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Trip Start Mar 31, 2006 Previous
Entry Trip End Mar 31, 2007

  Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday, April 8, 2007

Sheila and I have immediately gone into counselling; I find writing this while in a straight jacket quite difficult; a place in an asylum is being arranged! Yes culture shock has hit rather hard; we have been in Vancouver for just a day and the trip is already becoming a memory. Even in Mexico, camping beside 14 huge RVs towing their cars all with larger yellow posters saying RVFantasyTours and one RV containing "staff", we started the culture shock. We were in a little town called Alamos which is being steadily bought up by Americans who although they are lovingly re-building homes in the original style have almost completely stifled the village life so that the town felt dead. Going through the Mexican/American border and then onto smooth roads with no pot-holes and no "topes" (very abrupt traffic-calmers) was the real culture shock; going through a border where no-one stamped our passports or tried to extort non-existent fees from us or wanted copies of everything in triplicate and which takes hours of frustrating waiting

1 RVers on Fantasy Tour

.

Meeting friends is extremely discombobulating as it is as though we have been away for only a couple of weeks. Everyone is so well dressed and spending so much money; our three nights with my brother in Malibu were completely unreal with such apparently conspicuous consumption and single food items that cost the same as a three course meal in Latin America. I know it is all just us and that life for you all is quite normal but we wanted to turn around and head back down again. The first thing on our agenda was to get Sheila to her hairdresser where he succeeded in turning her into something that will take me weeks to recognise!

We are already boring people with our stories and are really looking forward to meeting with other travelers (we have been contacted by two who live nearby) where we are in no danger of boring each other with our shared experiences. And what experiences. It has been wonderful although of course with its ups and downs; when your house is a small tent and a car you are very close to each other most of the time and sometimes it brings you closer together and at other times maybe not. But the sharing of what we have tackled will give us something to warm our wet winter nights. It is obviously something that anyone of you can do if you have a mind; everyone will tell you stories of what terrible things happened to someone they knew but never what went right for almost everyone else

2 Quiet upscale Alamos

. We really scared ourselves with imagining what could go wrong before we set off.

What were the best bits? Sheila says I should not label them but for me Peru was right out in front with Bolivia coming in second; so much beauty and in Peru the Inca ruins are mind-boggling; and in Bolivia every day has a different challenge. For Sheila I think it was the Corcovada in Costa Rica where she saw her puma and got bitten by the scorpion.

Our biggest regrets were not completing the high mountain route in Bolivia where we got chased out because of my mountain sickness, and trying to go too far south; 12 months is too short even though we missed out half of South America.

Everywhere we found the people wonderful, so kind and helpful but also so respectful of our privacy; people will not stare but if you smile you always get a wonderful response; if you are lost you get the best pantomime out - lots of words and emphatic gesticulations even if it is only one turning to make - or they might jump in the car with you or often jump into their own cars and guide you through. People seem so much happier with their lot than in the West where having so much leaves people apparently with much more to grumble about; people who make so much of their own entertainment with festivals, dancing and street happenings almost everyday somewhere; still with such strong family values - in the best way not the Bush way; people with so little but willing to give so much, and to strangers as well

3 Alamos church

. Of course the police and officials can be universally awful and those in Peru were often quite frightening but a "voluntary payment" usually got us out of trouble.

My sister-in-law in one email said - enough with the description, give me statistics: so here are some:
o We drove approximately 60,000kms and if you have a Toyota all it required was oil changes some new air filters and one drive train grease half-way; although the engine is nearly ten years old I never had to add oil in between changes; fuel cosnsumption was about 6,000 litres so we did our best to warm the globe
o We spent some C$32,000 on everything other than insurances and vehicle papers which added approximately another $6,000 (and this included some $5,000 to get us and our car to and from Panama); so you cannot say it was an expensive trip
o We visited 12 countries: Mexico 17days, Guatemala 27, Honduras 7, Nicaragua 9, Costa Rica 25, Pamanama 22, Belize 7, Ecuador 90, Peru 35, Bolivia 29, Argentina 43, Chile 35; our 90 days in Ecuador were through force of circumstance rather than because we wanted to be there so long: meeting with Fin getting car on and off boats me on longer business trips etc
o I continued to work and had five trips to other parts of the world; nearly drove my travel agent mad with my weird itineraries which also kept changing
o We were the only travelers on four wheels that were camping and not sleeping in a purpose built vehicle (yes I know we are real toughies! Or maybe just stupid?) and if we subtract the times when I was away or when we were with friends or shipping our car, we camped 159 days out of 280
o The most days we spent in any one place was about 14 and often a full 10 hours was spent driving only 250km
o We sometimes set off at 5am but more commonly around 9am and if it was chilly we were in bed by 8pm, but if warm this could stretch to 10pm....wow!

So now we are home and Sheila says I better snap out of my funk real fast; it is absolutely wonderful to see friends again even if they remind us that it is all over; but it is not all over, other adventures are already gestating. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this blog and I hope I have not bored you all absolutely rigid. When next we meet I will be testing you to make sure you read every word!

Pagesturning are now closing this book.

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4 Another of Alamos church

5 Civilization in Malibu

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