I went down to Tampa in late July. Goal one was to help Ryan get a new  vehicle to drive around the Lower 48 with. I spent three days with Ryan finding cars online, looking at them, buying one and getting it registered.  We got him a pretty cool Toyata Camry and is was really great spending time with Ryan. We had a lot of fun.

Goal two was to check out the new expedition vehicle, a 1992 29 foot Class C motorhome we purchased off of Craigslist a few months earlier. So far, only my Dad had seen it. We had photos, but that was it.

The motorhome had been placed in a storage lot near my parents house in Dundedin. Ryan and I found a car for him so he dropped me off at the yard and I drove the motorhome to my parents house to look it over. There reportedly was a small leak in the rook from the air conditioner,  but otherwise, everything was supposed to be good. Shortly after I got the vehicle to my parents house, Ryan left on his big adventure.

While I was at my folks house and right after Ryan left,  the Tampa area received record rainfall, 10 inches in 24 hours. Roads were flooding, snakes and kids swimming in the streets, pools were popping out of the ground from over saturation beneath them, catfish were turning up on decks and lawns. It was crazy. I would say it was raining buckets, except it was more than that. Really. So this made it really hard to get any work done. It also showed that there were more leaks than previously advertised.

The inside of the motorhome took a beating. The roof leaked in several places. The inside smelled awful. Musty, wet, awful. I was becoming very concerned that the thing was a total loss. The kitchen counter top was formica covered particle board and much of it had swollen from ¾” to 2”. The dining room table had suffered the same fate.

The jackknife couch/bed was soaked, smelly and molding. The back bedroom was leaking as well and much of the cabinetry was some compressed paper product that took water worse than the particle board. The camper was a wreck, it was pouring rain and there was nothing I could do. Well, there was one thing I could do.

I knew I was going to have to find leaks on the roof, and to do that the roof was going to have to be cleaned. It was covered with black moldy stuff, and I knew the roof underneath was supposed to be white. I decided to use the endless buckets of rain to my advantage.  I found a deck brush my Dad had laying around for his sailboat, grabbed some dish soap and climbed up on the roof. I spent a good three hours in the never ending rain scrubbing the roof on my hands and knees. This allowed me to thoroughly inspect the roof while scrubbing all the junk off. I found a couple of suspect areas that looked like they needed a ttention.

After three days of ridiculous rain, the sun started to show. I had my parents car available to me so I started trying to deal with the leaking roof. There is a motorhome supply store nearby my folks house, Harberson’s RV, so I headed over there to see what I could find. I found a rubber roofing product that applied like paint for $90 a gallon. One gallon gave me one and a half coats of the roof. I took all the stuff off the roof, vent covers, the air conditioner, other various covers. It was 90 degrees, the sun was shining and it was about 90 percent humidity. I slapped the coating down as fast as I could. It took about four hours, including a short window of drying in between coats. It was brutal.

The next day I put all the vent covers back on. It turned out whoever had installed them had done so incorrectly by fastening them directly to the roof. This put four holes in the roof for each of the four covers. I was pretty sure every one of these things was leaking. In addition to the holes in the roof, they way the vents had been mounted had them elevated slightly off the roof. This allowed water to go under the covers and get right to the screws in the roof. When I picked up the roof paint I also got some tubes of rubberized RV roof caulk. When I put the covers on I liberally applied caulk to the screws in the roof. Then I sealed the covers to the roof as well. Hopefully we would be leak free from here on out.

Another issue with the camper was the cooking situation. It came with a three burner propane stove top and a combination microwave/convection oven, which was quite small. This cooking situation was not going to be effective for Team DeCorso, so I needed to find an alternative.  I found an RV stovetop/oven on Craigslist that was about 20 miles away and gave them a call. It seemed the dimensions of the oven would allow it to fit where the current stovetop was if I removed the drawer underneath it. So off I went to fetch the stove. I got back late and put it in the next day. With just a little trimming of the space, the oven slid right in. Thankfully the camper came with a full tank of propane so I was able to be sure it worked properly.

By now I had been gone from Fairbanks for too long. It was time to head home. The fair was coming up,  and I had a lot of work I needed to get done to the house and cars before I could head back to Florida and off to Europe.

I love coffee.  I used to drink coffee to keep me awake during 24-hour halibut fishing openers in Kodiak.  I has a skipper on my crab boat that brought a 50lb bag of Espresso beans on the boat and would make the crew freshly ground super strong coffee BEFORE he woke us up every day.  I really came to love coffee shortly after I met Michelle.  I was at her cabin on Goldhill Road one night and she made me coffee with vanilla ice cream in it.  It changed my life.

I prefer my coffee in a large cup with a teaspoon and a half of sugar and Coffeemate (TM).  Many people have suggested cream or half and half to me, like I’m missing out on something.  I have to say here that Coffeemate (TM), for me, adds a wonderfully delicious flavor to my sweetened coffee that I totally enjoy.  No other non-dairy creamer adds the same flavor as Coffeemate (TM), nor does cream, etc.  Just to be clear.

Michelle and I have been drinking hazelnut coffee for as long as I can remember.  It used to be that the only place in Fairbanks you could get it was at Country Kitchen, but as the coffee movement in the USA grew, it became more widely available.  At some point we switched from fresh ground coffee to Folgers hazelnut coffee.  With six kids, you do what you can to save money.

Coffee availability in SA was a big concern for us.  Mary and Brian had been to Ecuador not too long before we were heading there and told us there was no good coffee in Ecuador.  This was pretty horrifying   What about the rest of SA?  We were going to Colombia so thing should be pretty good, right?  Just in case, we stocked up on Folgers in Florida before we shipped the camper over.  I think we had like 8 cans of coffee.  We also had a giant can of Coffeemate (TM).

In Colombia it turns out that most of the coffee there is for export.  When I was picking up the van and trailer from the port I was in a warehouse filled with coffee.  And I mean filled. One hundred pound burlap sacks stacked on pallets and then stacked on top of each other something like 40 feet high.  It was all unroasted coffee beans.  It reminded me of the warehouse they stuck the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It was an unbelievable amount of coffee.  Inconceivable really.

As we drove south all too quickly through Colombia we came to the city of Caucasia. We saw our first supermarket in SA and screeched to a halt on the side of the road to head in.  We stocked up on many groceries, but one of the things we bought was a 5 kilo bag of ground coffee.  It was something like $35.  It turns out we should have bought more.

Our giant bag of coffee was pretty good stuff.  I have to say, Colombian coffee is really good.  We didn’t have any coffee worries at all through Ecuador.  We didn’t run out until our lengthy stay in Puno.  At the supermarket in Puno (Plaza Vea) they sold some coffee that turned out to be tolerable.  Altiplano was the brand.  It was pretty expensive, at least compared to the prices of other things in Peru, which were generally pretty cheap.  It was about $7 a pound.  One night we stopped into a smaller market that had coffee for sale in plastic bags.  It smelled pretty good so we bought it.  It was $5 for two pounds.  It was terrible and still sits in the cupboard to this day.

We has a lot of hopes for Chile after spending two months in Peru.  Good coffee was one of them.  Oh well.  So far we have tried four or five different brands of coffee in Chile.  They were all OK, but Chile itself is pretty expensive and coffee is no exception.  It runs $10 a pound for cheaper stuff (Haiti brand or Colombia brand) but quality coffee is way up there. Juan Valdez brand (REALLY!) from Colombia is $20 a pound.  We have not bought it.

We have quite a bit of our Folgers hazelnut coffee left, but it turns out that we are not liking it so much.  We ran out of Coffeemate (TM) a long, long time ago and it seems hazelnut Folgers is not the same without it.  Especially black.  Many of you who have been to our house may already have known this.  We did not, since we had been adding stuff to our coffee.  I don’t know what this means for us when we get home.  Will we continue to drink strictly Folgers hazelnut?  I don’t think so.  I am looking forward to moving back to fresh ground coffees of many varieties .  I am hoping to have a few or several different types of coffee on hand for whatever mood suites me.  But first I must talk about an unforeseen development.  NESCAFE!

The coffee aisles in supermarkets (or any market that has coffee) are filled with instant coffee.  Seriously.  There is something like 3 feet of shelf space for ground North American style coffee and then 25 feet of instant stuff.  Ryan had brought some Nescafe from the US with us and we (Michelle and I) decided to try it.  It turned out to be not so bad.  Really.  We followed the directions exactly to see what it would be like and it was pretty good!  Best of all, it was really easy to make.  Just heat up some water and pour it over the instant coffee in a cup.  No need to get out the generator and the coffee maker, find the filters, measure out X amount of coffee, make sure we have enough water (always an issue in SA since any water we consume, we buy), etc.  Most importantly, since we have all moved to black coffee (except for Ryan, who was already there), it tasted good.  And we can make it quickly anytime anywhere, which can be pretty important when you’re traveling like we are.

Now I’m not saying we are switching to instant coffee on a permanent basis.  I don’t really know what this means.  I am still looking forward to stocking up on coffee as I mentioned earlier in this post.  I am curious to see what happens when we get back.  I can certainly see the advantages instant coffee can present when you need coffee pretty bad.

One thing I know, I sure do miss good coffee.

Repair #1 was changing the transmission fluid and seeing if we could get the code read.  The fluid was burnt, brown and stinky, not red like it was supposed to be.  We got the fluid changed for $20.  I would do it myself normally but it requires removing the whole transmission pan and disposing the old fluid.  I didn’t want to have to figure out how and where to get rid of the old fluid, plus I usually get covered with the stuff and I didn’t want to do that either.  For $20, it was a no-brainer.   The new fluid cost $50 and was a pain to find.  The guy changing the fluid for me has his friends drive me around to six different “lubricantes” stores looking for Ford tranny fluid, a rarity in Peru.  After an hour and the second visit to one store, we found two gallons.  I made the guys who drove me around take $4 for the effort.  They didn’t want it until I suggested they buy themselves some beer.   The scanner the mechanic had didn’t fit our old Ford computer plug, so no reading.  The code light began flashing again on my way from the repair shop to our camping spot (a gas station, of course).  Frustrating.

Repair #2 was installing new front brake pads.  I had already put new pads on once in Ecuador.  We had come down a massive 6,000 foot mountain decent (one of at least a dozen so far) and the pads were smoking and making the “change me now!” sound.  We stopped at a gas station on the highway and Ryan and I took a taxi into the town another 1,000 feet down the hill.  The driver drove us to a part store and by some miracle, there were Ford F-250/350 pads there for $20.  I couldn’t believe it!    Anyway, $20 pads wear out pretty fast in the Andes and it was time for a change in Abancay, especially with a new venture into and up and down the Andes ahead.   In Ecuador there were lots of Ford trucks and cars, but Peru was different.  I wouldn’t see a Ford for days, and when I did it was at least 40 years old.  There were no pads in Abancay.  In South America, that doesn’t matter.  Why?  Because you just go to the brake specialist who grinds off what ‘s left of your pad off the shoe (think asbestos, shirt over mouth in front of bench grinder job), puts on some nasty smelling glue, and cuts new pads to custom fit your shoe.  Not only that, but Abancay, being at 8,500 feet on the way to Cusco, meant these guys knew brakes.  At least 60% of the streets in this town were at least 20% grade, with several being well beyond 30%.  San Francisco has NOTHING on this place.  Now I have the best looking metallic pads I’ve ever seen on the van, at a cost of $28.

Repair #3 We have been having problems with the van starting and I couldn’t figure out why.  Starting the van had devolved into getting out the generator, hooking up the battery charger and making several attempts to get her going every day.  I was getting pretty frustrated.  I had the starting system checked in Denver (a long time ago) and it was determined we needed a new alternator, which we got, but everything else checked out.  The current theory was we needed new battery cables, or possibly new batteries (we take two).  I yanked the 3 cables in question (one got replacedearlier, in Texas, I think) and went off to find new ones.  I ended up with three guys back at the van who, after a few minutes, I learned didn’t understand my problem, even though “necesarios nuevos cables” was pretty straightforward, I thought.  I’m pretty sure they were just trying to get some money out of me, so I sent them away.   When I disconnected the one battery cable from the starter solenoid, I found that the generator/charger method of starting the car had taken its toll on the connection.  The plastic cap on the solenoid where the cable connects had cracked due to too many starting attempts (I know, I know) and the bolt came right out of the unit.  At this point, Repair #3 evolved into something else.   Across the street from our gas station was a metal worker who we’ll discuss more in Repair #5.  I asked him if he could recommend a good auto electronic repair person in Abancay.  Yes, he said, see that aluminum door right up the street?  He is there.  I would have never known as there was no indication that any sort of shop was there at all.  Just a lovely house where he had his shop and worked out of.  I brought him the starter and the battery cables and found out my cables were just fine.  Thus endth Repair #3.  The starter, however, led to Repair #4.  

Repair #4 So now the starter (actually the solenoid) was missing the threaded part to bolt the cable from the batteries on to it.  I pretty much figured we would be stuck in Abancay for another week while a starter came in from I don’t know where.  I took the thing to the aforementioned mechanic up the street and showed him the problem.  It turns out this guy had been an automotive electrical mechanic for over 40 years and had saved EVERY spare piece to ever come off anything he worked on.  He took the solenoid apart, which involved melting solder and such, and found in his box of like 200 plastic solenoid caps the ONE (and only) to fit my solenoid.  Unbelievable!  He bench tested the starter, which worked fine, and the solenoid, again fine, and put them back together.  There was a problem.   There was no electrical contact in the solenoid to fire the starter.  He decided this was because the solenoid housing, a metal tube about 2 inches around and 4 inches long, was too long for the contact to be made with the new cap.  He sent me back down the street to the metal worker we’ll talk about shortly to cut off a quarter inch from the tube.  Two dollars to the metal worker and 30 minutes later, I was back.  Everything got put together and checked out great!  Back in action.  Total cost to the electrical mechanic: $27.50

Repair #5 This isn’t actually a repair, yet.  After the starter was reinstalled, it had a new problem where it would turn on and try to start the car even when the key was off and not even in the ignition!  Hmmmmm.  After all the other stuff that I had been dealing with up to this point, I was starting to lose it.  I’m sure the family would attest to that.  Michelle, ace researcher of the world, got on the internet and in a few quick minutes found some Q/A session where a guy with a Ford (maybe it was a Jeep) had the exact same problem.  The suggested treatment was to whack on the starter relay with something and see if the problem went away.  This was done and the car stopped trying to start itself!  Hooray!  Problem identified.  However, now the car wouldn’t start.  It turns out the relay was shot.   In retrospect, this problem had been getting worse and worse for at least two years. There had been several time in Fairbanks when it was cold I would have to start the car by jumping the relay with a screwdriver, so this really isn’t any surprise.  I yanked the relay and headed back to the electrical mechanic to see if he had one.  Out he yanked a “Made in the USA” relay from another box of about 50 of them, tested it (it worked like a champ) and for $8 more, I had another relay.  I have decided to keep using the old one with the screwdriver method and am saving the new (used) one as a backup for whatever reason I may need it.

Repair #6  As suspected, the batteries wouldn’t hold a charge.  Two new batteries, the car starts like it was brand new, every time.  $240 (Ouch!)

Repair #7 I had been having a problem with the weight distribution system hooking the trailer and van together.  The brackets on the trailer where the bars mounted were getting mangled.  I finally figured out this was because where the bars mount into the trailer hitch was wearing away.  After 25,000 miles on the last trip (this unit was acquired in Cody, Wyoming after the one we had broke) and another 12,000 on this trip, I again was not surprised.  To fix the problem I needed some metal added to the pivot points on the bars and the holes they went into on the hitch.  Here comes the aforementioned metal worker.  He fixed it all right up, turned them so everything was nice and smooth, all for a total of $20.  Plus he had sent me to the electrical mechanic who saved my sanity. And he gave me a few beers.  What a guy!

Repair #8  During all of this I decided it was a good time for an oil change.  I had done this in Texas, about 6,000 miles ago, so it was really necessary for another 1500 miles, but what the heck, right?  It turns out that with all the hauling the trailer up and down the Andes, the oil had started to break down.  When I pulled the plug, a way too thick black sludge started to come out.  Wow.  No wonder the engine temp had been rising faster lately.  Two gallons of oil and another $50 and The Blue Van is running like a champ.

All in all, we spent a week in Abancay for repairs with what was supposed to be a transmission fluid change.  It ended up being so much more, but getting all this done in a small town where I can get around easily (unlike the axle fire in Lima) was worth the time and money.  Knowing that all the problems I know of that had developed over the last few months have been addressed is a great feeling.  Much less stress for me.

My flight left out of Miami.  To fly out of Tampa meant turning a three hour direct flight from Miami into a 9 1/2 hour one stop through Bogata.  Also, the dogs needed a new APHIS (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/library/forms/pdf/APHIS7001.pdf) form to get on the plane (required by Avianca) and to get into Colombia (required by Colombia).  The form could be prepared by any vet who is state licensed nationally accreditted and willing to do it.  Then it had to be stamped by the USDA.  It turns out there was only one vet (that I could find) in the Tampa are willing to do the form, Air Animal (www.airanimal.com).  To get the USDA stamp, I had to go to Miami.

My sister Sara and her boyfriend Jeroen had arrived from Amsterdam the night before the family left and helped get them all to the airport the next morning.  After the family left, I spent Wednesday and Thursday tying up loose ends, repacking, mailing stuff to people and places, and generally freaking out.   Then everyone proceeded to help me out anyway the could to get me ready to go, often without me knowing it was happening.  Thanks for everything, guys!  We did get in a great meal Thursday night at a local steakhouse in Dunedin whose name escapes me.  Thanks, Jeroen!

On Friday morning I picked up the rental car, packed it up with the two bags of everybody’s stuff (Michelle took only one bag with her and the kids as it cost money on Spirit and mine were free, sorta, as my ticket was twice the price), the two dogs and their kennels.  I left about 10:30am.  I had a 3:30 pm appointment at the USDA office in Miami, the last of the day.  So five hours to drive what the GPS said was five hours and ten minutes away.  Needless to say to those of you that know how I drive, I got to the appointment a half an hour early.  I got the stamp, which took about ten minutes, then had nothing to do until my flight left the next day.  I found a dog park on Miami Beach and took the dogs there for about two hours.  I got there at dark and was the only person there the whole time.  The dogs had a great time sniffing around and marking everything.

Then plan was to spend the night in the car and head to the airport in the morning.  I found the closest Wal-Mart to the airport, which was back in my old stomping grounds in Doral (see Shipping Adventures part 1 and 2).  For those of you that don’t know, Wal-Mart is often a great place to stop for the night.  They usually don’t mind, figuring you’ll spend money there. They are generally pretty safe because they are open 24 hours a day, have well-lit parking lots, security cameras, and even police hanging out.  So I found a spot away from the entrance, tucked under a couple of trees and next to somebody from Michigan “overnight parking” on there way to somewhere.  Safety in numbers.  It turns out this Wal-Mart was also conveniently located about 300 feet under the flight path to one of MIA’s runways.  This ensured I was awake early enough to get to the airport by 10:00am, my required car rental return time.

Even more conveniently, a Hooters was located in the parking lot.  My inaugural visit (yes, really)to Hooters took place on my last night in the U.S.  What could be more fitting?  I was starving.  I tend not to eat on days like this when I have a lot to do and am carrying a lot of stress.  It was about 9:00 pm and I needed some food.  It was Friday night at Hooters in Miami (well, Doral).  I heard Hooters girls sing the Hooters birthday song about seven times to different parties of bellowing, screaming man parties around the restaurant.  I got to watch some basketball, each some quality fried food, and generally enjoy America for a few hours before heading back to my overnight parking (key phrase here, not “camping”) spot for several hours of jet landings, solitaire and a couple of hours of sleep.

My alarm clock, er, landing came at 6:32 am, courtesy of LAN Airlines.  I headed into Wal-Mart (see, they were right, I did spend money) to get some packing take to de-doghair the rental car before turning it in.  After that and a couple of lengthy dog walks around the parking lot, I headed out to the airport.  I got there about 9:45 am.  It took me about 20 minutes to get everything out of the car and organized enough to begin the big trek to the Avianca ticket counter.  The Miami rental car return is a 5 level parking garage about a mile from the terminal.  You drop off the car, walk about 300 yards to the elevators, take them upstairs to the rental car counter area, find the monorail, and take that to the terminal.

I got a little help from a couple getting on the elevator who had traveled with six dogs before (Really?!  Why?!  WOW!!).  Mostly it went like this.  Two kennels on the cart with dogs inside, with coffee (which I should have been drinking) and carry-on in the little basket thingy, and the two 45 lb bags over each shoulder.  After about 35 seconds of travel by the rental car counter area, the dogs started whimpering.  I got on the train about five minutes later.  By now they were crying.  Five minutes later we got to the terminal.  Now it was time for yelping and howling.  The Avianca counter was located in the J section of the terminal, the furthest possible (of course) location from the train. Also, at least half of the speedy walkways were not working.  HOORAY!

It turns out dogs are really popular when you’re hauling them through an airport.  Everyone wants to stop and see, especially kids.  Twenty minutes later, my whimpering, yelping, crying (dogs), sweaty, muscle burning (me) parade arrived at Avianca.  I was three hours early for the flight, and SOOO ready to turn the dogs over.  The line was short and I was done in a bout twenty minutes.  However, I had to keep the dogs until 11:30pm, so they didn’t have to drive the Avianca luggage crew crazy with their collective unhappiness.

I took them outside and walked them around as much as I could for the next 40 minutes.  Then took then in and dropped them off.  Louie was $80, Trek $130.  The total price was cheaper than the $125 each I was quoted on the phone, so there’s a small victory.  Security was a breeze and I got to the gate an hour before the flight left.  I just sat and relaxed for a while, eagerly looking forward to being back together with the family.

I was very happy to get on the plane.  I had a great window seat.  HOLY COW!!!  I’m going to Colombia!!!  The flight had great food, nice people, wonderful service and a great entertainment selection. The view flying over the Carribean was awesome.  I feel asleep for the last 40 minutes or so of the three hour flight and woke up when we touched down.  No for some real fun.

It was about 90 degrees when I got off the plane.  The customs receiving area was lacking air conditioning, and many   I was fairly worried about how this process would go.  I had a one way ticket into Colombia and had heard that generally, this was pretty frowned upon at customs.  The line moved pretty quickly for the amount of people in it.  I got to the agent in about 30 minutes.  It was easier getting into Colombia that transferring flights in the Amsterdam airport.  Very few questions, a passport stamp, a finger print scan, and that was it.  Maybe three minutes.

Al the bags and the dogs were waiting for me in the  baggage claim area.  Trek and Louie were making a racket.  I got everything together and hired a porter to help me with all the stuff.  A woman came up to me and said she needed to see the paperwork for the dogs and I needed to come to her office.  The dogs and I passed through inspection (there was no inspection for me) and I then spent about 20 minutes getting new Colombian paperwork for the dogs.  She kept the original APHIS for her records.  I tried to give her a copy, but she said no.  Then she brought in an english speaking young man to translate.  He explained that the new very official looking document was all I needed for the dogs inn Colombia and to get them into Ecuador, she had to keep the APHIS for their records, and all was good.  The whole time this paperwork process was going on, the dogs were whining, crying and yelping in the hall with the very nice porter, who was trying unsuccessfully to distract them.   Then off to the taxi.

I was wondering if there would be a taxi big enough for my stuff and the dogs kennels.  Not quite, but close enough.  It was $15 for the taxi from the airport to the vet where the dogs were to be boarded.  Louie started howling (like a wolf at the moon) about 10 minutes into the 15 minute taxi ride.  I still don’t know if he was happy or not.  The taxi driver was quite popular with all his other taxi buddies.  We stopped next to many taxis full of passengers on the way so they could see Louie on the roof.  Kids were especially enthralled.  We found the office easily enough and the whole family was waiting for our arrival.  What a great moment!

The dogs were placed in their accommodations,  we walked around the corner to the hotel, and I had officially arrived in Colombia!!

We got to the officer about 8:30 and gave Arturo the receipts.  He then had to go to customs to do things that are still unknown to me.  He dropped Ryan and I off at a Starbucks near his office where we were going to wait until he was done.  Then we could get the titles to the van and trailer back.

While at Starbucks, SC Line called and said we needed to have Hazardous Material paperwork filled out for the two propane tanks we had on the trailer. After a little investigation, I again found that this was something I needed a customs broker to do, and it would cost about $150 to $200.  Arturo was already costing us $170 and I didn’t want to spend more money, especially to ship two tanks I could buy when we got to Cartagena for less money.  So SC said they would take the tanks off for us.  I hope someone gets to use them on their grill or something.

One more mysterious piece of paperwork we needed was called the Bill of Lading.  I am told this is something like your boarding pass to a plane.  Arturo wanted to know who was going to handle it for us.  He could not.  We ended up contacting Martha Gonzalez, a freight forwarder, who was suggested by SC and said she could help us.  This turned out to be a great thing.

Martha was also in Doral and picked Ryan and I up at the Starbucks and took us to her office.  It turns out the bill of lading isn’t supposed to be issued until the vehicles got on the boat.  She works with SC Line regularly and personally know the owners.  Since we were a special case (hey now, you all pipe down!) she was able to get them to issue the paperwork early.  Also, Martha is from Colombia, and handles freight shipments all over South America.  She spent some time setting up our arrival in Cartagena so everything will go smoothly once we get there.  She also got me the opportunity to travel ON THE BOAT with the van and trailer (it’s about who you know)!  Unfortunately, the dogs could not accompany me, so I had to let that one go.  More about that later.  It’s too bad…..they even have a pool!

After about two hours of hanging out with Martha, everything was done.  She did have to hang onto the titles for the vehicles until they are loaded onto the boat.  This was in case customs had to inspect them to determine if they were stolen or not.  Apparently this is the biggest concern US Customs has for shipping vehicle out of the country.  Martha drove us to the metro station and we began our journey home.  It was about 1:45 pm.

Ryan and I were taking a Greyhound from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa.  We took the train from Doral (or wherever it was Martha dropped us off at) to Fort Lauderdale.  This took about an hour.  We then walked to the Greyhound staion, which was about 2 1/2 miles away.  We got there around 5:15 pm.  The bus  left at 7:00, so we went to get some food, our first of the day.  At this point I was pretty beat.

Our bus stopped in Orlando where we had to switch to another bus.  We had an hour layover and then head out to Tampa.  We got in at about 1:15 am.  Michelle and Max picked us up in my parents car and we got back to the house about 2 am.   Finally, the adventure within an adventure was over.

I had some work I needed to do to the vehicles.  I locked our generator to the car seats with a big chain so it wouldn’t disappear during transit.  I hid my bucket of tools inside the two van tires riding in the back.  I had to take the strobe light and antenna off the top of the van to decrease the measurements ($60/cubic meter….every inch counts).  I also had to add some screws to and caulk one of the trailer panels that keeps coming loose while we drive.  By the time this was done, Ryan was terribly bored, hunting frogs in the ditch along the parking lot of the office building.  Time for action.

We headed out to see the town, trailer in tow.  We ended up driving from the Import Express office in Doral to South Beach, driving through the city and avoiding highways as we went.  I have to say, the yacht line-up as you drive into South Beach is awfully impressive.  Nothing like seeing several hundred million dollars worth of boats tied to their respective private docks lined up end to end .  And all the pretty people, where do they all come from?  After driving through South Beach (all 53′ of us) we headed back to the Import Export office and spent the night in the parking lot.

The next morning I cleaned up the camper to get it ready for shipping.  Not much to do, just final touch ups.  I then met with Arturo so he could begin working on the paperwork.  I gave him the notarized Power of Attorney form Michelle and I had prepared in Tampa before I left.  This gave him the authority to act on our behalf to file all the paper work with U.S. Customs and the shipping line.  He also got the original titles to the van and trailer.  The last thing I had to give him was the dock receipt for the two vehicles.

The van and trailer had to be dropped off  Port Everglades at the SCLine terminal for the dock reciepts to be generated. They would give me the receipts, then I had to get then back to Arturo, 30 miles away.  Of course, once the van was dropped off, this part of the operation became more difficult.

After leaving Arturo’s office, I stopped at a NAPA to pick up a couple of spare brake lights, then I had to find a place to dump the black and grey water from the trailer.  This turned into a real pain.  Michelle was working the internet in Tampa, finding places that were supposed to have dump stations.  The first couple didn’t work out.  Finally, I found an RV park close to the port that let me dump for $5.  YAY!.  SCLine closed for lunch from noon to one, and by now it was 12:15pm.  Ryan and I had yet to have coffee and were getting hungry, so we stopped at a Dunkin Donuts for coffee and then headed to a Taco Bell for lunch.  It was after 1pm as we headed to Taco Bell, so we skipped it and went straight to the port.  We were already about 2hrs behind schedule.

At the port, Ryan and I had to clear security.  We got temporary day badges to be there and then drove to the SCLine terminal.  Here we had to clear more security.  This area was a more secure situation and they would not let Ryan in.  I had to wait about 45 minutes until there was no open freight (whatever that means) to get into the yard.  Ryan had to wait for me at the guardhouse.  They weighed the van and trailer.  Then I needed to provide a paper copy of the booking confirmation.  I only had an email the SC Line Panama office had sent us.  The freight receiving office didn’t have immediate access to the form, so this created another 45 minute delay.  I told Michelle what was going on.  She forwarded them the email copy we had received, they printed it out, and that solved the next piece of the puzzle.  It could have taken a day for SC Panama to get the booking confirmation to the freight office.  I should have thought of forwarding the form myself.  DUH!  Thanks Punkin!

So now then van amd trailer were parked and measured for shipping.  I then got the dock receipts and Ryan and I headed out.  It was 4pm.  So much for heading back to Tampa today.  We waited 45 minutes for a taxi that was supposed to take ten.  We took that to train station, took the train to the light rail, then the light rail to a hotel Michelle found us near the Convention Center in Miami (Rodeway Inn, not too crappy, price was right, perfect!).  We got there around 7:30pm

It rained and hailed but then the sun came out.

We all met up at 5pm.

Jack made a new friend,an underwear model.

Everyone picked food from a street cart:  Ryan got Indian food, Jennah got potstickers, Jack got a gyro, Max got teriyaki, Sylvia and Annabelle split Korean spareribs, Mark got a piripirisandwich (eurotrash fusion) and Michelle got a falafel.

Jennah & I (and unfortunately Jack) went into Sephora and bought sparkly lipstick for the night ahead: blues, swing and jazz at the Mock Crest Tavern with 2 old friend.