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

Long before our camper was loaded with our possessions and goodbyes were said back in 2014, I had dreams of Uruguay. I read loads of glossy travel magazines that described the coast of Uruguay as the next “it” destination. I had planned (but not taken) this trip multiple times. I dreamed of rocky hillsides, firelit estancias, and dune backed beaches. Then in 2010, John and I saw a film on Uruguay at the Mill Valley film festival called “Beyond the Road”. It was about a road t

So, we are back in Lima! After a long flight from Amsterdam, we gathered our bags and head out of the airport to meet up with overlanding friends Ben and Emma (www.flightlesskiwis.com). We met and traveled with the Kiwi’s way back in Mexico and they FINALLY caught up to us in Peru. They rented an apartment to accommodate Ben’s parents who weren’t set to arrive in a couple of days and graciously offered us a room for two nights before we headed to Cusco. It was great to catch

"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

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

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

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