Various people have been asking what our plans are when we go back, so we've been giving it some thought and come up with a cunning plan. Actually we've been waiting to find out what our London tenants were planning and we've come up trumps - their tenancy is due to finish at the end of September and I was worried I might have had to fly back to check them out and get the house ready for another renter, but they have just accepted our offer to renew for another 18 months which will take us to the end of March 2019...
We fly back to Calgary on August 10th to reclaim Badger. We have 2 nights booked in Canada to get him ready to travel and live in, then cross the border down to the US on the 12th. Hopefully they will give us another 6 month stay on our visas to give us time to do what we want. A few days in Glacier national park which was closed both times we came past early and late last year, then down to see our friends Pris and Bill again in central Oregon for the solar eclipse on August 21st - the original reason we chose to do the US trip at this stage.
After a few days with the Hardins we need to hit the road to get Badger back into California where he is registered and where we hope to sell him. We'll aim to get into the state by the labor day weekend (first in September) and get him advertised on line for anyone starting to look at wanting to snowbird for the winter. We'll then head as far south as we can to somewhere between LA and San Diego, or maybe around Palm Springs again and just chill out, live cheap and see if we can find a private buyer. If we do manage a private sale before Christmas great, we can hopefully head over to Hawaii for a few weeks, if not then we will have to take him around some dealers in the new year to see if they will take him on consignment and what sort of percentage they will want to take. We will also try and sell the Suzuki with Badger, but if not then we might be stuck with it as its probably not worth a great deal to a dealer, in which case we might take it round central america with us.
We fly back to Calgary on August 10th to reclaim Badger. We have 2 nights booked in Canada to get him ready to travel and live in, then cross the border down to the US on the 12th. Hopefully they will give us another 6 month stay on our visas to give us time to do what we want. A few days in Glacier national park which was closed both times we came past early and late last year, then down to see our friends Pris and Bill again in central Oregon for the solar eclipse on August 21st - the original reason we chose to do the US trip at this stage.
After a few days with the Hardins we need to hit the road to get Badger back into California where he is registered and where we hope to sell him. We'll aim to get into the state by the labor day weekend (first in September) and get him advertised on line for anyone starting to look at wanting to snowbird for the winter. We'll then head as far south as we can to somewhere between LA and San Diego, or maybe around Palm Springs again and just chill out, live cheap and see if we can find a private buyer. If we do manage a private sale before Christmas great, we can hopefully head over to Hawaii for a few weeks, if not then we will have to take him around some dealers in the new year to see if they will take him on consignment and what sort of percentage they will want to take. We will also try and sell the Suzuki with Badger, but if not then we might be stuck with it as its probably not worth a great deal to a dealer, in which case we might take it round central america with us.
In any case, once we get rid of Badger we will be heading south to central america - maybe as early as November, maybe as late as February, maybe on public transport zigzagging south, maybe in the Suzuki in which case we will do a loop down the Pacific and back up the Atlantic coasts. Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Honduras are all on the list, Chichen Itza, Popocatepetl, Panama canal, spanish lessons and anything else that takes our fancy. We may mix travelling with a couple of periods settled somewhere for a few months to kill some time until about October 2018. If we still have the Suzuki at that stage we'll have to take it back to the US to give to a dealer for whatever pittance we can get, then on to South America
The northern part of South america is still tropical so it doesnt matter too much when we get there, but as we head further south we want to be getting the best of the weather, so Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and down to Chile by around Christmas, then across to Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and up to Brazil in the new year, finishing in Rio for Carnival in late Feb/early March 2019. We may then fly up to Guyana and maybe French Guyana and Suriname if we can find a reason to, avoid Venezuala as its run by a nutter, and then fly home, maybe via Washington DC for a few more Days in the Smithsonian, in time to check out the tenants and actually move back into Mycenae road for a couple of months.
and then who knows where next....
PS
before people ask....its very difficult to drive from central to south america as there are no roads - the Darian Gap between Panama and Columbia has never been paved, so you have to put vehicles on a cargo ship. And then what do you do with the vehicle when you come back round the east and get to the amazon?
and Patagonia is a long way south and Antarctica is even further, and I'm not sure we can justify the expense when we have seen wilderness and glaciers in Canada and Alaska, and penguins in Australia....
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