ODO: 360,205
We can’t believe it, it’s loading day. How did we get here? Are we sure about this? Yikes. We Uber to the shipping office to meet our agent. He takes us on a fifteen minute walk to show us exactly where we will meet at 2pm. It’s a corner, across the street from the port entrance. After he shows us the corner, he takes us to the port to do Berne’s entrance paperwork. The shape the truck is in, we can’t just drop it off for strangers to load. Plus we have some special considerations, like our driver tire that will go flat during shipping…
Once we finish at the port, we hustle back to the hotel, we’ve got some last minute chores! First, breakfast. Always breakfast first if the day ahead might be difficult. Now we’re ready to remove the starlink, and wash the truck.
When we return to load the truck, KoKo heads out for a photo walk while Berne takes the truck into the port. Loading is very smooth, the port workers even find some wood to prop up our driver side, so the restraints won’t loosen as the tire deflates. The space between the truck door and the container wall is very tight, and Berne gets many, many bruises squishing himself through it.
And there it is. We did it… We completed our South American journey. We’re packed, the truck is packed, and this is it…
Back in the hotel, we book our flight. It leaves at 2am. There’s nothing left for us here, and we want to get back to Portland as quickly as we can. Our final outing is for some Korean food before heading to the airport. Here we are, Wednesday, March 18, 2026 is our very last day in South America.
Because we only seem to be able to leave here in the middle of the night, our seven hour flight to Panama is full of sleeping. Our second flight, four hours to Houston, is equally filled with sleep. In Houston, we need to go through security again, and we get caught in the early days of the TSA not being paid by the government. Pre-check is not an option, so we wait for about an hour and a half. A week from now, this line will balloon to more than three hours, so we consider ourselves lucky. We get a relaxing eight hours in Houston, spent between the lounge and the massage chairs to help with leg swelling from the long flights. A final four and a half hours gets us into Portland at 11pm local time. It’s been a solid 25 hours of travel, which means we are immediately back on PST. We’re wrecked. Once our four bags arrive, we hustle over to an airport hotel for the night. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.
Ahhhhh, the deep, deep sleep of the painfully exhausted. We drag ourselves out of bed. The rainy Portland morning is not helpful in motivating us. Cold, like actually cold, and raining is a pretty extreme weather change for us. At least, the cold part is… We struggle our way out of the hotel, and pick up our rental car. It’s time. Time to start figuring out what we do while we wait for the truck to get here. Time to catch up with family and friends. Time to figure out what comes next…
Leave a Reply