The Trip


Written July 2006 in Oregon
As you can read in our personal introductions, we are both people who enjoy travelling, and we enjoy it most at our own pace and in our own space. Our final goal of this journey is South America - if we make it that far remains to be seen, but if our current mood is any indication the answer is a clear 'Yes'. We are now 4½ months on the road, and both still enjoying it very much. It seems that the longer we travel the more at ease with it we become; daily routines are taking shape, we have become used to the cramped living in a camper (although we haven't had much bad weather so far), and as things found their place inside the camper we slowly found our place as long-term travellers...
Before the idea about this trip came to life we were almost absorbed in a typical Australian suburban life (minus the kids and the dog), planning to build an architect designed house in one of the better parts of Byron Bay. This would probably have sent us into debt way past normal retirement age. Then one day at a building show we were approached by a company selling time-share holiday properties; upon returning home I sat on the veranda thinking about the way I like to travel, and how far it is from visiting real tourist destinations and staying in posh resorts... And how many places there still are on this planet that I would like to visit - South America being on top of the list - and how little I might see on a normal 4-week-tourist-visit. When I carefully told Yasha the next day "Maybe we should sell everything and go travelling" I got a surprised look, but certainly no objection!
After a little initial hesitation we attacked the emerging plan head-on. Not only did this require finishing renovating the house we were living in, in order to sell it, and winding down my business, we also had to sort through all our possessions. We needed to decide what to keep (and store), what to sell (my eBay feedbacks alone went from under 20 to almost 200 - that's over 180 items to pack and ship - plus we held five garage sales), and what to give away. Writing in hindsight about all the preparation which went into making this trip a reality feels like reliving the past - let's just say it was a frantic period of over 10 months (right up until the very last minute, thanks to the over-anxious buyer of our house) of planning, organising, and re-scheduling, to get where we are now...
Now we only look forward to "the road ahead" and don't even really plan the next day. That is probably one reason our going is so slow (compared with other travellers we meet along the way) - just the way we like it!