***Update: our international insurance did not know how to deal with an international claim so we paid the guy $200 USD, took photos of the dent and they will reimburse us.  Maybe.  Hopefully.  Just glad it’s over.  And now the man is a friend on Facebook.

The time has come for Team DeCorso to return home.  We started making the arrangements and we were forced to make early decisions that we could not know how they would work out.  For example, in February we found a one-way ticket on American Airlines from Lima to Fairbanks for $478 that routes through Dallas so we bought 6 (Michelle, Jack, Jennah, Max, Annabelle & Sylvia) not knowing how the shipping / dogs would work out.  So now, because of the excellent airfare and the security of knowing we had a way home, we must leave out of Lima.

Departing South America can be divided into sections like this:

• Freighting the van
• Selling the camper
• Finding a place in Lima
• Making arrangements for the Amazon
• The dogs
• Tickets for Mark & Ryan
• Bolivia?
• Dallas
• Camper 2.0
• Other stuff

We are taking advice and suggestions from anyone here so please feel free to help us brainstorm!!

Freighting the van – this is both harder and much easier than you would think.  The hardest part is getting information.  The rest (customs, stuffing, forms, etc) is not so hard.  We started with Peru and got quotes to Houston but the travel time was almost 30 days plus 7 days to offload – too long.  Next we tried Peru to LAX and got a shorter trip (20 days) and 1 day to offload but the cost was quite high, about $4850.  Then, inexplicably, we could no longer contact NYK in Peru.  The phones just rang, emails went unanswered.  In Santiago, we called NYK Chile to ask about Peru and they offered us a better deal ($3000 to freight to LAX) and, best of all, no 2200 mile drive through the desert which saved us at least $1500 in gas and such.  So we settled on shipping the van out of Valparaiso.  The freighter leaves the port on May 1 and arrives in LAX on May 21.  We need to have the van there at 3pm on Monday, April 29.  The stuff it in a container, load it on the NYKLodestar with a crane, it sails to LAX stopping in all kinds of places along the way, places the blue van has already been to (Antofagasta, Arica, Callao, Guayaquil…)

We bought tickets to Lima for all 8 of us & 2 dogs and we leave early Tuesday morning.

Selling the camper was never really an idea until we got here and people were so amazed at the camper that we had people make us offers several times a week since we arrived in Colombia.  We have a book of emails and phone numbers from very serious buyers all over the place.  People would flag us down, drive in front of us and stop, follow us for miles, leave notes on our window…  People were also amazed at the blue van which is the size of three Peruvian combis.  It was not uncommon for men to gather around the blue van looking at its locking hubs and being amazed that it was diesel – and how MANY people could really fit in it!  I was once on a combi that was smaller than my Aerostar minivan with 22 people and a baby.  The combi would have literally fit inside our van.  However, some serendipity led us to camp in a nice truckstop outside Santiago and a man named Patrico drove this way to work every morning and he stopped every morning and every evening to ask us to sell him the camper.  So we are.  We sell it to him and we stay in it until our plane leaves.  This is a little stressful as we have never done anything like this  before and we are taking a leap of faith that it all works out.  Once the van is gone, we can’t move the camper so we are selling it on Friday (tomorrow).  Tomorrow the camper goes to it’s forever home and we will all be a little sad to see it go.

Finding a place in Lima should be easy but it is not.  All of the places are very fancy and for some horrible reason WHITE.  White couches, white carpets, white area rugs, white curtains.  Team DeCorso can deal with a lot of things but white is our nemesis.  Also we had this idea we would rent a typical home, not a luxury vacation rental.  On top of this, the luxury apartments all have luxurious (read fragile) decor like blown glass vases and such.  This is still unsettled.

***update – while the insurance claim was being investigated, I found a perfect place south of Lima on the beach and they will let the dogs stay there.  Most importantly, it has a WASHING MACHINE.  Not a dryer but it is the desert.  It’s not white and it’s not a penthouse in a super earthquake zone with no building codes!  Yippeee!

Making arrangements for the Amazon is something we haven’t yet even started.  

The dogs are also a problem.  White carpeted, white furnitured luxury penthouses don’t want dogs.  We can board them but they will hate it.  They need dog stuff, dog papers to fly and Lucy needs a kennel.  We can’t board them for 21 days so we need to figure this part out.  

***Update – dogs are staying with us at our beach house!!  Yipppeeee!!!

Tickets for Mark & Ryan we still need to purchase from Lima to LAX.  The question now is – who takes the dogs?  Either they do and have to figure out what to do with them while they negotiate the van out of its container or I do and figure out what to do with them in Dallas.  Or I fly home with everyone.  

Bolivia? Just to make things exciting, Ryan and I (and maybe Jack) would like to zip over to Bolivia.  We already have tickets one way.  The way back would be a bus from La Paz to the border, cross to Peru, bus to Puno, overnight in Puno, combi to Juliaca and a plane from Juliaca to Lima.  We can’t finalize Bolivia until we make sure everyone else and the dogs have a place to go in Lima.  Our plane to Bolivia leaves 12 hours after we arrive in Lima so we have some time to help everyone get situated.

***Update: now that we have the Peruvian beach house, Bolivia is a go!  More altiplano! More altitude sickness!  More cholita wrestling!  More PUNO!  More of Oscar’s vegan restaurant!  More hats!

Dallas is where Team DeCorso #1 wants to get off the plane and wait for Team DeCorso #2 to drive 1500 miles and pick us up.  Or we can take a plane.  Or a train. Or, as Ryan constantly suggests because he is on Team 2, a bus.  We could meet half way – Tuscon? Phoenix? Albuquerque? We can only do this if Team 2 has the dogs.

Camper 2.0 is necessary as we just need one to do Alaskan things.  So on the way to fetch Team 2, Team 1 must be searching for an adequate camper -anyone know of any??  Between LAX and Dallas or surrounding Texas?

Other small details include the van needs some transmission work because, turns out, hauling 10000 pounds over the Andes a few times is hard on the transmission.  And brake work because stopping 15,000 pounds on an Andean mountain road is hard on your brakes.  Which needs to happen before the joyous reunion of Team 1 & Team 2.

We have Billboards Top 100 for 1971 – 2004 (3500 songs) and we intend to listen to each year.  We also are going alphabetically through the artists.  So today, on the new (but sadly not color changing) stereo we will be listening to 1971 and Aaron Neville.Home school music lesson #1.

Technology

• Michelle’s work laptop
• Ryan’s laptop
• Jack’s laptop
• Jennah, Max, Ryan, Michelle, Sylvia & Annabelle have Nook tablets
• Mifi that works in Alaska, Canada and the lower 48
• Three smartphones
• Three unlocked phones for local sim cards
• One unlocked phone with an international sim card and a Washington DC number
• 500 GB hard drive filled with music!!
• Assorted headphones
• One small DVD player

School Books

• Enki Fairy Tales (scanned and loaded on my Nook)
• Math (Calculus, Geometry, Algebra, 5th grade, third grade) – a combination of a text and Teaching Textbooks
• Rosetta Stone Spanish and a headset
• Geography
• Cultural Anthropology
• Veterinary Science
• Writing Arguments
• Physical Geology
• Middle Ages & Renaissance reading list (most on Jen’s Nook)

Cooking

• 8 bowls, 8 plates, 8 mugs, 8 cups, 8 forks and 8 spoons
• Two mixing bowls
• 2 baking sheets that fit into the camper oven
• A whisk, slotted spoon, spatula and colander
• 2 – 9 x 13 pans
• 8 quart pressure cooker + directions
• three sauce pans + lids
• two stock pots + lids

First Aid

• Comprehensive first aid kit
• Aloe vera burn ointment
• Antibacterial wipes
• Iodine
• Pepto bismal
• Advil & Tylenol
• Kids Advil & Tylenol
• Cough and cold medicine
• We also are bringing items we make ourselves such as echinacea tincture, Balm of Gilead, antiseptic salve (wormwood, yarrow, balsam poplar, chickweed, beeswax and olive oil), and lip balm
• Sunscreen, all kinds of sunscreen
• Mosquito spray

Tools

In Every Tub:

• Shower shoes / sandals
• Comfortable hiking boots
• Wool hat and gloves
• Two fleece jackets
• Two pairs of PJs
• At least 5 bottoms
• At least 5 tops
• Swimsuit
• One nice outfit

Toys

• A kite
• Sand bucket and shovels
• Basket of Playmobil
• Basket of wooden people, animals and small dolls
• Legos
• Games (Uno, Ticket to Ride, cribbage board & deck of cards, Stratego, little kid card games, memory)
• Crayons, paper, colored pencils, journals, gluesticks

Dogs

• Leashes
• Paperwork (international travel card, shot record)
• Meds for the trip

Paperwork

• Passports
• Shot records
• Vehicle and camper registration
• Vehicle and camper proof of insurance
• Dog paperwork

Books

• Milepost
• Lonely Planet USA
• 99 days to Panama
• People’s Guide to Mexico
• Americas Overland
• Frommers Bolivia
• Moon Panama
• Frommers Central America
• Lonely Planet Chile
• Lonely Planet Argentina

Other

• Honda eu2000i generator
• Mosquito netting for all beds
• two spare trailer tires
• Scissors
• Candles
• Flashlights / head lamps
• LED nightlights
• magnifying glass
• craft items (yarn, needles, beads, pipe cleaners, etc)

We are driving a van with a camper trailer down through Canada and then heading south towards Texas where we will pause for my older brother Ryan to take his SAT.  After our brief side track in Texas, we will head down through Mexico stopping along the way.  After we complete our Mexican exposure we set sail for Guatemala. Once through Guatemala we will continue southern through Honduras and then Nicaragua and then Costa Rica and finally Panama.  Panama marks the end of the Central American part of our venture.  We will have to find a ferry to take our vehicles over, otherwise we will have to fright them across which would be expensive and require lodging.  Once we make it into Colombia we head down into Peru.  All through this there will be loads of fun, shopping and other stereotypical American touristy ventures and hopefully a little bit of monkeys.  The next place we get to is one of the main milestones of this trip and that would be the country of Bolivia but Bolivia is not the end of this journey, for a matter of fact we are considering going as far as Ushuaia.  I kind of hope we go to Ushuaia because penguins live that far south.  After all that we come back to Alaska.

I will be taking with me some clothes and a jacket or two.  I won’t have cell reception but I will still take my phone for entertainment and such.  A few books will also be accompanying me. I play the bagpipes but because the bagpipe is a very expensive instrument I will only bring my chanter for fears that the journey might destroy it.  I have software called Celtic Pipes that allows you to play bagpipe sheet music on the computer, I will be using this as well as a few weekly check ins with my teacher via Skype.

I have most wonderful mother ever, she’s willing to home school me during an epic trip to South America; that gives parenting points.  My mom and I have been through a lot together, I remember when I broke my arm and my mother stayed at the hospital all night while I had surgery.  I also remember the first time my mom let me walk our local fair alone, I was so happy that day because I finally could go be a kid with my friends.  I make sure to stay out of trouble so my mom and I will continue to have a healthy relationship. I love you mommy.

We are a Waldorf family and we have been from the start.  We use Live Education! as our primary curriculum and we adapt it when we have to, need to or it seems like we should.  Sylvia, Annabelle, Max and Jennah keep main lesson books and draw and write every day. We have many subjects planned for fabulous main lesson books: Ethnobotany, Geography of Latin America, Animals of the Rain Forest, and Mayan, Aztec & Inca Civilizations…

We are also using technology whenever we can to make life easier.  Lesson plans, curricula, patterns, books and stories are scanned and stored on my Nook (and backed up on my laptop and in the extra hard drive).  We have three Nooks on one account so we can all share books and apps.  Nook books will be most welcome when we have read everything we have with us and we can’t find any English books – we can download new books.  Harry Potter, the read aloud book for the trip from Alaska to the Mexican border, is a Nook book (which is great because the seven books together weigh a ton and take up a lot of space).  This will be my THIRD time reading all of the Harry Potter books aloud.

We also have a few projects!

1. Ethnobotany collection (also the Ultimate Fairy House supply collection).
2. Sending post cards to Martha and Reid
3. Handwork using the yarn, fleece and wool we find – a blanket, I think using this pattern  http://www.knittingdaily.com/media/p/67334/showcontent.aspx
4. Rocks, always rocks
5. Collecting bottle caps for Reid and Rhys

School Supplies

1. A good set of colored pencils
2. Beeswax crayons (they last a long time)
3. Main lesson books, Moleskin Notebooks and sketch books
4. Pencil sharpeners, erasers and pencils
5. Ruler, a protractor, & compass
6. Some handwork supplies (yarn, knitting needles)
7. A synthesizer for piano practice
8. A chanter for bag pipe practice

Soon we will buy big plastic tubs like we did last trip, where we store our clothes in them.                                                                                                                                                                                    The last trip we went on was around America in a big blue van (hence the name of the blog) and a trailer.   I’m Jennah, I am thirteen, and I like pens.

-Jennah