A fellow traveler we recently ran into equated meeting other overlanders to speed dating. After the first 10 minutes of asking the easy question of “What did you do before you quit your job, hopped in a vehicle and decided to drive around the world?” is out of the way, the not so easy question of “Why?” is usually next. This seems to quickly lead to a much deeper discussion of people's world views or a personal life changing event.
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Natasha
We've moved to another camping spot on the beach, because that seems to be the thing to do in Baja. We're hidden between two hills and from the road behind us.
This is my favorite spot yet. I say this every time we come to a new beach camp, but this time I mean it. We're tucked in behind head high bushes that block the wind and give us a fair amount or privacy. The people before us, or before them, built a fire pit using a wheel well. There's a makeshift alter; neatly stacked rocks topped with a candle and covered with smaller rocks and shells added by the camp's various inhabitants over the years.
The elusive Sipac has arrived in La Paz! After over a month of waiting for this form; it took all of two hours to take it to the other driver's insurance company, have them issue the paperwork we need, go to a shop, have our car looked at by the mechanic and get the parts ordered.
White sand beaches, periwinkle water and 70 degree weather is fantastic, but it didn't really inspire the holiday spirit in us. Being thousands of miles away from our family didn't help either. We were both rather unenthusiastic about the impending holidays.
“Are you coming back out?” I heard our neighbor (who we had not met) say to Pete as he was reentering our camper.
Pete apprehensively: “Uh...... I'll be coming and going”
Neighbor: “Well good! Because I want to know what the hell you guys are doing!”
We are ¼ mile down a dirt road parked feet from the turqiouse water of Playa Escondida on Bahia Concepcion. There are no alarm clocks, no name badges or uniforms, no one calling my name to tell me someone needs me or that I have a phone call.
As we leave our southern California camp spot at 8 am I feel a little nauseated...I'm nervous this morning. We keep hearing negative things about the Tijuana border crossing. Countless people have told us we would be better off crossing at Tecate. Countless more people have told us that we need to get away from the border as fast as possible. I usually don't take heed of such warnings, but there's been so many of them that its starting to wear on me.
This trip has been years in the making. There's been countless hours of research, planning and overtime. Countless dollars saved, spent and saved again. The last few weeks have been a frenzy of truck and camper modifications, packing, moving and unpacking.
We decided months ago to leave our to dogs with my parents on their farm. Fitz, our 90 pound behemoth of a pup, is fiercely protective and doesn't like strangers. This isn't his fault. Pete and I are unsocial creatures and didnt get him out and about when he was little. Malta, Fitz's smaller more genial sister would stay at home because we couldn't imagine separating them,
Our interior camper living space is approximately 6' x 10'. Fitting everything we think we'll need for drastically different climates and geographical regions has been a challenge.
One of the things about this trip that I am most looking forward to is slowing down and enjoying things that we haven't been able to do lately. That includes cooking. We'll have a full (albeit tiny) kitchen in our camper.
Pete and I are both pasty white so have a space where we can hang outside and be protected from the sun was a must. Lately we've been thinking in terms of costs for camper/truck modifications vs. lengthening our trip. The less money we spend;the longer we get to travel.
Last time we were in Baja the temperature reached 107 degrees so we thought it might be a good idea to get a second Fantastic Fan. We had read on another overlander’s blog that the Four Wheel Campers were prewired for this. We contacted Four Wheel and they confirmed it.
The second project we decided to undertake was putting in a new floor. The old floor was fine. It was the original vinyl floor Four Wheel Camper installs. It had a few scratches here and there but was perfectly functional. Regardless, we decided to replace it.
Since we've decided to do this overlandig trip we keep running across this saying from other camper owners. It's really starting to sink in that this will be our only tiny house for over a year and we want to make it as homey as possible.
Deciding we wanted to take a 15 month road trip from Tennessee to Argentina was the easy part. Deciding what we wanted to live in was the hard part. We knew wanted a truck camper from the start, but there are SO many companies and SO many opinions.
We probably shouldn't have taken this vacation. After all we are saving for a lengthy, expensive trip to South America. Pete was hard to convince, since he's the pragmatic one. I used the fact that Roatan was an excellent place to get scuba certified and that we HAD to get that done before we left on our trip.
After our first meeting in Southeast Asia, Tara and Tyler have made yearly trips to Tennessee to visit. When they bought their land, we were super excited for them, partly because it was the beginning of their homesteading dreams, but mostly because we were thinking "Heck yeah! Vermont's cool!! We can't wait to visit them every year!"
The sky is clear and blue, the air crisp and warm; rare oddities during the last two weeks and perfect for our final day on the Ring Road. After coffee, pastries and a little fermented shark meat for breakfast; we drive west with our tiny car sandwiched between the monstrous Snæfell Glacier and a scraggly coastline.