NORTH OR SOUTH

That was the question we put to ourselves.

The original plan for this trip three years ago was to drive through Central America, circle South America and drive home.  Then we changed our minds and decided to drive to the tip of South America and ship the truck home.  Then we changed our minds again and decided to drive to Panama and back.  Then we changed our minds again ..... and again.  This went on for the two years we planned for this trip.  In the end, we decided to leave and just see what happens.

On day one as we pulled away from Edmonton, with a truck that seemed to be overheating, we thought that we wouldn't even get out of Canada and thus started our adventure 291 days ago (as I type this).  We pretty much knew that day we wouldn't be getting to South America this time.  Day one we felt defeated but everyday we made it a little bit farther and each day we were surprised at how far we had come.  The day we hit Mexico was monumental for us - maybe we would make it to Panama after all.

So throughout this trip we never did decide on a plan, we just go day to day.  If we like a place we stay, if we don't we move on.  There has only been two times that we have had to be somewhere on a certain date. So as it happens, time has completely slipped away from us.  It has always been about heading south, we never thought a lot about heading home.  Until a few months ago we didn't realize that we needed to be a lot further down the road if we were going to meet our travel goals.  This posed a problem.

We started to take a look at our money, we added up the miles from Panama to Canada and factored in how slow we drive.  Turning around and driving home, going through all those borders again and all of those miles we had to get through became overwhelming.  So we started looking into flying home and shipping the truck back to Canada (or somewhere in the states).  We received quotes and talked to other travellers to try and figure out what to do.  As we saw it, we had two options.  Option one - drive to Panama, see it well and ship the truck home.  The downside to this is that a lot of our funds would go into shipping costs and it felt like wasted money to us. We've heard that the process of shipping north is a nightmare and can take a lot of time.  Or option two - skip Panama, turn around after we have visited with family and spend the remainder of our time in Mexico, seeing the places we missed on the way down.  The downside to this is that we miss Panama and don't succeed at one of our goals but at the same time we get to feel more in control, continue to meander along (this time north) and we use the money for our trip.  I guess the obvious third option is to drive to Panama and then turn around.  Thing is, we've ran out of time.  We move along at such a slow pace we would have to add months onto our trip.  Time that we just don't have.  We did consider crossing the border and spending a few days checking out a few places in the northern part of the country but that just felt like cheating.  This was such a hard decision because we REALLY wanted to see Panama, we just travel so slow.  A year was just not long enough for us.

So again we went back and forth.  Every second day we would change our minds.  One day ship, the next day drive.

About a month ago we made our absolute final decision.

North - we've turned around.  But the adventure still continues.........