A Day Off

Sitting around a campfire in Belize, at the lovely San Miguel Campground in the mountains, Rob with the black beard, made a point that has stuck with me. 

Overlanding is hard work. Every day you have to make decisions, there is almost no routine, from where to sleep to where to park to where to shop. Everything feels new all the time and he found it exhausting. Not tired in the hard work sense, but exhausting in the meaning of life sense. And he has a point.

The allure of travel is that very break in the routine that we crave when our daily rounds bore us. Two weeks of change and we come home ready for another 50 weeks of routine. Therefore permanent change must be fifty times better! Well, not exactly but I have to say I enjoy the uncertainties of being on the road, most of the time. I think Rob was right though inasmuch as this life is a job. Planning, decision making, correcting, deciding and making mistakes in a strange culture as an outsider and alone. Sounds fun! 

There are the bad days when errors and problems seem insurmountable. And you are still alone! Deciding about issues of which you understand very little.  These are moments I like less and they are a struggle. They are the days the job sometimes suck, just as any job can suck from time to time. However this job is one we have chosen and from which we can duck out anytime.  And some travelers do!

I’ve met overlanders who are tired of the road and crave a stationary period. Many find their hobbies require more room than is available in a vehicle. Some days I miss being among my own culture. I dislike the lack of personal space in Latin American society and the cultural need for loud music gets tiring. 

For instance in Guatemala I wouldn’t mind a smooth broad sidewalk from time to time! But I smooth through the bad bits of overlanding with Laynes’s help and we keep going. She gets her strength from a massive network of women friends she remains in close contact with through Starlink and WhatsApp. 

I’ve been struggling with our need to return to north Mexico to finish Laynes’s tooth implants in Los Algodones on the US border. It’s silly because all we do anyway is drive so taking a detour back to the US is just another drive. Furthermore we will be back when the weather is right for this part of the world  which is now hot at lower elevations on the road ahead and soon to get very wet. I am just impatient by nature when I have made a decision. I want to get on with going to  South America. That’s our goal and I want to be on the road doing it.  

We are planning to enjoy driving the States this summer as that is always fun and after we polish off South America I have a growing list of places to visit in our home country. Layne has even agreed to let Rusty and I go to Alaska alone as she doesn’t want to drive the Alcan or deal with the vagaries of the Last Frontier. I can’t wait!

But right now we needed a break in Antigua which need coincides with a three day holiday and full accommodations everywhere, naturally. So we found a rather peculiar campground for a few days on the outskirts of the city with the huge benefit of shore power to plug in and run all our appliances irresponsibly on someone else current. 

You can park an RV at $10 or 150 Quetzals per night, or plant a tent or you can rent a peculiar place to sleep provided by management. A helicopter? 

A boat next to the pool? 

A bus or a truck perhaps? 

Rustic toilets, restaurant and bar, outdoor seating, dogs welcome and the opportunity for us to just ignore the rigid for a couple of days, swing in our hammock, watch a movie, enjoy air conditioning, stop being tourists. 

We recharge more than just the van batteries.