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"Head on a swivel. Always remember, head on a swivel". Those words are our mantra the minute we step out of the train station in Amsterdam. Bicycles wiz by in every direction, their bells dinging menacingly at the constant flow of clueless tourists stepping off the curbs. The bike culture here is such an interesting way of life. Almost everyone we talk to commutes to work by bike. Life here is conducted on the bike. Business men and women ride in expensive suits, briefcases d

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 route to Cusco takes us up over 15,000 feet through the Peruvian Andes, where small villages of herders occasionally dot the landscape. It seems an inhospitable place to live, so far up in the sky. But we begin to see green, not just brown, and we are finally in the mountains. Here we also finally see the rare vicuña, a wild South American camelid that lives in the high alpine areas of the Andes. Their long necks, gentle eyes and downy coats instantly draw me in. We drive

We made our way south along the coast, and decided to pull into the tiny town of Ayampe to overnight. Ayampe consists of one main dirt road, about a mile long, from the PanAmerican highway to the beach. Another dirt road runs along the water. Inviting little open air restaurants and hostels are scattered in among the foliage. A smattering of young travellers roam around and there is a low key surfer vibe on the beach. It was very chill compared to Canoa and we liked what we s

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

We found ourselves in a Colombian Convoy for twelve days. We traveled from Salento all the way down to the Ecuadorian border with Jesse and Jessica from Toronto, Canada, and Melanie and Lukas from Zurich, Switzerland. Both couples are in their late 20s/early 30s. Our “Convoy” traveled over 750 miles from the coffee region south - up and down multiple mountains chains, into the wide open spaces of the Tatacoa Desert, over to the Archeological tombs of Tierraadrento, down to th

Our drive to the heart of the coffee zone, also called the Eje Cafetero (Coffee Axis), from Bogota to the town of Salento was ‘mostly’ uneventful - at least for the first 4 hours. It’s a long drive without a doubt, but the first 4 hours to Iguape were a breeze on four lane roads with not much traffic. Then came the mountains. We’ve driven plenty of difficult mountain passes and this wasn’t much different except for the fact that we were driving on the only route East to West

Our departure from Baranquilla was delayed by a few days. John got hit with some strange flu bug. Or what we thought was some strange flu bug. He had body aches, fever, and was really weak. He rode it out in the Sheraton Hotel (our oasis hotel chain on this trip) in the fetal position. Two days later, after we set up camp in the mountains on the Caribbean Coast, I went down too. We think that we both got hit with the Zika virus that's been spreading through Latin America with

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