An overdue update

Looks like it’s time for an update, folks. This is what’s been going on in the past 18 months.

Tiny house

As suggested in my previous post, we intended to set a more permanent (or at least less ephemeral) base in Northern California. With that goal in mind we got ourselves a tiny house, which we named Adelaida, and set it in our friends’ 1-acre property, which they named Rosalinda. Adelaida is technically an RV, built on top of a trailer, and it has about a quarter of Ñandu’s footprint.

Delivery day was as stressful as docking Ñandú to a mediterranean moor under crosswinds, a strong current, and half the town judging your skills… which, thankfully, I never had to do. Turns out that even though I had measured the front gate’s horizontal clearance, it was plenty spacious only in theory. In practice, the street wasn’t wide enough for the truck driver to maneuver and back up with the tiny house lined up with the driveway. Every attempt required stopping the mid-morning traffic of a somewhat busy street. On the last one the driver calmly declared he was stuck.

He got off and said to me: “I cannot go forward or backwards without destroying something.” At that point we had a dozen cars waiting on each side of the truck-plus-trailer rig, in addition to the city bus, for about 10 minutes.

“How can you be so serene!?” I complained to him in what was not yet the apogee of my panic.

“Well, it’s just that there’s nothing I can do”. Good point. But his Zen attitude had zero soothing power on me, because at that moment I saw the garbage truck joining the traffic jam. My panic climaxed, because the next vehicle I imagined I’d see was the police’s. In my desperation I went to get a sledgehammer to bring down a portion of the fence, but when I was back someone had had the great idea of dislodging the gate itself, which was perhaps a slower but non-destructive solution. That gave us the extra inch of space that made all the difference. So after about 20 minutes of holding the traffic the tiny house was finally inside the property. It was still a long way to the back, pruning trees and occasionally backtracking, but we had the entire day for that.    

Before

Then came the déjà-vu of our boatyard days with a long list of arduous tasks to make the house habitable and reasonably comfortable:  appliances, paint, flooring, plumbing, decking… Tiling the shower in particular solidified our relationship: if that didn’t kill it, nothing will. Even though we are still not done (are you, ever?), the (tiny) sofa and (tiny) closet that we got just a few weeks ago made all the difference to make it look like the cozy, tidy and inviting place we wanted.

After

Panama

As the end of 2019 approached it was time to execute our plan of dodging the cold months and move to warmer latitudes. We chose to start in Panama, not because Ñandú was there, but because Kathy wanted to go to Chile first and, well, Panama is more or less half-way between Chile and California. More importantly, Kathy bought a ticket with Copa and it was very cheap for her to add a Santiago-Panama leg. So Panama it was, and we don’t regret our choice for a rendezvous point. Coincidentally, it was during our stay in Panama that Ñandú got sold, and to our knowledge, she’s now in Florida.

Panama City

Bocas del Toro

Costa Rica

Our last accommodation in Panama was our good friends’ boat, Anahita, in Bocas del Toro. From Red Frog Marina we took a water taxi to Isla Colon, then a Ferry to the town of Almirante, then a bus to the border with Costa Rica. We then crossed a bridge by foot to Sixaola, where another bus and a transfer to a van finally got us to Puerto Viejo.

From there we rented a car and drove across half of Costa Rica to the lush Arenal Volcano area.

Honduras

Next, a flight and a ferry took us to the island of Utila in the Caribbean, where Ada and a friend of hers joined us. We spent a month and a half freediving almost every day to get our master’s certificate. We reached new depths (4om or 130ft) and breath hold times (4m40s hers and 5m30s his—she held the family record for a few, agonizing hours). Those numbers make me proud, but not nearly as much as getting an official picture id with my religious headwear.

After a couple days in neighboring Roatán we came back home right in time for the first covid-19 lockdown.

California

The pandemic derailed some grandiose travel plans we had, which included Ecuador (for Kathy), France, and a total solar eclipse in Chile. We made the best lemonade we could out of the life lemons we got. Regardless, we acknowledge it would have been so much more difficult had we still been cruising on our sailboat, as we’ve received some harrowing reports from stranded cruisers.

A new Ñandú in the incubator

With no international travel in sight, we put in action plan “camper van” one year earlier than we originally intended. We ordered a Mercedes Sprinter cargo van, and during the long wait to get it delivered we drove to Montana to check a shop that would convert the van into a second, tinier tiny house. We made a multi-week, multi-national park trip out of that errand.

Nevada

Wyoming

Yellowstone

Idaho

We selected the Montana shop to do the job, so a month and a half later we were doing the 2000-mile round trip again on our brand new flashy red van (and came back on a rental car). This time the weather was much colder, and we stopped only one night each way.

Epilogue

Just as we were eagerly waiting for Ñandú to be ready five years ago, now we are anxiously waiting for our camper van (for which we need a name, by the way) to scratch our wonderlust itch. We are hopeful it will be easier to dock than both Ñandú and Adelaida.

I’ve decided to continue blogging here with an occasional update of our whereabouts, travel stories and a bunch of pictures. If you were here for the sailing adventures, then please accept my apologies for the bait-and-switch and feel free to unsubscribe. Otherwise, see you soon (-ish).