We feel like an end of a trip like this should be triumphant, epic, and exciting; like the trip itself. Sometimes things don't live up to your expectations, sometimes things go wrong, and sometimes a road trip is just driving on the road.
In this blog we attempt to leave Puerto Montt, Chile but are greeted with a new problem. When we finally left Puerto Montt we checked out Bariloche, Argentina and raced across the country to enter Uruguay. Although our vehicle was almost denied entry into the country everything worked out the best it could, sort of.
This blog ends with us saying goodbye to our van after placing it into a shipping container bound for Houston, Texas. This bitter sweet moment of saying goodbye to our van and marking the end of our official Pan-American highway road trip is one moment we will likely not forget, even though their was far less fanfare and excitement than we had originally hoped.
March 17th to 21st – Cleaning and preparing
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| Our "to be cleaned" table |
The idea of relaxing in the Airbnb seemed like a good idea except we had got a very inexpensive Airbnb meaning “hang out” area. We were antsy but emotionally tired meaning we settled on cleaning the van. We have not done a thorough cleaning of our van since we started this trip and we can attest that it was in desperate need of a deep cleaning. This also gave us the opportunity to fix a crack in our stow and go which had developed thanks to all the dirt roads and bottoming out on speed bumps and gravel roads. This crack is how we flooded the stow and go storage area.
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| Hopefully this will make our stow and go waterproof |
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| Cleaning ever surface |
On March 20th we learned our parts were finally
at the mechanics, but they would be unable to work on our vehicle until the
following day, so assuming this would be our final day or two in the area we
left Rupert at the Airbnb and took a taxi to the resort community of Puerto
Varas, the capital of Chile’s Lakes region.
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| Coffee and a view!! |
By the 21st we were ecstatic, we couldn’t believe that by
the end of the day we would have a working vehicle and we would be back on the
road exploring. We felt we just had one
last obstacle to overcome; the drive to the mechanic’s shop.
For reasons we don’t fully understand the fuel pump fails
when we are going down a hill and Puerto Montt is full of hills with the
location of our Airbnb requiring us to drive down many hills. What followed was one of the most stressful
drives we had done since being towed out of Bolivia. Our van stalled no less than 6 times in
rush-hour traffic while going down hills. It is a miracle we didn’t crash into
anyone because as soon as the vehicle stopped our brakes and steering became
far more manual and required a lot of extra effort to engage. It was all worth it though when we finally
arrived and were told to come back around closing time.
We had hoped that by the end of the day we would be back on
the road and heading towards Argentina however, when we arrived the van
wouldn’t start. The mechanics were
dumbfounded. They had replaced the fuel
pump and taken for a test drive and everything seemed fine, yet right now the
van refused to start. The electronic
troubleshooting device kept saying no fuel was reaching the fuel pump. The mechanics assumed that we were out of
fuel but when that theory was proven incorrect they apologized and said that we
will need to leave the vehicle at the shop for one more day. We prayed we didn’t need another fuel pump. Before we left the mechanic went and showed
us all the work they had done and reaffirmed why we needed a new fuel pump and
struts. It was amazing just how much
damage to our suspension we had done over the last year of driving through
South America .
March 22nd to 23rd – Heartbreak and Anger
The next morning, we got the text we were hoping for. They had found the issue and the van was
ready. We rushed down to the mechanics where
we got the full picture of what the mechanic in San Pedro had done. Not only did he just (poorly) “fix” our fuel
pump when he said he had replaced it. He
had rewired some of the wiring to the fuel pump to ensure it was quasi
functional. His odd wiring was causing these
issues. Thankfully the issue was found
and corrected.
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| We thought everything was fixed... |
We drove the van around downtown and everything seemed
perfect. We were ecstatic!
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| That doesn't look right |
Heartbroken we turned around and in the rain in a grocery
store parking lot we troubleshooted this issue.
It appeared that we needed new rear bearings which we would have to
order from the US. We wouldn’t be going
anywhere.
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| It doesn't look it but this pump had some odd mortifications |
We decided to purchase the bearing, in fact we decided to purchase all new rear and front bearings mostly because we wouldn’t be able to forgive ourselves if we replace the rear bearings just to have the front ones fail before we arrived in Uruguay.
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| A brewery started by a man from Alberta that still loves the Oilers enroute to our campground! |
We considered booking the Airbnb for another night but found
the idea of looking or staying any longer in Puerto Montt heartbreaking. We wanted to stay in our van again, we didn’t
want to spend $70 CAD a night for an undesirable apartment. Camping in the area was out of the question
as the only place that people have successfully camped in the area is a quasi
lover’s lane where young couple go to play loud music to mask any other sounds
coming from their vehicle.
After weighing our options, having some tough conversations
and reading multiple blogs and forums we felt we could drive with the bad
bearing into the Lakes region of Chile.
We knew this was a gamble as if the bearing seized it would likely put
an end to our trip but what sort of trip are we even having right now? Wedesperately needed a change of
scenery. We needed to do something that
may make us happy. We decided that we would drive to a campground in the lake
region so we could be surrounded by nature and beauty of the Chilian lakes
region.
It was only 50 kilometers to the campground we wanted to camp at, however that was using the highway something we thought to avoid. The last thing we want is the bearing to seize going 110 km/h so we meandered on country roads going as slow as we read we should drive.
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| Rupert had to investigate the local wildlife at the campground |
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| Our view from our campsite |
Halfway through the drive we decided to stop for a break and
let our bearings cool down. It gave us
the opportunity to check out a local brewery which we had read was run by an
American, but we learned was opened by an Albertan from Bentley. We didn’t know this at the time but had a
feeling it was as soon as we walked in and saw tons of Edmonton Oilers
memorabilia displayed on the walls. We
ended up chatting with the owner for some time who was amazed we had driven
from Canada to Chile. For a short time,
we forgot our problem and just enjoyed the company of another English speaking person.
After an hour or so we jumped back into the van an arrived
at a campground in Frutillar Bajo. The
community was cute but not busy and the view was amazing. What we liked even more was that the weather
was far less rainy here meaning we could actually enjoy the outside as well.
March 24rd to 31st – Camping and
loving it!
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| Celebrating that we are doing something! |
We stayed in the Frutillar Bajo area for 5 nights. Every day we would walk down the cafes and
restaurants near the shores of Lake Llanquihue and we just enjoyed our
surroundings. We played games, cooked
good food and tried to forget our concerns about the van and its need to be on
the other side of the continent it a month.
We laughed and started to smile again.
It seemed we had made the correct decision.
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| Lake side camping! |
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| Paul reading the bill and test result from Kendra's doctor visit |
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| Living a cafe life! |
By the end of the week, we were ready for another change of
scenery so decided to move to another community just 20 kilometres away called
Llanquihue where we visited new restaurants and cafes while camping at the beach.
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| Paul set up a little easter egg hunt for Kendra |
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| Rupert getting in the easter spirt |
We were in no rush to return to Puerto Montt so we spent all
day driving the 30 kms or so back the big city.
We stopped into Puerto Varas and once again explored the area before
driving to the only camping spot in Puerto Montt the quasi lover’s lane.
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| This is how we like to kill time... |
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| ...waiting for our vehicle. |
We learned we had another issue with the van as we drove through rush-hour traffic into Puerto Montt. The sound of a failing drive belt filled our ears and we knew we would have to relace it. We were sure that we wouldn’t be able to buy one in Chile, but much to our surprise our size of belt was available in local parts stores. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn this until the next day meaning we had a very restless sleep where we listened to some loud music from couples in cars that had parked close to the van.
We debated getting a hotel for the day while the mechanic
replaced our bearings and drive belt but instead walked and took public
transportation all around Puerto Montt with the dog. For 8 hours we travelled from café to
shopping mall to restaurant and back.
Kendra bought jeans and we purchased a pet carrier for Rupert for when
we fly home, something we had read people struggle to find in Argentina and
Uruguay.
Finally nearing the end of the day, we were told our van is
ready to go. They said they had really
struggled replacing the bearings as the sea air and Bolivia salt flats had
really seized the bearing into the hub.
Probably for the best we replaced everything. We thanked the mechanics again and drove.
We were so excited to be on road and debated just how far we
wanted to travel. We considered driving
all the way to Argentina but decided to “only” drive a couple hours since the
sun was going to set in an hour.
However, we only made it 20 minutes out of Puerto Montt.
During our route planning we realized that we would be
unable to have a shower for the next week unless we stopped at a truck stop
just north of Puerto Montt. As we had
spent the day in the cold and hadn’t showered in almost a week so we decided we
needed to stop and thank God we did.
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| Smokin! |
As we stopped the van the smell of brakes filled our
nostrils. One of the rear brakes was
smoking. Even after taking off the tire
(using our oven mitt since the lug nuts were too hot to touch) we didn’t know
why the brakes were smoking. With the
oven mitt Paul could turn the wheel so his only guess was they didn’t install
the bearing correctly.
We felt so foolish and worried about the damage we may have
already done to the vehicle by driving it in this condition. We feared we would need to order new parts
which would make it impossible to reach Uruguay in time. If our vehicle needed additional work we
decided that we would abandon it; it felt like repairing this vehicle was a
fool’s errand.
A common camping spot that some more frugal overlanders use
is 24 hour gas stations. We prided
ourselves on never camping at a gas station but said we would do so only in an
emergency situation. Today we knew we had to camp at a gas station
further adding to our downward emotional spiral. Thank
god you can’t buy alcohol at gas stations in Chile because we were emotionally
wrecked.
We had sent a message to the mechanic asking him to help us
and the next morning he respond and offered to drive to the gas station to fix
the issue. The problem ended up being a
lack of lubricant something that took him 10 minutes to fix.
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| Hopefully the final fix |
Before he left he made us do a long test drive to make sure
everything was good. We were happy to
not see any smoke or feel any hot lug nuts after 50 kilometres of driving
. However, our steering wheel was no longer
driving straight.
We returned to the gas station and told him everything was
good, even though there was now an issue with steering. We did not have the emotional capacity to say
anything about it or deal with it at all.
The drive towards the Argentina border was full of research
into why I needed to turn the steering wheel to the left to go straight. Our minds went to the worst case
scenario. We decided to drive the van
and just get it to Bariloche. If the
trip was over because our van has another issue we’d prefer to reassess our
lives and our plans in a beautiful, accessible and cheaper place.
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| Back camping in Argentina! |
The drive to Argentina was beautiful through a mountain pass with a bit of snow and the van, although not driving straight, did drive well with no mystery sounds or smells. After 7 hours in the van and an hour at the border we reached Bariloche. It was surreal to finally drive into the community (that we thought we would be in for Christmas). We were happy but exhausted so found one of the few free places to camp in the area and settled in for the night. Free camping spots are hard to come by in the area but we had managed to find one that gave us a beautiful view of the area, it just required us to sleep on a weird angle.
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| The weather was starting to change |
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| What a view, we even got a rainbow! |
April 4th – One day in Bariloche
Our original plan was to spend a week or so in Bariloche
but thanks to vehicle issues we only had the day. Although a potentially controversial decision
we are okay cutting our time in Bariloche.
It is a beautiful place, but it is also very similar to the Rocky
Mountains of Canada which we would hopefully be seeing again in the next few
months. The other issue is crime. This place is notorious amongst overlanders
and those who rent vehicles due to the large amount of break ins. It has become the norm for rental car
companies to warn renters about parking anywhere in the community, even paid
parking lots. If we ever come back to Argentina we would
love to return to Bariloche but we are just too fearful of getting a window
smashed and having another vehicle issue to tend to.
Our morning "hike"
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| With breakfast at the top! |
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| Exploring the community of Bariloche |
The whole area is known for amazing camping but a quick look
at iOverlander showed us that every trailhead has a warning for break-ins. We couldn’t not go up a mountain for a view
of the area so we decided to take a chairlift from a “safe” parking lot to the
top of Cerro Campanario. Our early
morning “expedition” up the mountain was amazing. Just as we arrived to the top the rain that
had plagued us most of the morning stopped and we were greeted with a rainbow
overlooking the entire area and since it was so early we had the entire
viewpoint more or less to ourselves.
Our next stop was within the community of Bariloche. Yesterday we had made an appointment with an
alignment specialist which seemed like the perfect person to fix our issue with
the van (or at least tell us how difficult it would be to fix). This also gave us a few hours where the van
was safely inside a garage so we could explore the community without fear of a
break-in. The community itself is very
cute but extremely touristy. A few hours
is probably all you need to spend in the community as it consists mostly of
expensive tourist shops and tourist traps.
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| Views from the Lakes district |
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| One of the seven lakes |
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| Camping in the seven lakes area |
April 5th to 7th – The Race to Uruguay
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| Starting our journey before sunrise |
Our vehicle is to be loaded into a shipping container in
Montevideo Uruguay on April 17th which is over 2000 kilometres
away. We estimated that it would take us
roughly 3 days to drive there if we drive all day. Therefore if all goes
according to plan we will have a week and a half with our van in Uruguay.
Now you may be wondering why we are prioritizing Uruguay
over Barlioche or anywhere else in Argentina.
Well the answer is pretty simple.
We don’t trust our van’s reliability and don’t want to get “stuck” in
Argentina where it is extremely hard, if not impossible, to get vehicle parts
for our van due to their high importation costs and government
bureaucracy. We also didn’t want to half-ass
our time in Uruguay. We wanted to be
able to say that we, by our own definition, properly saw the country as this is
something that in general we feel about every country we visited.
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| Sunset in La Pampa |
On our first day we woke up to -1 degrees showing that winter has arrived to Patagonia, we drove until we reached the rural town of Casa de Piedra, Argentina’s newest community.
The next day we officially left Patagonia and reached Buenos Aires province and camped beside a lake in the community of Bragado where we were treated to one of the most spectacular sunsets we had ever seen. Paul is convinced that it was his reward for helping an Argentinian who was struggling to start his car.
The final driving day we drove to the border town of Gualeguaychu where we would prepare our “doguments” to allow Rupert entry into Uruguay. We celebrated by going out for a meal before finding a spot to camp for the night which proved to be more difficult than we first anticipated due to massive flooding that has affected the area and the army of mosquitos that the standing water had allowed to thrive.
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| At the vet |
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| We have the "dog"uments |
April 8th – The vans final border
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| Made it to Uruguay!! |
April 8th would be the final day our van would be
in Argentina. We woke up not too sure how
to feel, but kept away sad thoughts of the end of our trip by frantically
running around Gualeguaychu to a vet to get all Rupert's paperwork in order for
SENASA, the government department, who prepares animal export documentation for
other countries. Uruguay has a unique
requirement for entry for dogs, dogs must test negative for Leishmaniasis. This potentially deadly disease is contracted
by sand flies, and although we had been in contact with sand flies, many times,
Rupert had no symptoms so we were hopeful that Rupert had not contracted this
disease. We had learned of people
getting false positives with this test that caused them a lot of issues and
delays to enter Uruguay, something we couldn’t afford to have happen, either
way we were a little stressed that the test would say it was positive. We held our breath as the vet drew blood and
spun it in a plasma centrifuge. We
finally exhaled when the vet said he had tested negative.
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| First night in Uruguay |
Our next step was to take all the paperwork to SENASA and
get the exportation document. The only
issue is that we had to pay in cash at a third party bill payment company and
we didn’t have very much cash since we were leaving Argentina soon. After more running around and an hour in line
we had paid for the certificate and had done everything we needed to do to
enter Uruguay with the dog so we decided to head to the border.
In general, we are always very prepared for borders and in general have never been worried that we wouldn’t be allowed in. Well Uruguay ended up being the 2nd country where we had issues entering. As some may remember we had a lot of difficulty entering Guatemala since Paul’s passport omits his middle name, but the documents for the van from ICBC do not. Previously it only took 10 minutes of discussion with the Guatemalan officials about how one document was federal and the other was provincial and that middles names aren’t that important in Canada and we were able to get our paperwork. Well, the Uruguayans did not believe Paul and for a while refused to provide us with a vehicle import document for the van. Rupert was legally in, we were in, but our van was stuck at the border.
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| A monument to the animals slaughtered in Fray Bentos |
The Uruguayans had a host of concerns about the temporary
importation of the van. First there was
the name issue, but secondly the insurance and registration for the van is on a
normal piece of paper. Its not
laminated, or on cardstock and definitely does not contain any security
features. Similar to our border
experience in Panama, they just didn’t believe that this was a real document
and even if it was what was stopping us from illegally altering it.
Paul explained as best he could the situation and that we
already had a spot in a shipping container to return the van to North America
but they were unfazed by his pleas.
30 minutes at the border in limbo dragged on for what felt
like an eternity as we wondered what was going to happen until one of the
younger border guards asked Paul to walk with them back to the Argentina side
to see if there were any oddities with any of our previous border crossings
with Argentina. In a small room Paul
sat down and saw a list of every border into and out of Argentina we had ever
done. Each one referenced Paul and our
Dodge Grand Caravan. After a bit of
discussion between the Argentinians and the Uruguayans they said, okay, we will
temporarily import your vehicle. Relief
flooded over us.
Celebrations were short lived as we began our typical day 1
tasks in a country. We needed food and a
new SIM card for our phone but we also needed cash to purchase a lot of these
things. Our first Uruguayan city was
known as Fray Bentos and although it had at least one bank, it wouldn’t work
with our debit card. Usually this is
when we would turn to iOverlander to find banks but there was no information
about the area on the app. We found this
really odd since most overlanders need to come to Uruguay to ship their vehicle
home so its not like no one comes here.
What we would learn later is that no one comes to this area of Uruguay
that most take the ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia meaning these extreme
western communities are rarely visited.
We did eventually find a bank that would take accept our
card and after an hour we had everything we needed for a successful time in
Uruguay. We purchased a couple drinks
and made our way to a camping spot for the night overlooking the water. It was beautiful and we could not stop
smiling. We had made it to Uruguay! We would make it to the port of Montevideo,
and we would be able to ship our van home for future adventures.
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| Looking out to the old meat packaging plant from our camping spot |
April 9th – Historical Meat and Great Wine
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| Exploring a UNESCO Slaughter house |
Our campsite overlooked the historical Anglo Meat Processing
plant which is both an UNESCO world heritage site and the Uruguayan industrial
revolution museum. This site is one very
few UNESCO sites related to food and the only one related to meat processing,
but this site played a pivotal role in both world wars feeding the front lines
on both sides and creating processes and methods to store and preserve meat
which was then transported all around the world. It was a very interesting place with English
speaking guides from Germany. We can
say we enjoyed it far more than we thought we would.
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| Loving the wine |
An hour or so south of Fray Bentos and the UNESCO site was
Uruguay’s wine region known as Carmelo.
We had heard that it is expensive but worth your time so we researched
what wineries would be open, especially since it was the off season, and the
costs. We were super surprised to read
that the prices for tasting were around $40 cad per person, but at least they
included food. Regardless we decided we
would only go to one winery. The winery
we decided upon was Almacen de la Capilla and, we can’t believe we are going to
say this, but it was worth it!
We have had many good wines but Paul’s favourite has become
the wine of Uruguay, their Tannat. Fun
fact Argentina is known for Malbecs and Chile is known for Carmenere. The tasting glasses were large and the meat
and cheese that came with it was exquisite.
We couldn’t help ourselves and bought a few bottles to open at
celebratory times (in the next week or so before we ship the van). We definitely blew the budget for today but
Uruguay is known for being very expensive and we had been prewarned that it is
a country that will test anyone’s budget.
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| Rupert always thinks he's helping |
Uruguay is supposed to have some of the best beach side
camping in South America so we were excited to end our trip by doing what we
had loved to do in Mexico and Central America, sleeping beside the ocean and
tonight Uruguay did not disappoint. We
drove a few extra kilometres to the community of Puerto Ingles where we donned
our bathing suits and swam in the ocean while enjoy our view. Hopefully today is the start of many great
days in Uruguay. This is also our first
time to be moved along from a campsite. We had a nice beach front parking a
little bit away from the public toilets, but we were told in order to camp we
would need to park beside a BBQ grill closer to the toilets, so we moved the
van 100 metres and we were good to go for the night.
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| A quick dip in Uruguay |
April 10th – Cross Country Road Trip
Before we enter a country we do a lot of independent research to determine what are the must see things for us in a country. From this information we start formulating a basic route between where we enter the country and where we would eventually leave the country from. We knew we would leave the country from Montevideo in the centre of the country so it made the most sense to properly do the western area then quickly drive to the eastern area before eventually heading to the centre.
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| The most historical street in the community |
We left Puerto Ingles and drove to Colonia del Sacramento, another UNESCO world heritage site and one of the oldest communities in Uruguay. It was a cute place and we were happy to wander its old cobblestone streets and admire its colourful buildings. It is built far differently than most colonial towns we had visited as all other colonial place were built by the Spanish while Colonia del Sacramento was built by the Portuguese. The biggest difference between Spanish and Portuguese colonial buildings is that Spain built communities in a grid while the Portuguese built roads and landmarks that followed the natural contours of the land.
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| The community was beautiful |
After taking tons of pictures and walking down every
cobblestone road we decided to get a coffee until we looked at the prices of
things. Unfortunately, we think this may
become a common theme during our time in Uruguay. This country is known as the most expensive
country in South America with many German and Swiss people complaining that
everything is the same price as back home.
We decided to save our money (since we can brew our own coffee) and head
towards Uruguay’s east coast.
Quite randomly as we were driving we received a message from
our friends that we had made in Bolivia, Katarina and Micheal. We sadly had not seen them since Bolivia but
had messaged a few times hoping that our paths would cross. They messaged us saying that they were
preparing to ship their vehicle back to Europe and that they were just outside
of Montevideo, which happened to only be an hour or so away from our current
location. After cooking lunch on the side of the road in front of a rural
school we made our way to their location.
We can not begin to explain how much we enjoyed our visit with our
friends. We laughed and shared stores but unfortunately all good things have to
come to an end so we said our goodbyes and headed towards somewhere to camp.
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| So happy to see these gems again! |
We reached the furthest we could drive as the sun was
setting. After a quick look at
iOverlander the only place that made sense was in a community we can’t remember
hidden in the trees beside a river. Now
you may wonder why we didn’t stay with our friends for the night, it was
because the campground was only for Europeans.
This is something we have heard happens from time to time but this
campground was well known in the community, if you are not European you are not
welcome. It’s amazing places like this
exist in today’s world.
April 11th – Beach Life
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Uruguay is known for its beaches; in fact, we had recently
learned the population of Uruguay doubles to around 7 million in the summer as
Brazilians and Argentinians flock the various beach communities around the
country. After hearing that Brazilians
like these beaches more than their own we were excited to see what it was like
to live Uruguayan beach life.
We arrived and the beaches were beautiful, but not quite what we had expected. We lately have been really missing beach side camping that we experienced in Mexico and Central America. This issue we were having was the temperature.
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| The beautiful Uruguay beaches |
Our first stop on our beach road trip around Uruguay is
Punta del Diablo near the Brazilian border.
We can tell that this is a massive party community with lots of things
to do in the summer, but right now it was a ghost town. All the hotels, restaurants, bars and kiosks
of people selling their goods were closed with nothing telling us they would be
open any time soon. It was a little disappointing.
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| Napping on the beach |
After affirming that there was nothing to do in the
community we headed to the beach to relax.
We would have stayed there longer but we got cold so we turned our
attention to finding somewhere to camp for the night that would give us a
beautiful view of the ocean. We tried a
few of our tricks from Central America to find some amazing beach side camping
but nothing seemed to work. After driving
down a road that a 2 wheel drive vehicle has no business driving down and being
disappointed by the result we finally gave up and drove to a mirador that we
hoped would have a nice view.
Our camping spot for the night was okay, we could walk to a
spot with a nice view, but our actual spot was surrounded by palm trees with no
real view of the water, it did; however, give us a perfect spot to have a BBQ,
which is exactly how we spent our night.
April 12th – Finding what we were looking for
Paul spent the morning looking at every single possible
camping spot between Punta del Diablo and Punta del Este. We wanted our beach side camping and decided
we would do anything to get it. We drove
from spot to spot hoping to find the perfect place for ourselves. It took a few hours and extra gas, something
we really didn’t want to spend money on as gas in Uruguay is around $3 CAD a
litre. In the end we did find our
perfect spot just outside the community of La Paloma.
After a quick stop to buy a few essentials and a bottle of
wine (or two) [for a small fortune] we returned to our little piece of
perfection, set up the van to listen to music and podcasts and spent the day
enjoying the sun and looking at the beach.
We finally had our Uruguayan beach day and it was amazing.
We had recently learned that the Uruguayan rich and famous
favourite place to relax was a community called Faro de Jose Ignacio which was
just an hour away. We checked out the
community but found the same things we had found in other resort communities;
since it was the off season the community was a ghost town. We did stop at the lighthouse that gives the
community its name(Faro is lighthouse in Spanish) and stopped at a few
artisanal shops but didn’t purchase anything.
We looked for a camping spot near the community but nothing gave us a
view we wanted so we continued west.
Nearing the evening Paul started to cook dinner, as normal
and when we were about 90% done the meal our propane went empty. We knew we
were low but assumed we would make due until we reached Montevideo. Running out of propane made us ask ourselves
a lot of questions mostly related to if we should continue camping. These
conversations continued late into the evening.
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| Board games in the van during the rain |
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| At the famous lighthouse |
April 14th – An anticlimactic end of camping
across the Americas.
We woke up to pouring rain.
The weather forecast was no better.
The next few days are also filled with rain. We sat in the van looking at our three
issues. It would rain for the
foreseeable future, we couldn’t cook as we were out of propane and we were out
of clean clothes. We could fill up our
propane bottle, but that would have been costly and we would have to empty it
to ship it back to North America.
We came to a sad realization, that we were done. We had no will to continue to live in a van
for the next 3 days so we booked an Airbnb in the closest community of Punta
del Este. We set up the tripod and took
one last picture of us camping in South America. We didn’t celebrate, we didn’t mourn, it
seemed we were more in shock. We packed
up the van and drove to our Airbnb.
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| Our last campsite in South America! |
April 15th & 16th – Exploring
together for the last time
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| Hand near the Ocean, by the same artist who created the hand in the desert in Chile. |
We spent the last few days preparing the van and ourselves for the trip to Montevideo to load our vehicle into the shipping container. We’ve always seen this trip consisting of 4 entities and whenever one of those entities is missing the trip feels a bit off. As we have always seen the van as an entity (with the other three being us and Rupert) it felt like these were the last few days we would be exploring together for the foreseeable future.
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| At the Marijana Museum |
We explored the city of Punta Del Este by driving downtown
and to the various other site around the area.
The city had a large permanent population but built to accommodate so
many more people than those who live there year round giving us the feeling that
the community was dying with many buildings boarded up. Obviously this was not a permanent closure
just seasonal.
We celebrated our final day together with a BBQ at our Airbnb. It was surreal, we knew it was the end of our trip, we knew we wanted the trip to end but were also scared of our post trip future.
BBQ/Parilla makes everything better
April 17th – The End of our Pan-American Road Trip
Our loading time was 2pm in Montevideo, around 2 hours away
from Punta del Este. Beside a busy road
we returned everything we had removed from the van and placed it into a logical
spot where it would not fall or damage anything. We disconnected our solar system and made
sure that the battery would work once we retrieve the van in Houston. We did not want a repeat of Cartagena.
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| Paul working hard. |
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| Rupert hardly working... |
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| We made it to the port |
We only made one stop in Montevideo before heading to the
port, we stopped in at the Airbnb we had rented for a few days to drop Rupert
off as well as the two bags we would be living out of for the next month or so
and Rupert’s crate. We then made our way
to the port.
Right before leaving Paul reached into his pockets are realized
he made a mistake, he was supposed to leave the keys in the van for unloading,
but in the excitement of the day had forgotten to do so. Since we have no plans to be in Houston until
it is absolutely necessary we gave our keys to our container buddies as they
needed to be in Houston far before us since they decreased their air pressure
in one of their tires too much and broke the bead. They would be able to give our keys to the
proper people when it is time to unload.
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| Lots of room for the van, but not a lot of room for Paul to get out. |
The four of us left the port and headed to our respective
Airbnbs. We did chat about having a
celebratory meal together but it seemed the same phenomena happened to both of
us. When we reached our respective
Airbnbs we all thought to lie down for a moment. That moment stretched into the night and by
the time we woke up we were more exhausted than we had ever been. The van was gone and our trip was over. We had 6 weeks to get to Houston but we
didn’t have any plane tickets booked to get us there.
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| The last photo of us and our "trusty" stead in South America! |
Our trip was over, but the adventure was far from being
completed. We did have ideas of how we
would spend the next month or so as well as how we would spend our time as we
try to rejoin the real world, but that is a story for another time.
This marks the end.
We are so happy we did the trip.
We have no regrets and a lifetime worth of memories. We wish the last few weeks were more
triumphant but that’s life. Words and
sentences can not express the feelings we have and want to convey. We feel like we have completed our own rite
of passage and have accomplished something that has challenged us to our core
and made us incredibly proud of ourselves.
Every day wasn’t perfect but every day was worth it!
