There have been a few questions about how we are going to finish this trip we are on.\u00a0 Here is the background on the current plan and the best guess as what the future holds:<\/p>\n

The family has made it back to Lima, Peru.\u00a0 We sold the camper in Santiago, Chile.\u00a0 Michelle found a great price on one-way tickets to La Paz, Bolivia from Santiago, Chile that routed through Lima, Peru with a 17 hour layover.\u00a0 It was much more expensive for tickets just to Lima.\u00a0 Go figure.\u00a0 So we bought them.\u00a0 This was because a month and a half ago, Michelle found an unbelievable one way fair from Lima, Peru to Fairbanks that flew on May 22nd.\u00a0 We bought six of them because that was all there were.\u00a0 At least most of us were guaranteed a way out.\u00a0 So we had to get back to Lima.<\/p>\n

We had intended to drive back to Peru and sell the camper, but one day in the parking lot of a gas\u00a0station\u00a0about 10 miles south of Santiago I started talking to a guy driving by on his way to work.\u00a0 He was asking me questions about the trip, Alaska, etc. and I told him how we were going to sell the camper in Lima. \u00a0The family didn\u2019t really want to drive back to Lima.\u00a0 It\u2019s 2200 miles of the most barren desert I have ever seen.\u00a0 Let me say, that is pretty barren.\u00a0 Nothing living at all. \u00a0Nothing. \u00a0At all.<\/p>\n

Long story short, the camper is in Santiago forever.\u00a0 We figured out we could freight the van back out of Valparaiso for a pretty good price \u00a0($3000) with a schedule that we thought could make work.\u00a0 The van leaves Valpo on May 2^{nd<\/sup> and is available for pick up on May 22nd<\/sup>.\u00a0 Since it takes 20 days for the van to get to LA, we would be without a car (or home) for that time, and that time had to end with us in Lima for Michelle and the 5 kids (not Ryan and I, yet) to get on the plane.<\/p>\n}

Michelle (again) found a great place for us to rent about 25 miles south of Lima, so we took it for the final three weeks while the van is on the boat.\u00a0 After this, Michelle, Ryan and Jack decided to fly all the way to La Paz, Bolivia on the tickets we bought.\u00a0 The rest of us were happy to stay in Lima at the beach house.\u00a0 So now Michelle, Ryan and Jack needed to get back from La Paz to Lima.\u00a0 Are you following?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t this fun?<\/p>\n

So the plan now (up for change at any given moment of any given day) is for the La Paz crew to take a bus from La Paz back to the old stomping grounds of Puno, Peru and meet up with some\u00a0 (new) old friends.\u00a0 Then head to Huliaca (where the Puno airport is) and catch a fight back to Lima, where we are all reunited.\u00a0 THEN we create the IQUITOS plan, where we all fly to the largest city in the world (1mil)\u00a0accessible\u00a0only by boat or plane.\u00a0 And it is on the Amazon.\u00a0 Because if you go to SA, you better see the Amazon , am I right?<\/p>\n

So after the\u00a0Amazon,\u00a0we all return to Lima, and six of us head out to the US, hopefully getting off the plane in Dallas instead of flying all the way to Fairbanks.\u00a0 Ryan and I fly to LAX (tickets yet to be determined) with the dogs to get the van out of customs, etc. and then drive to ???? (Dallas, Houston, Yuma, who knows?) and\u00a0 pick up the crew.\u00a0 We also buy a new camper (aka Camper 2.0) along the way and then head North to Alaska!<\/p>\n

SO! That is the plan(ish).\u00a0 Wish us luck, and if you haven\u2019t noticed yet,\u00a0 there is a link to buy us dinner on the right side of our page.\u00a0 Really, at this point, it would buy us a drink.\u00a0 So, thanks, if that is where your inspiration leads you. We (well really, I) could use it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been a few questions about how we are going to finish this trip we are on.\u00a0 Here is the background on the current plan and the best guess as what the future holds: The family has made it back to Lima, Peru.\u00a0 We sold the camper in Santiago, Chile.\u00a0 Michelle found a great… Continue reading From Mark: Exit Strategy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,329,265,217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-us","category-alaska-to-patagonia","category-chile","category-peru","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2119\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}