Time to GO!
So we are going to be leaving here soon and going to drive down through Ecuador, to Peru and eventually the rest of South America. Not sure how often I'll have access to the internet but when I do, I'll keep you up to date on our adventure. It is going to be one long trip especially since the roads here are one lane, two direction, horrible pot holes, steep drop offs, blind curves, possible live stock on the road at any given moment, all stop lights and road rules considered as mere suggestions, bridges down, trees fallen, pedestrians every where, check points sometimes with guards that hassle you for anything waiting for a bribe, borders that can take nine hours to cross and so many weird unexpected things that this would become an even worse run on sentence if I continued. But that's all a part of the journey. Part of me will be sad to leave, we have been here in Colombia so long this country has really become like home, and part of me, a bigger part, can't wait to get on the road and touch a new country, a new village, a new street. We have pretty much already sold everything, and our extra clothes we gave away. It's amazing how much you really don't need.
The motels here can be few and far between and usually in pretty poor shape. We have some tents to stay and will find a motel now and then. There are no campgrounds here really, but a lot of times people will let us stay on their property and some times restaurant or motel owners have a nice place in the back we can camp. We had originally hoped to ship a pop up trailer down here to live in as we travel, but it did not work out so last week my brothers and I built a little cargo trailer from scratch to carry our gear! With eight people (that's eight back packs, eight mattresses, eight sleeping bags, four tents plus cooking and camping gear) plus all our musical equipment, props and costumes, we needed more space than just the van.
It was a lot of work to build a trailer and a challenge to find all the used parts to assemble it. My brother worked as a welder and is really smart, so he designed it all. We were out from six in the morning to ten at night for just less than a week, walking up and down streets finding parts, than negotiating the price, then assembling the trailer. I bolted the box to the frame, prepped it for painting, wired it, repacked the axles with grease (first time I had done that), grinned my brothers welds, and did a lot of the painting, and errand running. I even used a blow torch, flame thrower thing to dry out the floor, it was actually fun. I'll post a pictured of the finished product when I get a chance.
