Darin and I have been talking and dreaming of taking extended time off to travel for years.  Up until recently,  there always seemed to be multiple reasons as to why we couldn’t make it happen.  Over the years, we’ve taken many holidays and we’ve travelled to amazing places but never for more than 2 weeks at time.  These vacations, most of which we took with our kids just amplified our desire to have an adventure that would be impossible to plan and fully prepare for.  Over the past year or two, life has given us some less than subtle hints that this is no dress rehearsal, life is sailing on by and as much as we love the life we’re living, we’ve decided not to wish this wish of ours away.

Last week, we put our yet to be named Eurovan on a ship at the Port of Tacoma to be transported to Cartagena, Colombia.  We will arrive in Cartagena in less than three weeks to pick up our van and spend the next 4 months driving, surfing, hiking, and hammock(ing) our way south to Chile.  We’d love to make it to Tierra Del Fuego, but the plan is essentially to remain plan-less.  I’m not sure that we even have a goal other than to hang out with each other and allow for the experience to create itself.

Our boys, Simon (10) and Marco (8) don’t seem to have many expectations either.  They’re still trying to understand what missing 4 months of school looks like exactly.  Their homeschooling will consist of daily reading and journal writing, which will often be transcribed to posts on this blog.     We’ll throw in some math with money conversion, mileage calculations, altitude interpretation and wave related calculations.  Coming from a person who tends to thrive toward structure, this loose schedule and lack of specifics seems like it’ll be a healthy tangent to be on, though it may make me crazy.

Our spanish leaves much to be desired.  In fact, my husband Darin speaks none and neither do the kids.  I understand a fair amount but can speak very little.  We bought Rosetta Stone but haven’t used it once.  We keep telling ourselves we’ll take daily Rosetta Stone lessons once we’re in South America but that remains to be seen.