The Long Goodbye...or, yendo de la cama al living...

Today was the day we were supposed to be heading out, totally excited about spending New Year's Eve in some funky cheap hotel off the Interstate in Ohio somewhere, but it looks like fate has slated us to spend the start of 2009 in Hamilton. The weather in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio looked really bad for today - snow and high winds - so we decided to stay for one more night and head out early tomorrow morning. Still a good way to start the new year.

The past couple of days have been pretty chaotic and a bit heart-wrenching, but also really nice. On Monday Ariel spent the day, along with River, at Austin's house. As usual, they had a great time, concluding their time together with a ginger beer "toast" to Ari's trip. We parents also said a sad goodbye, as Mark and Cornelia have become our good friends as well! Meanwhile, Mateo went over to Ben and Ollie's place to play with their brand new Wii. Then we drove in to Toronto for a quick visit (and a couple of glasses of champagne) with Daniel, Yamila and Dario, before heading over to Suzanne and Quique's place for a rousing game of ping pong on the "beach." They thoughtfully got us a great pair of binoculars (to be better able to see the monkeys in the trees in Costa Rica, and the whales in Punta!) an an external hard drive for the laptop, so we can back up all of our files, photos, music, etc. Amazing! I've already backed everything up...

Yesterday we stayed close to home, packing up and getting organized. Eva and Mary drove all the way to say goodbye to us from Ottawa, and we also had visits from Suzanne, Quique, Sofia and little Gabriel. Noah and baby Simon came over with their parents Lucy and Dale, and brought an absolutely scrumptious Sicilian Cassata cake that Lucy made - to die for! We have been nibbling on it ever since.

Last night Eva and Mary took us out to eat at this great Thai restaurant in Hamilton, and Mateo spent the entire time (when he wasn't stuffing his face with noodles and shrimp) filming underwater fish! If you look closely at the video you can see that he almost took one of the little fish with him when he lifted the camera out of the water!

This morning we were invited over to Yvonne and Neil's for a fancy farewell breakfast, but we were running so late that it turned into a brunch, and it was absolutely delicious! Thanks guys, and thanks for the lightweight travel towels too - those will come in handy!

One thing we have realized is that we feel really torn about leaving so many great people behind, but I have the feeling that we will be seeing many of them in warmer climes. We have been so successful in our temptation campaign that we might be single-handedly responsible for a alot of ecological footprints on the planet at this rate.....

Another Post by Mateo

Hi its Mateo again. Here is a song that I played with my cousins Daniel and Annie.
Hope you enjoy !!!!

despedidas

It was a teary farewell as we waved goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa while they drove off in their truck loaded down with our belongings, and with Eddie sandwiched between them on the front seat. They have been very helpful to us during the chaos of these last few days and it is very hard to say goodbye, but we know that they will be coming to see us in Uruguay soon enough. This is always the hardest part of the trip, but we have done it enough times to know that with every sad goodbye upon leaving one place there are as many happy reunions in the other. We love and will miss you guys!

Bueno, ya empezamos con estas eternas despedidas. Si pudieramos apretar un boton para adelantarlo lo hariamos, porque es la parte que menos nos gusta de viajar - y como a nosotros nos toca vivir en dos mundos diferentes, siempre hay que despedirse de algunos para poder reencontrarse con otros. Pero vamos a extraniar un monton a Grandma y Grampa y a Eddie.

El otro dia vimos a nuestro gran amigo Hamid! El insistio que para hacer un viaje asi, hay que tener un GPS, asi que gracias a el tenemos otro juguetito electronico. Ahora vamos a tener que aprender a usarlo! Por lo menos no nos vamos a perder en el camino: aunque a veces las aventuras mas interesantes pasan cuando uno se pierde, no es verdad?

We were really happy to be reunited the other day with our good friend Hamid who we haven't seen since we moved away from Platt's Lane in London four years ago! Thanks to Hamid we have now hesitantly entered even further into the world of modern technology, as he insisted on getting us a GPS for our trip! It is a Garmin eTrex Legend. It was the only one with pre-loaded maps of the Americas and it is small, which is a bonus. We still have no idea about how to use it, but we will have lots of time to learn during the endless hours of driving! We are sure that it will come in handy and keep us from getting too lost (although, sometimes the best stuff happens to you when you do get lost...) Anyways, we'll keep you all posted on the technological exploits of our adventure.

Over the weekend we spent some time visiting family here. At Eric and Gina’s holiday dinner, which was a truly unbelievable feast, everybody kept asking us about our trip, which somehow suddenly made it seem more real to us. I guess we have been so focused on the little details that we didn’t realize that, yes, we are actually doing this (soon)! The good thing is that it seems like we will be getting some visitors to Punta del Diablo, especially of the youth contingent. The kids’ cousins - Matthew, Sascha and Seth (and hopefully Tina) – are planning a visit soon after we get to Uruguay. We have been tempting them devilishly with our talk of bird-watching (penguins on the beach!), whale-watching, beachcombing, etc. Ariel and Mateo also really enjoyed spending time with their cousins Annie and Daniel (who now also want to come see us in Uruguay, although it is pretty flat there and there wouldn’t be many rock-climbing opportunities for Daniel!). As a result of thier wonderful musical influence, we now have yet another instrument to take with us on our journey to be serenaded with along the way - a mandolin!

preparaciones ...

Hola a todos! Bueno, ya sabemos que mucha de la gente que nos va seguir en el blog no quiere o no puede leerlo en ingles, asi que vamos hacer el esfuerzo.... a mi me cuesta un poco escribir (y Gustavo es medio vago) pero ya cada dia vamos a empezar a hablar mas en espanol que en ingles, asi que va a ser interesante ver como va a ir cambiando esto mientras vamos manejando. Gracias a todos los que nos han dejado comentarios - sigan, sigan! Entre las enfermedades – el cancer de Gustavo, mi conmocion cerebral y el maldito virus de la compu (que recien ahora pudimos arreglar) – estamos re-estresados, asi que ayer fuimos a comprar un buen seguro que nos cubre para cualquier emergencia medica en el camino. Tocamos madera. Ahora lo unico es que no sabemos nada de mecanica y pensamos manejar unos 20,000 km! Ya se que muchos piensan que estamos re-locos por hacer esto - vamos a ver, lo mas probable es que tengan razon.

Remind me to never again plan a trip for this time of year! Between shopping madness, serious parking lot rage, offices closed for the holidays, and the weather (at least it gives me an excuse to bake!), getting prepared for our trip is turning out to be a real nightmare! Anyways, mountains of red tape and a small fortune later, we finally have all of our documents in order with the Uruguayan Consulate. Of course, it doesn't help that in the past couple of days the poor laptop contracted a horrible, malicious virus (I can't believe that people actually spend hours of time and energy creating these things - bad karma or what?!) and so we had to take it in to have it fixed. Twice. Nice timing. Luckily, just as we were preparing to shell out the dough for a new laptop to take with us, the university UTS Services people have now completely fixed the problem (a special "thank you very much" to Elvis! You're our hero!) Let's hope that doesn't ever happen again! The good thing is that it has taught us to back everything up. I bought a couple of USB memory sticks specifically for that purpose. Between Gustavo’s cancer, my concussion and this computer “infection,” we are really stressed out and health and security conscious. That’s why yesterday we also went and bought emergency travel medical insurance plans. I guess that doesn’t help with the laptop though, huh?

The good news is that we are almost done getting the bus ready for the trip - a special thank you to VW mechanics Dave Pinder and Scott Lyons for this. We are especially glad that we ended up changing all the tires (they were new, but the wrong size). The bad news is that we went and bought the wrong battery (apparently, we need a deep cycle battery in order to run the fridge without draining it). I know that many of you probably think that we are completely crazy (come on, admit it: even if you don’t say it you are thinking it!) for attempting to do a trip like this with little or no mechanical knowledge or experience whatsoever – you are probably right. We shall see.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIA EVA!

Snow Day!

Today was supposed to be the last day of school for the kids, when they could say thier goodbyes to teachers and classmates, but fate intervened and the schools were closed due to the weather. They were pretty sad early in the morning when they woke up to check if school was cancelled, but went back to sleep and were in better spirits upon the second waking. Maybe there is something nice about just saying, "see you tomorrow," instead of "goodbye"? Anyways, why do snow days always have to happen when they are least welcome? (Why not on exam day, for example? or a Monday-after-a-totally-crazy-weekend?). It snowed and blowed all day, and we ended up with 25 centimetres of snow! Mateo went to play at his friends Ben and Ollie's house up the street for a bit, and then was off to a sleepover birthday party at Matthew's, thanks to Matthew's mom, Diana, picking him up because, despite the fact that Gustavo and Ariel shoveled all day, we were unable to get our vehicle out of our alleyway (VW buses are not made for this weather -- I guess it's a good thing we are leaving soon!). But at least Ari was able to make some cash by shoveling out a neighbour's driveway!

We also managed to figure out how to fix our brand new camera (thank you Eva and Mary for this amazing gift!); apparently, there was a defect in the audio quality when filming. It is otherwise a perfect machine for us -- waterproof (up to 35 ft!) shockproof, crushproof, etc -- but there was some problem with the sound with the Olympus Stylus 1030SW in movie mode. The first couple of videos that we took had this "popping" sound every few seconds which was really distracting, and we thought we might have to return it; can you imagine trying to film the panorama from atop some Mayan pyramid, or a jungle tour down a Bolivian river, accompanied with a constant and irritating popping sound? Luckily we just updated the firmware of the camera, which specifically included an update to improve the audio, and that seems to have done the trick!

Ari's Post

Hello,
As you probably know I’m Ariel and here is a video of me playing the guitar. The song is called se fue al cielo by an Argentinean group called intoxicados.
I will write another entry soon.

Goodbye

Mateo's Post

Hi I am Mateo. I am very exited about the trip, it will be a trip of a lifetime! I am 9 years old. I like playing with Lego. I have 1 brother his name is Ariel. He is 13 years old.

I've liked living in Hamilton alot and I'll miss my good friends like: Matthew Mallard, Ben Woodley, Oliver Woodley, Jacob Wolfenden, Noah Hoffman and Simon Hoffman. I'll also miss my cat Eddie, but I know that he will be well taken care of by Grandma and Grandpa until he comes to Uruguay to be with us.

On the trip I am especially looking forward to going to the Aztec temples and machu pichu. I enjoy trying different fruits and cheeses. I cant wait to see the monkeys swinging in the trees in costa rica.

Wish me GOOD LUCK!!!!!

Bienvenidos!

It is hard to believe that after months of planning we are finally getting ready to head off on our big adventure through the Americas. In less than a month, we will load ourselves and our gear into our pop-top Westfalia, set our compass, and start driving south. It has not been as easy as we thought to reach this point and there have been a few bumps along the road, but now we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We were actually supposed to set off on this trip last July, but Gustavo was diagnosed with testicular cancer. If you are interested in reading a bit about what our summer was like, you can view our originally planned blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/ariteo/1/tpod.html

I think you will all agree that this current blog set-up is both more aesthetically pleasing and less confusing to navigate. I just hope it lets us upload the many photos and videos that we will be generating on the road! None of us has ever done anything like maintain a blog before, so we hope that you are patient with us as we learn as we go along. As excited we are about embarking on this well-earned trip, at the same time we are sad to leave our family and good friends in Canada behind. This blog will be a way to keep in touch and share our experiences with them, as well as create a forum to make new connections along the way. Sometimes posts will be in English, y a veces en espanol. Please feel free to leave comments for us or send us an email. Enjoy!