Preparing the van and camper for a sea voyage — and freaking out a little bit

posted in: About us | 4

On Sunday, the van and camper and Mark and Ryan depart Dunedin for Port Everglades.  On Monday morning, they meet up with Aturo to get the paperwork ready for customs and the van & camper go on a giant RORO ship.  Mark and Ryan are taking a Greyhound (Ryan’s idea) back.  This is stressful as it completely 100% commits us to leaving.  Some small freaking out moments happened.  So much in not knowable — will people steal stuff from inside?  Will it cost much more than we planned?  Will we get stuck in South America, unable to return??

But the moments passed and we all feel better.  We spent all day cleaning and organizing the camper for whatever kind of Colombian inspection lies ahead.  Laundry, paperwork (and holy cow, is there a lot of paperwork!), van maintenance — so much fun.  Tomorrow we condense our personal belongings into three dufflebags for the next 13 days and for the inevitable plane trip to Cartagena on 12/12/12.  Then we are stuck here.  Without a car.  For 13 days.

We have reservations for two rooms inside the walled city – one family room that sleeps 6 and one additional room that sleeps 3.  The dogs will be guests of a veterinarian down the street from our hotel.  The van & camper is scheduled to arrive on 12/13, which is Thursday.  But the RORO ship stops along the way and it could be delayed so we may not be able to retrieve the vehicles until Monday.

One thing we did do this evening is to try to make reservations for language immersion in Ecuador. Mar Azul is our first choice (http://ecuador-spanishschool.com/) – they have salsa lessons, too.  Not sure how they feel about 6 kids being there, we’ll see.

4 Responses

  1. John and Kalina

    The real trip does not start until the other end of this stress. this is what you prepared for. you are golden. The trip will be magical (with hiccups). You have made all the right moves… and you have a brain trust to solve the unexpected.

    • Hi Kalina this is Annabelle. I am in Florida at my grandparents house. How are you? It’s really hot here and I miss winter. Is there anything you want from South America? I miss you. I can’t wait for 4H camp! What do want for Christmas? Hope you have a really nice holiday! Love Annabelle

  2. Wow, so much has happened since I talked to Mark on Thanksgiving! Sounds like a great plan, and that language school looks wonderful!

  3. I delight in, cause I found exactly what I was having a look for.
    You’ve ended my 4 day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a
    great day. Bye

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