Today we literally did not do anything – so you should not be surprised that we don’t have any pictures! We still have some time to kill in Cartagena waiting for the boat to arrive. The good news is that the boat has made it to Cartagena and tomorrow we are heading to customs to start the paperwork. In order to have at least some visual aids in this post, here’s a picture of our boat!
As we are halfway through our journey and on a new continent, we thought to share some moment of reflection on the past 3 months.
Situations you will not likely see back home… (and that we have almost stopped noticing)
- People selling all kinds of food and stuff in the middle of the street (toilet paper, lobsters, …)
- All types of different bugs accompanying your toilet visit
- If we are looking for something, sometimes people will walk with us to the shop
- People working at 35°C in the middle of the day on roadworks
- Officials on lunch breaks from 12:00 to 2:00
Most amazing things seen so far…
- Big blue butterflies (although still not caught on camera) and other unfamiliar wildlife
- Beautiful beaches (varying from crystal white to dark grey)
- Volcano craters in Death Valley, Crater Lake and Poas National Park
- Cities of a lost civilisations who lived long before our time
- Panama canal
Most stressful moments…
- Border crossings – especially when people are jumping on your car…
- Driving in Mexico City but even worse, driving in Panama city
- Sleeping in a tent during a tropical storm
- Arranging all the necessary documentation to ship a car from Panama to Columbia
What happens behind the scenes…
- We need to regularly wash our clothes (by hand)
- Supply on food every day and try to turn it into a yummy dish
- There are only so many ways to make a long drive entertaining
- We need to make a lot of copies of documents
- We get sick every now and then (even though we keep on smiling on the pictures)
Things that we miss from home…
- Being able to hug friends and family
- Luxury of our bathroom (note: that is the bath tub and the hot water)
- Local food (fries, stoofvlees, curryworst speciaal, club kip special, home made soup, …)
- Big warm duvet
But the thing we miss most now is our car… hopefully we are back on the road on Thursday!
We drank dandelion wine and we reminisced
About the moment when we first met that day
Then we reminisced about how we first reminisced
Keep Calm and Drive South 