Rusty and I walked this morning round the neighborhood where we slept in Santa Vitória.
We stopped by the vet yesterday to check in and thought what the hell this is a quiet neighborhood let’s just sleep here, so we did.
The hoy of the self contained camper means we can drive park and step into our home in a vehicle no bigger than a delivery van.
We had a modest dinner of cheese and crackers after our large midday buffet, watched some tv and that was that.
The odd thing is with Starlink on the roof and an iPad combined with a virtual private network (VPN) set to Miami for sentimental reasons we stream Prime and Netflix just as you do at home. Modern electronics combined with a comfortable van home make long term travel relatively effortless.
Vacation travel is limited by time not money and experience is the value yielded by the money spent and the precious time away from work.
So on vacation you take the tours, march up the mountains, eat exotic foods and spend money as this slice of your life is an experience. People we know used to say to us “I love being cut off from the Internet when I’m on vacation..”
Then I would ask if they had Internet access at home and they said of course. Obviously my point is that we aren’t on vacation and the way we pull that off is by making our van our home.
It’s our home aboard GANNET2 because we have what we need plus we have what we want. We aren’t staying in rented accommodation explaining ourselves to the staff, expressing our pleasure with our wonderful trip and so forth as you do when you check in to a hotel in Latin America where automation is more expensive than hiring minimum wage workers.
We close the door and Brazil fades into the background. Layne cooks, I wash up the dishes, we talk about our day, we watch tv, we watch Rusty sleep on our bed. It’s just a matter of being home.
The best attribute a van dweller can have in my opinion is curiosity followed of course by adaptability. You need to enjoy driving too and I read the words of people who find driving to be a drag yet they have chosen (excluding those forced by circumstances) to choose a life on wheels.
GANNET2 is very well insulated, thanks to Custom Coach Creations in DeLand who built our interior. That’s a good think when it comes to coping with heat and cold but the other benefit is sound insulation, making street parking or truck stop parking or rest area parking no bother at all where noises can be loud. 
If you like to drive and have curiosity combined with a well insulated camper you have the foundation for a happy life on the road. I’m not suggesting anyone could or should, those are the baseline attributes of a happy life on the road.
When we paid $92,000 in 2020, roughly $38,000 for the Promaster and the rest for the conversion and taxes we knew we were building a home for retirement.
And we had pretty good idea it would work. We had both traveled a great deal including finding bursts on sailboat cruising Central America and the Caribbean so we knew the ball space would work.
We also had things we wanted, a separate toilet compartment with a door, a full kitchen, lots of water in a tank and we wanted to live as you do at home.
In other words I didn’t want to be plugging in battery banks or shuffling jugs of water. We have outlets, a water faucet and a full electrical system that we don’t have to deal with especially now we have powerful solar panels on the roof.
Of v cv purse we have limitations one being I wanted no hot water to create more things that could fail and after living in a boat Layne is content without a full shower. We use campgrounds and we carry a solar shower for outdoor use and lots of wipes.
Consequently when we close the doors at night we are tucked into our own world at home. We aren’t unpacking suitcases or on the streets looking for dinner. We are at home.
And that is what makes long term travel not only possible but enjoyable. Some days are aggravating just as they are for anyone.
Then you walk the dog and come home to a plate of cold cuts and a glass of wine and talk it out, curse the Brazilian officials or the mechanic or the overlanders who acted weird and you move on. At home you recharge your batteries.
If you are camping in a messy disorganized home pushing stuff aside to find your phone charger or forced to clear a space to boil water it won’t feel like home. At least that’s how I feel about it.
The question then becomes how you pay for it and in the States these days how do you live in a vehicle without drawing negative attention from neighbors or the law?
I suppose a small unobtrusive mini van might be best but for me, old and no longer so limber living crouched is not fun. Webb Chiles is heroic in his ability to live in a fiberglass tube on bouncing ocean waves but me? No chance.
So
