SUPER VARIO WORLD

Welcome to our Christmas & New Year bumper edition! We hope you have all had happy holidays.

After catching the Baja Rally, we headed back over to the East coast to visit the towns of Loreto (old and lovely) and Mulegé (just old). The main draw of this area though is Bahía Concepción - miles of sheltered bays, clear waters and excellent snorkelling. We roamed up and down the coast, from beach to beach and spent a couple of long weekends in Loreto enjoying the cafes, restaurants, topiary lined streets and free musical entertainment in the evenings.

Strange and dangerous wildlife kept making unexpected appearances. At Scorpion Bay we saw a tarantula. At Rattlesnake Beach we saw a scorpion. At El Coyote we saw stingrays and puffer fish.

We soon started thinking about where to spend Christmas. We were hoping for somewhere special and our choices seemed to be either a resort complex to experience a Mexican style Christmas or find a nice free camp somewhere to celebrate with other travellers.

The trouble we were having though was that everywhere was really dirty with rubbish and human waste. It was also so noisy. We’d be camped alone on a beach and a Mexican family would turn up, camp right next to us and blare out music all day and night. Even the shops and restaurants would have huge speakers pumping out all sorts of music.

We had spent a month living on or near various beaches and the noise and lack of facilities were starting to get us down. This was on top of living out of our truck for the last 6 months, and we were getting tired. Sometimes we just wanted to sleep in a bed you could get out of the side of. And not have to get dressed to go to the toilet at night. And just have a proper toilet rather than a hole we’ve dug in the ground.

Having decided not to make the leap to South America, we started to question the point of the rest of the trip. We knew we would ship the truck home from the USA, so however far South we went from here, we would have to double back on ourselves to the States, with the obvious time and money implications.

There are Mayan ruins in Central America that we wanted to visit, but these would be at least a 5000 mile round trip. We started to doubt our commitment to carry on, as we didn’t believe that the potential positive experience would be worth it.

We were also missing home and wanted to spend time with friends and family. We wanted to be in familiar places, as a constantly changing environment is mentally draining and you stop appreciating it. Bumming around for the next 4 months suddenly started to seem a bit pointless. We had achieved what we originally set out to do - we’d driven around the World from UK to Australia and then all the way across Canada and Alaska.

We have always said we would do this trip while we were youngish, because you never know what’s around the corner. We found ourselves flipping this mentality and wanting to be with family and friends, because you never what’s around the corner.

We reckoned, with a bit of luck, we could get our wish – spend Christmas somewhere special and with great people – suddenly being home for Christmas felt like the best idea in the world. It was also great to have a goal again – we realised we had just been drifting without focus for too long.

So we contacted our shipping agent to explain our most recent change of plan and started heading back to the US. Our main concern was getting back into the States. Our current visa only had a week left on it, so we were worried about them extending this to give us enough time to ship out.

It had taken us 4 weeks to get down to Loreto by zigzagging across the peninsula on the rough roads. Using the single-lane highway to go North, we were back at the border in 4 days. Along the way we met Baja Cruisers, a Land Cruiser owners club, who were out on an expedition. They loved Bowser, especially as he is a diesel, so we had to pose for some photos and they gave us one of their club stickers in return. They were a great bunch of guys.

Back at the border crossing at Tecaté, we nervously waited our turn in the long, long queue, trying not to consider the implications of not getting back in to the US. We needn’t have worried. After the usual questions and a blind-eye to our excess alcohol amounts, we were let in. They didn’t seem to care that our visa was due to expire, we had to point this out to them. After a few more questions we were given another six months. Result!

Now we were really close to Christie & Dudley, our surfer-dude friends we met at San Juanico, so the chance to meet up with them again could not be missed. A few emails later, they had booked a campsite for us all at Cardiff-by-the-Sea, just North of San Diego. So we had a lovely four days with them on the coast, with them showing us the local sights including the house where Kelly McGillis’ character lived in Top Gun and the beautiful meditation gardens at Swami’s, a spiritual retreat and temple.

We hadn’t yet had a confirmed date for shipping home, so we then spent a few days with C&D at their place in Sun City. This was when the South Californian wildfires started, one was just North of us and another just South. The sky was smokey, the air dry and choking and seeing the fire fighting planes swooping overhead again reminded us of the power of nature. Since July, we’ve never been that far from wildfires and it’s scary how devastating they can be. That’s one benefit of living in a wetter climate.

Having received confirmation that we would be able to ship before Christmas, with heavy hearts we said bye to C&D. We really hope to see them again one day, but will keep in touch regardless. They were so lovely and generous to us, we miss them a lot.

So now we just needed to drive across California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, all the time discussing whether we would let people know we were on our way, or just turn up and surprise everyone.

On the way we stopped at “The Boneyard”, where the US military store thousands of planes and other vehicles. Then Tombstone, Arizona to see the OK Corral and a re-enactment of the gunfight and on to The Alamo in Texas. It was here that we received a ‘phone call from our shipping agent to say the date was brought forward to the next day – so it was then all systems go.

Within the next 24 hours we drove to Houston, found a hotel, cleaned the inside and out of the truck, took all the stuff off the roof-rack and packed it in the vehicle, sorted what to take home with us and what to leave on the truck, took the truck to the shippers and booked our flights home.

We then flew from Houston to Miami to Oslo to London (it was the cheapest!) and hired a vehicle to drive home. We’d decided to surprise people and think we did the job when we turned up on Caroline’s parent’s drive and then again when we turned up at Bry’s family on Christmas morning. It was so good to be home, amongst family and friends, where we belong!

So another great adventure comes to an end. 30,000 kms, 200 days, stayed in 120 different places, 8 Canadian territories & provinces, 13 US states, 2 Mexican states.

Highlights? Scenery, wildlife, meeting friends and family.

Lowlights? Not as challenging as last trip, expense cut the trip short.

Thanks for sticking with us. Special thanks to all the people who put us up and put up with us over the trip. Hope to see you all again, soon.

TTFN.

For Mexico photos click here!

For USA photos please click here!