Today was the day that we said good-bye to our faithful travel buddy Rodrigo. He took us 25,743km from Vancouver to Montevideo in 131 days. We drove him across 16 countries – through the desert plains of Nevada and Peru to the mountains of Ecuador and Chile! We’ve driven through rivers in Belize and over rocky mountains in Guatemala. Although we had some hiccups (heat shield fell off on the first day, exhaust needed to be welded back in place, one ignition coil needed to be replaced after our great heights, spare wheel went flat, …), we have been truly impressed by the performance of our Toyota 4Runner. He took quite some abuse on the roads of Belize and El Salvador but he kept going. Today the V8 was running as smoothly as the day we bought the car – and I will miss the ‘roar’ when you start the car engine.

We drove the car to the airport at 10:00am and after a quick inspection, the new owners paid the full amount. We went with them to a notary about 15km away and officialised the sale there. In less than an hour everything was done. The new owner drove us back to the center of Carrasco… and we were left without a car! Although a bit sad to see our travel partner driving off into the distance, we were happy to have the sale behind us. Now we can focus on getting a plane ticket to go back home some time next week!

In order to celebrate our successful sale we had a big lunch in ‘Don Pepperino’ and enjoyed the rest of our day strolling around the city center. At night we celebrated again with a double load of sushi orders. 🙂

They deftly maneuver and muscle for rank,

Fuel burning fast on an empty tank.

Reckless and wild, they pour through the turns.

Their prowess is potent and secretly stearn.

As they speed through the finish, the flags go down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pSlu2okpqM