ODO: 324,010
It happened!! We have officially been on the road for a whole year! The timing of this anniversary is a little odd because we are back in California for work and a very contentious election just wrapped, something we were very excited to not be in America for. We order in a nice dinner and have a relaxing, ignore the world, kind of evening to celebrate.
Our two weeks (yes, two! We got word that the boat transporting the truck was delayed a week, the day before we were supposed to fly down to meet it) in the office fly by. There is always something interesting to work on, so almost all of our time is fun and exciting and involves inventing. This time around we do a much better job of making time to catch up with our friends in the area. And we buy new shoes….
Flying home day is here! Which sounds funny because we don’t live in Colombia, but maybe we kind of do? We board a plane at midnight (seriously?!? why are these the only reasonably timed flights??) and walk into our hotel, with the great view, in Cartagena by 4pm. And then take a nap. Until 8:30pm, oops. This will not make adjusting to this time zone easier. Luckily we have the weekend, plus holiday Monday to relax and recover.
Time for action day! We are up and out by 7:30am (no, we are not at all adjusted to the time zone yet) to get a power of attorney document signed. Our Colombian fixer needs this to act on our behalf with The Port. The notary is in the old walled part of the city, so once our official task is done, we have some breakfast and go for a little bit of a wander. The streets are small and colorful and vey clean. Our guess is that this is due to what feels like near constant flooding that happens here.
Early evening we get some bad news: We need long pants to enter the port. Berne’s long pants are in the port already! Berne is thrilled about having to go pants shopping, and as luck would have it our hotel sits above a mall! Berne now, very reluctantly owns jeans. An attempt was made to have Italian for dinner, but the restaurant we picked ran out of gas, so no hot food from them. We managed to find another Italian place that had no run out of gas, and they fed us a lovely dinner.
Being on the road for a year has taught us some things we would like to share with you in no particular order:
- Racoons will eat your silicone pots. No joke. Don’t leave those dishes outside overnight.
- Some days are boring, and that’s ok. Sounds insane to say out loud, but it’s true.
- As soon as you share you goal with people, they want to help you. Especially strangers south of the border.
- You will miss your old life sometimes, the celebrations and holidays you’re used to, routines, visiting friends. This is normal, and doesn’t mean you’re not also having a good time on the road.
- From our informal research, most couples don’t like each other. The number of people that said “I would kill my spouse if we spent that much time together” was really eye opening.
- Don’t want to get sick? Eat local! For example, if you haven’t seen a cow in 3 days, don’t order the steak…
- Ant bites are by far the most painful insetct bites
- The library is the best. We get so many digital audiobooks from our local library back home for free!
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