Hello friends,
We finally made it to South America! It’s the 5th continent we have driven to in our vehicle. It was never a goal we aimed for but sorta just happened once our international travels began. One country at a time, one continent at a time. Baby steps and underplanning are our style. Ha.
Cartagena, Colombia
As I write this, we are waiting for our lithium batteries to be shipped from Panama to Colombia. Our what? You read that right. We shipped our van from Panama to Colombia a few weeks ago but did so without our batteries onboard. Due to restrictions on our RoRo ship, they had to be put on a container ship. And did it go on the scheduled container ship? No. Or the next rescheduled one? Nope. What a debacle. But we just got notice that it was loaded today so the end is in sight. Once the batteries arrive, we can install them in our van and start driving south. We plan to take a couple of months in Colombia and stick to the west of the continent. By this time next year, we should have made it to the very bottom tip and started shipping our van to some other continent. Maybe the US, maybe Europe, maybe somewhere new. I’m unsure what the future holds because we have a big shift coming up. Our oldest will be graduating high school next year which means there are a lot of unknowns but we will figure out what the next chapter looks like. We always do.
Colon, Panama
Last summer while we were visiting the US, we got invited to film an episode for GonDirtin’s new cooking show on the XOverland network. The show’s premise is that the guest cooks a favorite meal at home and then GonDirtin makes a simplified version of the dish at camp. In episode 5 of the show, Dan cooks Lu Ro Fan (a Taiwanese Braised Pork Rice Bowl,) and talks about his childhood, immigrating to the US, and our family’s travels. You can watch on the XOverland Network (it’s subscription-based but you can opt for a free monthly trial) or watch it free on YouTube.
So what else have we been up to? Lots of things because when we are stuck in a rental, creating things is way easier to manage.
- Our Podcast: New episodes of our podcast are live. We alternate between sharing educational topics and interviewing guests. Since the last newsletter, we have released Crossing Borders in Central America and an interview with She Roams Wild. You can listen to them in all the usual places or watch them here in video format.
- Shipping: We always get a lot of shipping questions so we put together an informational video and will be working on a long-form brain dump of it in podcast format next month.
- Substack: We share snippets of our current lives on all these various platforms but don’t have a home for traveling stories of the past that mean a lot to us. Dan has taken up this writing project that now lives on Substack. You can read these stories as a free subscriber or get extra ones as a paid one.
- Expedition Portal: There have been questions lately on safety while international traveling, especially in Baja. Dan wrote an article on Expedition Portal about things we do and do NOT do while in a foreign country. You can find that here. We also shared tips for traveling as a family on the road with a little bit of our story weaved in there. I think it will be helpful for those who are apprehensive about camping with kids. The link to that article is here.
That’s about it from us. If you have suggestions on what to see, do, or eat in South America, send them our way. We would love to hear!
Until next time,
Marlene
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Cartagena, Colombia
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