, before flinging their heads back into another wave of laughter.

Old friends. Years of mutual understanding visible through their non-spoken communication as much as what they say.

Raquel Escudero wipes a laughter tear from the corner of her eye and leans forward to explain, “We’ve known each other for 12 years.” An animated speaker, her eyes, hands and expression talk as much, if not more, than her words.

She adds: “Alicia is one of my best wheelchair pushers. There is nowhere she can't take me — no matter how steep, she will find a way. Whatever the problem, she can solve it.”

It doesn’t explain the joke, but alludes to many years of adventures, scrapes and fun together. 

Isabel, the youngest of the group and only single arrives. More helpless laughter as the friends recount their last night out. The conversation moves to Raquel’s forthcoming trip. In three days she is off to Mexico. Not to the resorts of Cancun or even the Mayan ruins of the Yucatan Peninsula. Well, not the ones on the tourist trail at least.

Raquel’s wanderlust and fascination with other cultures are taking her to the jungles of Mexico, where she plans to visit local tribes. Totalling up on fingers, the friends together count how many countries Raquel has visited. Thirty-three so far. Not bad for someone who is just 40 years old. And even more amazing when you consider many of those trips include once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Raquel’s travelling party will include her long-term boyfriend Juan-Jesus and another couple. Far from posing a problem, Raquel’s wheelchair will be an integral part of the travelling adventure. “It’s fun to organise so that I can get to the same places as my friends,” she adds. “And if I can’t get in somewhere, they just go without me. This can be fun, too, because when I am alone, I get to meet a lot of different people. People are always interested in my wheelchair and come and talk to me.”

Alicia snorts with laughter and Isabel leans forward to explain: “Raquel is like a magnet for people.” Now composed, Alicia chimes in: “Just leave her alone for five minutes and then stand back and watch. She always ends up talking to people. Some are really weird. I’m sure we could make a great film if we followed her!”

A great book too. Raquel’s experiences could fill many chapters. There is the time she ate snake in Cambodia. Not sharing each other’s language, Raquel pointed to a picture on the menu. The waiter took her order and came back a few minutes later with two live snakes writhing in his hands. “What could I do, but choose one?” she asks. “The meal was good, a white meat with a mild flavour, like chicken really.”

In India, she visited a Sikh temple. Her friends were allowed in, but her wheelchair could not enter because it would have brought in dust on the tyres. One religious man gave her a dish of strange-looking food, telling her that it would cure her. Luckily, he let her take the dish away, rather than eat it there; with a quick-thinking excuse designed not to offend, Raquel told him her religion didn’t let her eat between meals.

She didn’t let her wheelchair get in the way on the Ganges when, with a little help from Juan-Jesus and others, she was able to navigate a small boat and take a trip on India’s most famous river.

Then there was the accident that resulted in her spinal cord injury. A car crash in rural Namibia. After Namibia she spent a month in the hospital in South Africa, followed by 10 months in a specialist hospital in Toledo.

Already a close family, this is when Raquel’s bond with her parents and her sisters, Eva and Elena, grew even stronger. “They have been amazing,” she says. “They are always there for me.”

In the five years since her accident, she has been to Egypt, Japan, India, Cameroon, the United States, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Mexico is next. The most remote place she has ever been was the deepest jungle of Papua, New Guinea, about a year before her accident in Namibia.

Raquel explains: “The tribes were really remote. We had a three-day boat trip and three-day hike through the jungle to find them. They still used stone to cut trees and practised cannibalism. They gave me bows and arrows as a gift in return for rice and flour. That was my best souvenir ever.

“Many people ask me why I travel to these countries. When someone asks me, ‘Why do you need to go to Africa again?’ I say I know the culture in Europe; yet going to Africa or Asia or the Americas is going somewhere completely different. It offers me different ways of seeing life. And that is something precious. It shows me how lucky I am, even with my spinal cord injury.

“Travelling also makes me humble. Okay, so I had an accident and am in a wheelchair. But I have water in my kitchen and bathroom. When I travel and see the conditions in which many people have to live, I think, lucky me. I can’t feel sorry for myself when I see something like that.”

Last December Raquel went to Cameroon and visited a small village by the coast. She took pens, pencils and notebooks and gave them to the school there. “It was great to see where our money was going and a nice way of helping people who do not have the same opportunities as me,” she adds.

It is this sense of adventure combined with compassion that best describes Raquel and the relationships she has with her close friends. The many tales of fun and scrapes that Raquel has had with her Gatos (Madrid residents, born and bred) show their adventures. But the closeness of their relationships is evident too.

Raquel sums it up with an arm around Alicia and Isabel: “Good friends are the ones where you can go out and have fun together, but they are also there for you during the times that are not so good. They are the ones you can call up and go out for a drink or call up when you want to cry, and they will come round and be with you.”