Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

When asked, “Why does one vlog?” Ter­mi­ca Vic­tor-Mc Sween replied, “I doc­u­ment my ex­pe­ri­ences with the world as post­cards to peo­ple who haven’t had the op­por­tu­ni­ty. I want to in­spire them to chase the world too.”

Per­haps it is no co­in­ci­dence that the mot­to of this pas­sion­ate trav­eller comes from 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can philoso­pher Ralph Wal­do Emer­son who fa­mous­ly said, “There is no des­ti­na­tion, on­ly the jour­ney.”

What start­ed as a hob­by has cat­a­pult­ed this trav­el vlog­ger in­to the realm of so­cial me­dia and seen her trav­el to more than 36 coun­tries. Vic­tor-Mc Sween, who goes by her trav­el nick­name Timz, has over 40,000 fol­low­ers across her so­cial me­dia plat­forms and it’s grow­ing dai­ly.

Her fol­low­ers are en­thused by her video con­tent which cap­tures Vic­tor-Mc Sween on her trav­els to dif­fer­ent parts of T&T and the plan­et.

From a young age, she showed in­ter­est in pho­tog­ra­phy and videog­ra­phy prac­tis­ing in front of the mir­ror. Now the mir­ror has turned in­to a cam­era.

“Vlog­ging start­ed as a per­son­al doc­u­men­tary of my life—a way for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of my fam­i­ly to see my jour­ney and ex­pe­ri­ences. But, it soon be­came more than that. I re­alised that many peo­ple, due to fi­nan­cial or phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions, might nev­er have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it cer­tain places. This in­spired me to use my plat­form to bring those des­ti­na­tions to them, of­fer­ing a win­dow to the world from the com­fort of their homes. In this way, my work be­came a form of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice—an op­por­tu­ni­ty to give back by mak­ing trav­el ac­ces­si­ble and in­spir­ing to oth­ers.”

Her trav­els have seen her doc­u­ment through vlog­ging four of the sev­en Won­ders of the World, in­clud­ing the Chichén Itzá in Mex­i­co, the Colos­se­um in Rome, the his­toric sanc­tu­ary of Machu Pic­chu in Pe­ru and the fa­mous ar­chae­o­log­i­cal site in Jor­dan’s south­west­ern desert, Pe­tra.

For this lover of trav­el­ling, the jour­ney has just be­gun.

“My goal is to ex­plore all 195 coun­tries, ful­fill­ing a life­long dream of im­mers­ing my­self in the di­verse cul­tures and land­scapes our world has to of­fer,” she told WE Mag­a­zine.

Yet, Vic­tor-Mc Sween’s ad­ven­tures start­ed right here at home. In her ear­ly years as a vlog­ger, she trav­elled the length and breadth of Trinidad and To­ba­go telling the sto­ries of some of the na­tion’s most won­drous and hid­den trea­sures.

“I’ve ex­plored every cor­ner of our beloved is­lands, and de­spite all of my in­ter­na­tion­al trav­els, I’m yet to find a des­ti­na­tion sweet­er than home. No mat­ter where I go, when peo­ple ask where I’m from, T&T is al­ways part of the con­ver­sa­tion. I take pride in shar­ing the beau­ty and di­ver­si­ty of our is­lands—from the lush hills of Paramin to the serene shores of Char­lot­teville in To­ba­go. To me, it’s more than just home—it’s par­adise,” she said.

Vic­tor-Mc Sween, who pub­lished her first vlog eight years ago, has post­ed over 200 trav­el videos since 2019.

Now she wants those who watch her videos to be in­spired to dis­cov­er our coun­try and the world.

“I want my videos to do more than en­ter­tain. I want them to in­spire peo­ple to ex­plore. Not just to see the beau­ty of our beloved twin-is­land state, but to re­alise that trav­el is a pow­er­ful es­cape, es­pe­cial­ly for young peo­ple,” she ex­plained.

Trav­el­ling has not on­ly been an ex­pe­ri­ence for the Ch­agua­nas res­i­dent but al­so an ed­u­ca­tion. She says while peo­ple across the world have dif­fer­ent cul­tures, she has found that love is a com­mon lan­guage un­der­stood by all. Trav­el­ling has al­so taught her a valu­able les­son.

“The great­est les­son I’ve learned from trav­el­ling is that life is hap­pen­ing now, and the time we have is ours to make the most of. Dis­ci­pline, con­sis­ten­cy, and a pos­i­tive at­ti­tude can take you fur­ther than you ever imag­ined. And if fear stands in your way—don’t wait to over­come it—just do it scared.”