It is now January 2020 and we have been back home for several months. The first few months we were been busy getting our house back in order; getting moved back in, doing minor repairs, trying to get rid of some things that we no longer need or want, doing some painting….

We are enjoying being home, having so much space, watching wildlife walk through our yard. It has been great to see friends and acquaintances again and to cook in a real kitchen…but there is also a bit of a feeling of being lost, not knowing what to do each day, and, for me at least, some longing for life back on the road.

It is a bit surreal….like when you read of people who say they were abducted by aliens, and had this week-long and detailed experience aboard the mother ship, only to return and to find that they were gone what turns out to be a few minutes of earth time. We had this fabulous 2 year experience and then returned and it’s almost like we were never gone, so much is unchanged from when we left. The trip seems almost like a dream, and South America feels very far away in both time and space. We knew we would have to take some time when we got home to readjust to life here in Alberta. We are still working on that.

People have asked us what our favourite part of the trip was, and it is really impossible to pick one country, one beach, one mountain, one waterfall, one colonial city, or one meal as our favourite. I think the best part of the trip however was the day to day excitement and freedom. Every day was something new, and the decision would be made daily whether to stay and enjoy it or to move on to yet another new experience. Time slowed down on the road as we keenly observed and were present for every single moment.

Others have asked what our next adventure will be. For now, our plan is to stay fairly close to home, but we are already talking about backpacking and canoe trips for next summer, and we are enjoying getting out and playing in the snow this winter.

Okay, here are some stats about the trip:

We drove 73,960 kilometres (well, Derek drove and I navigated, for all but about 300 kilometres!) The batteries of our SPOT device failed several hundred kilometres before we arrived home, so there is a small bit of the loop that is missing on our Where Are We Now page.

We were in 16 different countries, over 683 days. Here is a breakdown of how many days we spent in each country:

DAYS PER COUNTRY
USA	9
MEXICO	103
BELIZE	19
GUATEMALA	11
HONDURAS	5
NICARAGUA	24
COSTA RICA	18
PANAMA	15
SAILING	6
COLOMBIA	48
ECUADOR	23
PERU	48
BOLIVIA	32
CHILE	85
ARGENTINA	91
URUGUARY	27
CANADA
NS	36
PEI	2
NB	10
NFLD	23
LAB	3
QUE	6
ON	18
MB	2
SK	3
AB	10
BC	6

Of the 683 days, we camped for free for 168 days, paid for camping for 392 days, and stayed in an AirBnb or hotel or sailboat for 123 days…74 of those were nights where our truck was in a container being shipped either over the Darien Gap or from Uruguay to Halifax.

We put Seymour on about 20 ferries along the way. We took boats without Seymour on about 12 or 13 different occasions…sometimes to stay on an island for a few days, sometimes a day trip to an island or a remote coastline, and of course, the fantastic sailing trip we did to get over the Darien Gap.

There were lots of things to be repaired over the 2 years. Derek and I took the fridge apart dozens of times, finally fixing it for good a few months before the end of our trip on the east coast of Canada. Some of the repairs that Derek did on the truck and camper include wiring an override for the chip controlled mechanical charging relay, fixing taillights, repairing the side mirror on the truck after a minor accident, replacing the water pump, re-greasing dry and screeching brake calliper pins, removing, straightening and reinstalling a crooked running board (that got crunched trying to get up a super narrow lane way), repairing the thermostat for the furnace in the camper, replacing the burnt out charge controller for the solar panels, replacing the idler pulley, multiple oil changes, lube jobs, tire repairs and many more small fixes and modifications.

We had Seymour in to mechanics to weld the exhaust system, for brake service and new tires. We had the fuel tank dropped and cleaned, a new lift pump installed and and finally an entire set of injectors.

It was the most amazing experience of our lives. We are so glad we went.

So, there you have it. Our last blog post for the trip! If you made it all the way to this post, a sincere thank you for following along and and thanks also to all those that commented and emailed.