Dog-friendly travel

Yes, you can travel overland with your dog(s)! We have met many travelers in the Americas with their dogs, and most of them were like us–not the richest, not the most organized, not the most Spanish-speaking. If you want to…
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Pony Homecoming

We got our van back! Tuesday afternoon, as Team USA was losing to Team Belgium, we took Milo in a rental car and drove down to Port Hueneme in Ventura County. We were a bit apprehensive, as the month of…
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Coming home

My friends here have a specific term we use when talking about the act of returning from a long trip: re-entry. I’m not quite sure who coined it (Sam? Lindsay?), but to me the breathless descent through the atmosphere that…
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North-ward bound

It was tough to pull ourselves away from Ushuaia. Not only did we enjoy some spectacular weather and the great company and hospitality of some new friends, but it also meant beginning the journey back home. Even though we have…
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Into the great wide open

When we reached Punta Arenas, we checked into a hotel as a respite from two things that have become very difficult–staying warm at night, and fast Internet. We’ve seen so much in the past two weeks that it seems like…
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From East to West

After leaving Punta Alta, we traversed Argentina from its Pacific Coast to its Western edge, in a matter of days. This meant crossing the low-lying plains of La Pampa. It felt like driving through the Great Plains on any rural…
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Anti-climax

Machu Picchu is not an easy place to get to. If you’re coming from anywhere outside Peru, your best-case scenario is a flight into Lima, a flight from Lima to Cusco, a two-hour train ride to Aguas Calientes (aka Machu…
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To Lima and beyond

We ended up staying five nights in Lima, accomplishing important things like: showering, doing laundry, taking Milo to the vet, visiting the mechanic, SUSHI, and meeting our new friend Miguel and a bunch of other Westy owners. We also enjoyed…
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Northern Peru

We have made really quick tracks across northern Peru to arrive in Lima two nights ago. The drive from Huanchaco on the coast to the capital was still filled with a lot of desert and shantytowns, but also mountains and…
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Rolling through

Colombia continues to be very good to us, with beautiful mountains, pleasant weather, great people, and relaxed times. The agricultural strikes restricted our movement a little, but we clearly didn’t mind, hanging out in San Gil and Barichara, waiting out…
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One year of Milo

Dear San Francisco Animal Care and Control, One year ago today, we adopted Milo. Nine days later, we headed south with him, driving in our Volkswagen camper down through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, until today,…
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Colombiahhh…

Colombia has been the most incredible (and welcome!) change from Panama. Flying into Cartagena with Milo was such an ordeal that I sort of didn’t expect it to actually happen, but once we saw the Cartagena skyline, I was so excited to be me again! We spent three sweaty, exhausting days in...
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Have dog, will travel…slowly

A month after first arriving in Panama City, we are still in Panama City. This has to do with three things: Our recent trip to California, the Darien Gap shipping process, and The Dog. To be fair, Milo has not really cost us a ton of money so far on this trip. He eats what we eat, and vet visits...
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Panama

We have sort of trucked through Panama pretty quickly. We hit the 10-month mark of our travels in Boquete, the highlands, where we enjoyed the cool weather and worked out some van problems.   Boquete is a strange place because it’s filled with gringos. Gringolands mean one thing to...
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Bits and bites, nine months in

Today marks nine months on the road, and we have been observing this milestone by holing up in an air-conditioned hotel in Granada. The current mood has a bit to do with travel fatigue, a bit to do with heat exhaustion, and a whole lot to do with a whole lot of bites. Something I didn’t do...
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Familiar grounds

For the first time since Baja (or backtracking our few times through San Cristóbal), we have arrived in a place that I’ve visited before–Nicaragua. Back in 2008, in the summer between my first and second years of grad school, I came to Nicaragua for two weeks with two friends...
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Honduras: a mixed bag

A lot of overlanders skip Honduras, mostly because of widespread police corruption on the 100-km Honduran stretch of the Pan-American highway, and the country’s reputation as the poorest and most dangerous in Central America. We decided to do a basic tour of the country and try to avoid...
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