OurBiggerPicture

We’ve been back in the U.S for over 2 months now. Finding the discipline to finish this blog has been difficult. Taking myself back in time to our road life requires putting myself in a different headspace from where I am now. It requires writing about the past while the present clouds my thoughts. I’m still catching up so it won’t be until the next blog post that I explore our reentry. Time is catching up to me faster now, that’s for certain. As I reflect on our last few wee

After the Perito Moreno Glacier we headed southwest, back toward Chile - and yet another border crossing. Our destination was the Torres del Paine National Park, a must see on the Patagonian circuit. We entered Chile at the Cerro Castillo border crossing and saw the road signs change to “Ruta del Fin Del Mundo” – End of the World Route. Ushuaia, where the road ends, is now only a 10 hour drive. We are almost there! Torres del Paine National Park is known for its granite pill

We left the Iguazu Falls and headed straight south. We planned to stay in the northeast province of Corrientes for a little while longer to visit the Iberá Provincial Reserve—a 3.2 million-acre protected wetland area within the vast Esteros del Iberá. Iberá is one of the most important fresh water wetlands on the continent and the second-largest wetland in the world after the Pantanal in Brazil. These wetlands are difficult to get to - access is either by private plane (the p

Touching down at Schipol Airport, I mentally prepared myself for a whole new existence out of the camper. I was looking forward to living in a house, seeing the familiar faces of my family and the comforts of “home”. What struck me right away was the order of things. It looks so clean and nice. Everything seems to work here, and the order not only creates a more quiet place in my mind, but it also feels quiet. And peaceful after the chaos of the Peruvian roads. The order of

The scenery changes as soon as we cross into Peru. The trees give way to brown sand and desolate terrain. For miles and miles, our eyes see brown. Tiny brown houses made from mud and brick dot the landscape and make up the towns. The sand blows across the highway and dunes rise up along its sides. A favorite documentary of many overlanders is The Long Way Down. For us, the coast of Peru is the The Long Way Brown. We are driving the length of this country along the coast, and

It was mid March before we ventured beyond a three hour radius of Quito. We hovered around the capital city waiting for a couple of small parts to be FedEx’d to the Toyota Dealership there. We killed time hiking in the mountains a few hours north, just above Otovalo, and then ventured down to Cotopaxi National Park. We’ve been to Ecuador before and we covered all the highlights then. The Galapagos, Amazon jungle, Otavalo market, and Quito. Now we are here after 15 months on t

The only break in the 29,000-mile stretch of road known as the Pan-American Highway is the 100-mile section of impassible jungle between Central & South America called the Darien Gap. The only way to get our rig across the gap is to ship it. It’s a complicated process. On the Panama side it requires a shipping agent in Panama City, a police inspection to clear us through Interpol (to make sure the vehicle isn’t stolen), and of course lots and lots of paperwork. Only way to ge

We entered into Panama without even realizing we had crossed the imaginary line between the two countries. The night before we camped at a little botanical garden high in the mountains. We thought it would be an hour drive back down to cross, but the owner told us about a smaller border that we hadn't even seen on the map, and it was only 25 minutes away. The next morning, as we turned out of town, the pavement gave way to dirt. The only indication we were near the border wa

By the time we got to the Osa Peninsula, jutting off the Pacific Coast just above Panama, we have crisscrossed the entire expanse of this country. We have seen so much beautiful wildlife in the national parks, but driving slow and meandering around, I see this country differently than I did before. Much of what we see out the window is not rainforest and monkeys - its pineapples fields, banana plantations, miles of palm oil plantations, patches of bald mountains…and cows. Thi

The coast north and south of San Juan del Sur is undeveloped, wild and beautiful. Tiny villages spread out from the beaches, with cattle, pigs and chickens roaming the dirt roads. The town of San Juan del Sur has grown up from a small fishing village to ground zero for Nicaraguan surfing. It is has Victorian clapboard houses, a few decent restaurants and a steady stream of young international visitors. A cruise port is getting built on the edge of the crescent beach here so w