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Mali-Mish, a Family of Five on Four Continents · The Overland Journal Podcast

0:03
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
0:06
Speaker 1: host Scott Brady, and I'm here with my co host
0:08
Speaker 1: Matt Scott. Hello, and we are here with Dan and
0:11
Speaker 1: Marlene from the Molly Mish and they have traveled to
0:15
Speaker 1: over forty countries and they just got back from a
0:18
Speaker 1: big trip. They drive a Mercedes Sprinter and they travel
0:22
Speaker 1: with There's five of.
0:23
Speaker 2: You in there, isn't it.
0:24
Speaker 3: There is three, three here te seven if you count
0:27
Speaker 3: the cast these days.
0:28
Speaker 2: You spiner Man's amazing.
0:33
Speaker 1: Give us a little bit of insight into where you've been,
0:37
Speaker 1: what you've done. Just give us kind of an overview
0:39
Speaker 1: so people know where you guys have been in the world.
0:41
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1:24
Speaker 3: Thanks Moonshade. It's just sort of raw numbers. We've been
1:27
Speaker 3: on the road for about fourteen years. Forty one country,
1:31
Speaker 3: four continents, forty nine US states, all the provinces in Canada,
1:35
Speaker 3: however many there are territories, yeah, most of the Mexican states.
1:40
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:41
Speaker 3: We are in a currently we're in a one seventy
1:44
Speaker 3: four x four sprinter van. Nice we switched to in
1:47
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen with the intention to ship across to Europe,
1:52
Speaker 3: which turned out to be a good idea. But before
1:53
Speaker 3: that we're in four wheel camper on f two to
1:56
Speaker 3: fifty chassis for two years, okay, And before that we
1:59
Speaker 3: were doing US North America in a two thousand and
2:02
Speaker 3: seven airstream trailer.
2:04
Speaker 2: And there's nothing wrong with an area.
2:05
Speaker 4: I think that's where I became first familiar with you guys,
2:07
Speaker 4: was was the airstream phase? What that was like five
2:11
Speaker 4: or six years ago or something, because that's when we
2:13
Speaker 4: were like six years ago.
2:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's when we.
2:14
Speaker 4: Were kind of like looking at you know, oh, can
2:16
Speaker 4: we like run the business from an airstream? And we
2:19
Speaker 4: bought a two fifty and did everything. I don't know
2:21
Speaker 4: why we didn't end up doing that. I think we
2:23
Speaker 4: realized that we would we would kill each other, as
2:26
Speaker 4: people living it can find that's nice together. So that's
2:30
Speaker 4: my first question. How do you not kill each other?
2:33
Speaker 4: Having five of you and two cats in a van? Well,
2:36
Speaker 4: you know, one seventy sprinters big.
2:37
Speaker 3: It is, and I think what we realized at this
2:40
Speaker 3: stage we can and shouldn't go smaller. Okay, yeah, so
2:43
Speaker 3: we've actually gotten smaller over time because we started when
2:46
Speaker 3: our oldest who's fifteen now, was just one and these
2:49
Speaker 3: two weren't born yet. As our family grew bigger, our
2:51
Speaker 3: ambitions got bigger, so we had to choose, Okay, we
2:54
Speaker 3: have to go smaller and the vehicles we can go
2:56
Speaker 3: more places, but we also have to make them we're comfortable.
2:58
Speaker 3: What became really important, which just layout as a matter
3:01
Speaker 3: of fact, our twenty five foot airstream isn't laid out
3:03
Speaker 3: as good as our four wheel camper or our sprinter
3:06
Speaker 3: for a family of five. Interesting thing, So that's what
3:09
Speaker 3: it's really what's kind?
3:10
Speaker 2: I mean? Did you have like the front and bedroom? Yeah? Okay,
3:13
Speaker 2: why that doesn't make sense to me?
3:15
Speaker 4: Like, what was it about the layout of the airstream
3:18
Speaker 4: that didn't work for you? I'm just curious full time
3:20
Speaker 4: these are the best questions. When that's curious, it's usually good.
3:24
Speaker 2: He really wants to know.
3:25
Speaker 3: It's the idea of having full time beds that don't convert. Okay, Okay,
3:29
Speaker 3: you know because when you live in a full time
3:31
Speaker 3: and there's all different types of scenarios can happen, and
3:34
Speaker 3: then you've got to consider the worst case scenario, which
3:36
Speaker 3: is long driving day.
3:38
Speaker 2: Everybody's tired.
3:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, nobody wants to like find finally find a place
3:42
Speaker 3: to stand the night and then go into camper and
3:44
Speaker 3: then realize you have.
3:45
Speaker 2: To do an hour of setting up. Sure, you know.
3:47
Speaker 3: So I think people that have done this knows that
3:50
Speaker 3: if you can make the setup as easy as possible,
3:52
Speaker 3: it's going to make your life. And that kind of
3:54
Speaker 3: goes with not killing each other at easier. Okay, yeah,
3:58
Speaker 3: you know that makes sense.
4:00
Speaker 4: Reduce stress, reduce, Yeah, reduce every way you can. The
4:03
Speaker 4: TTB time to bed exactly. Yeah. So that's a new
4:07
Speaker 4: term that we've invented on the TV podcast hashtag TTD.
4:11
Speaker 4: I actually call it time to beer. And it's the
4:14
Speaker 4: thing I love about the roamer because I don't have
4:16
Speaker 4: to do anything and then I can pull up and
4:18
Speaker 4: crack a beer.
4:18
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the best TTV. That's start.
4:21
Speaker 3: That's a big difference between our foil camper and the sprinter. Yeah,
4:24
Speaker 3: is we can access to fridge without going outside.
4:27
Speaker 2: Yeah.
4:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's not that we're you know, promoting having
4:31
Speaker 3: a beer when the driver's seat and obviously we're not
4:35
Speaker 3: doing that so us Yeah, right, so cold coffee, that's right.
4:39
Speaker 2: Now.
4:40
Speaker 1: What did you guys do before you started traveling full time?
4:43
Speaker 1: And is were you able to transition your business or
4:47
Speaker 1: your career to doing.
4:48
Speaker 2: That while you're traveling? How did that all work? I've
4:50
Speaker 2: been a web developer.
4:51
Speaker 3: I was working for mostly startups in the southern California area.
4:56
Speaker 2: Okay, and in.
4:57
Speaker 3: Two thousand and four, the last company I worked for
5:00
Speaker 3: acquired by a Fortune five hundred company, so it has
5:03
Speaker 3: some stock options.
5:04
Speaker 2: Okay.
5:04
Speaker 3: So as a young thirty something, I felt like I've
5:08
Speaker 3: made it. Yeah sure, really, you know, it was just
5:10
Speaker 3: enough for me to walk away for a bit, sure,
5:12
Speaker 3: to kind of start my own thing. So I started
5:14
Speaker 3: my own sort of freelance business. Old you we need
5:17
Speaker 3: did that in two thousand and four? Was twenty nine?
5:20
Speaker 2: Okay?
5:21
Speaker 3: Cool, So in two thousand and four I became a
5:24
Speaker 3: self employed freelance web developer. You know, we're still young,
5:28
Speaker 3: we haven't kids yet, so our mentality was totally different.
5:30
Speaker 3: We weren't We weren't necessarily the people that have these
5:33
Speaker 3: world traveling ambitions. We were like suburban nites. Right, Okay,
5:37
Speaker 3: we're in this house. We've got to buy a house.
5:39
Speaker 3: We've got to get a bigger house, gonna get a
5:40
Speaker 3: cooler car, and yeah, yeah, yeah, you can do that.
5:43
Speaker 3: You can go down that dark.
5:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can just go down that black hole and.
5:46
Speaker 1: Like never come back. There's a there's a sailing couple.
5:49
Speaker 1: It's called sailing um Or. They're on YouTube. They're tagline
5:53
Speaker 1: is don't buy a couch. Like if you can avoid,
5:56
Speaker 1: like we were talking.
5:57
Speaker 4: About, so it makes so much sense, like if you
5:59
Speaker 4: can avoid when you're buying the couch.
6:01
Speaker 3: As soon as you buy the couch, you're kind of done.
6:04
Speaker 3: Just don't don't ever live in a place that has
6:06
Speaker 3: space for a couch.
6:08
Speaker 5: Exactly, Yeah, exactly, Ton, But that takes a lot of
6:14
Speaker 5: that takes a lot of courage to buffet the system
6:16
Speaker 5: to go in a different direction than buying the house
6:19
Speaker 5: in Riverside, you know what, just going down the road.
6:22
Speaker 3: I guess for us what really got us the desire
6:25
Speaker 3: to go see stuff is actually after we started having kids.
6:28
Speaker 3: You know, we had our oldest in two thousand and seven.
6:31
Speaker 3: You know, now we're like a young family of three,
6:33
Speaker 3: and we're like, you know, let's go take her to travel.
6:36
Speaker 3: I work from home. You know, we don't have to
6:37
Speaker 3: stay here if we don't want to. And what were
6:39
Speaker 3: you traveling in at that point? Our first ever camper
6:42
Speaker 3: was a was a Tabis.
6:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure, they were relatively new to the scene of
6:48
Speaker 2: the time.
6:48
Speaker 3: I think they went away for a couple of years
6:50
Speaker 3: and then they came back, so they're pretty popular now.
6:52
Speaker 2: Again.
6:52
Speaker 3: Our first trip was actually to touths On, Arizona with
6:55
Speaker 3: her for like three weeks awesome, and two of those
6:59
Speaker 3: weeks she got like a really bad respiratory infection of hospitalized.
7:03
Speaker 2: Oh no.
7:05
Speaker 3: So luckily they have a good children's hospital. So we
7:08
Speaker 3: were in the I was in the trailer. She was
7:10
Speaker 3: in the hospital room with her. During that time. I
7:12
Speaker 3: was in the camper in the hospital parking lot, and
7:15
Speaker 3: my thought was like, well, you can camp at any
7:17
Speaker 3: hospital for free.
7:18
Speaker 2: Probably they won't kick you out, you know. So I always.
7:24
Speaker 3: No, no, I've never kept in the hospital since, but
7:27
Speaker 3: I always think about it's like maybe a few Walmart
7:30
Speaker 3: parking lots, oh, I mean.
7:32
Speaker 2: Probably three digits. I know, Walmart slipt out.
7:37
Speaker 4: It's like expectation of living life on the road is
7:39
Speaker 4: a beautiful campsite. The reality, Yeah, one more parking lot.
7:43
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's your only choice.
7:45
Speaker 3: I mean when we came back from Europe to a
7:48
Speaker 3: month ago, we finally got our band back, it was
7:50
Speaker 3: actually quite comforting to pull into a Walmart, like we
7:54
Speaker 3: were like, we're like nostalgic for it.
7:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.
7:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, Unfortunately, like a lot of Walmarts have stop letting
7:59
Speaker 3: people part.
8:00
Speaker 2: That's true, and that's true.
8:01
Speaker 4: You guys just got back from Europe relatively recently.
8:04
Speaker 2: I mean, you guys did row row over there and back.
8:06
Speaker 2: I think right. I mean, I guess one of the
8:08
Speaker 2: things we've never really talked about is is that shipping
8:11
Speaker 2: to Europe.
8:11
Speaker 4: You know, we've had people talk about shipping to Africa
8:13
Speaker 4: and all these kinds of things.
8:15
Speaker 2: What was that process? Like?
8:16
Speaker 4: Was it easy? Where did you where did you exit
8:19
Speaker 4: the US? Where did you enter Europe and vice versa.
8:22
Speaker 4: So like I'm selfishly curious.
8:25
Speaker 6: Twenty eighteen, we ship from Baltimore, Okay, and it was
8:29
Speaker 6: coming there right, yeah, So we for the safest route
8:34
Speaker 6: with not a lot of stops. Stops mean chances of
8:38
Speaker 6: break in or something into your vehicle. So we went
8:40
Speaker 6: directly from Baltimore to z.
8:42
Speaker 7: Brus and Belgium.
8:43
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, And like for those that don't know, you
8:47
Speaker 3: hand over your keys to the shipping company and then
8:50
Speaker 3: they say leave the doors unlocked and it works, yeah.
8:53
Speaker 2: And then they say there's nothing in there, right, and
8:55
Speaker 2: you say, right, that's right.
8:57
Speaker 7: Well of hot sauce and clothes that's.
9:00
Speaker 5: Supposed to ship personal effects like when I shipped back
9:03
Speaker 5: from Panama, Rorope, you're not supposed to have any fuel
9:06
Speaker 5: in it, like it to get one of course that
9:09
Speaker 5: you know, you do the nod nod wink.
9:10
Speaker 1: And of course I've got like all my stuff and
9:12
Speaker 1: I got.
9:13
Speaker 3: To drive away from the port when I gets there,
9:15
Speaker 3: and I'll tell you that Panama was amazing.
9:17
Speaker 2: They were perfect and nothing got so good.
9:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we haven't had anything, but you know, you
9:22
Speaker 3: hear about it.
9:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, but of course you only hear about the bats. Yeah,
9:25
Speaker 2: that's right.
9:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were fortunate because you know, we also chose
9:29
Speaker 3: the first time. They actually had two extra stops that
9:31
Speaker 3: were unanticipated. But it went to like Frankfurt and then
9:34
Speaker 3: maybe it went to somewhere in UK, right, but just
9:37
Speaker 3: coming back was yeah, NonStop port to port and then
9:41
Speaker 3: minimize the chance of somebody sticking their head in.
9:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:44
Speaker 1: Sure, And as I recall, it's a lot cheaper to
9:47
Speaker 1: ship to Europe than back, Yeah, because of the number of.
9:49
Speaker 2: There's more cars coming this way than the other way.
9:52
Speaker 2: We had heard that.
9:53
Speaker 3: It turned out to be true, but we don't know
9:55
Speaker 3: how much of the increase in price was due to
9:58
Speaker 3: just the troubles with the current logistic.
10:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:01
Speaker 4: I mean when you initially shipped in twenty eighteen, was
10:04
Speaker 4: shipping back in twenty twenty two.
10:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, the world life.
10:07
Speaker 4: I know what containers used to cost me in eighteen
10:09
Speaker 4: and I know what they cost me in twenty two.
10:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think container prices have jumped high.
10:15
Speaker 4: Ro rows relatively asistent because they can't produce the cars.
10:18
Speaker 4: And it's great a volume, right, and these ships are
10:20
Speaker 4: so specific.
10:21
Speaker 3: And then with containers you're competing with everybody who's yeah,
10:25
Speaker 3: selling a little talk keys and getting them made from wherever.
10:27
Speaker 3: I think it went up about sixty percent compared to
10:30
Speaker 3: shipping there and shipping back.
10:31
Speaker 2: And can I ask how much it was initially like
10:34
Speaker 2: to get there in.
10:35
Speaker 6: Twenty five hundred, they said, and done paperwork and everything
10:38
Speaker 6: to get there.
10:39
Speaker 7: On the way back it was fourth out.
10:41
Speaker 2: What about insurance for the EU?
10:43
Speaker 3: Like what?
10:43
Speaker 4: Because I don't know why more people don't shift to Europe.
10:46
Speaker 4: There's so many cool things there. You have access to
10:48
Speaker 4: North Africa, you have access to East places in Eastern Europe,
10:51
Speaker 4: you have all the Nordic countries and all that kind
10:53
Speaker 4: of stuff.
10:53
Speaker 2: There's so much cool stuff in great infrastructure.
10:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, great infrastructure, in the world's best art museums. I'm
10:59
Speaker 4: super keen on. So what was the insurance process like
11:02
Speaker 4: for a US registered vehicle? Was it easy to acquire?
11:05
Speaker 4: Who did you use it?
11:06
Speaker 2: Was easy for us.
11:08
Speaker 3: We use a company that specializes in foreign vehicles traveling
11:12
Speaker 3: in Europe, so they require you can do full coverage
11:15
Speaker 3: if you want. At the minimum, you need liability. And
11:18
Speaker 3: for liability they use what's called the Green Card insurance
11:21
Speaker 3: and that's what everybody has.
11:22
Speaker 2: Anyone who has a car in Europe has to have
11:24
Speaker 2: a green.
11:25
Speaker 3: Card insurance card and it has like all the country's
11:28
Speaker 3: names on it and then the ones that they cover
11:31
Speaker 3: our circle and the ones.
11:32
Speaker 2: That are like punched out or something. Yeah, so we
11:34
Speaker 2: had all of EU countries.
11:36
Speaker 7: Covered as Americans as Americans.
11:38
Speaker 3: And through our insurance company, you can get more, but
11:41
Speaker 3: I don't know how we didn't get but you can
11:43
Speaker 3: also buy liability insurance per country while you're there with
11:46
Speaker 3: no EU countries. We our van liability was fifteen hundred
11:50
Speaker 3: dollars a year.
11:51
Speaker 2: That's really not that bad. One.
11:53
Speaker 3: They didn't require us to keep our liability insurance in
11:57
Speaker 3: the US, which I don't know why, but we have
11:59
Speaker 3: thirty You know.
12:00
Speaker 6: We're from California, so we have to keep liability minimum to.
12:03
Speaker 7: Keep our registration.
12:04
Speaker 2: Sure, gotcha, yeah, got person.
12:06
Speaker 4: I think Arizona does that too, because I realized one
12:09
Speaker 4: of my motorcycles is registration has been killing because they
12:12
Speaker 4: have insurance because it's been sitting there for like.
12:15
Speaker 3: Three years in the cord is gathering dust, pretty straightforward.
12:18
Speaker 3: But full coverage gets expensive. Yeah.
12:20
Speaker 2: I think if you.
12:21
Speaker 3: Want a full like theft and in accidental cover just
12:25
Speaker 3: like well our van anyways was going to be like
12:27
Speaker 3: seven thousand for a year. Wow, we really it's very expensive.
12:32
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, and there's only a few that do it.
12:34
Speaker 3: Thumb insurance is one you can insure through Lloyd's as well,
12:37
Speaker 3: but that's even more expensive. Yeah.
12:40
Speaker 2: What was the one that we looked into just a.
12:42
Speaker 1: Few months trip down to Panama with a vehicle. It
12:45
Speaker 1: was over five thousand dollars for full coverage.
12:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, just because the vehicle was expensive enough
12:50
Speaker 3: word be, as far as insurance is concerned, you have
12:53
Speaker 3: to also pay for separate loss insurance if you want
12:56
Speaker 3: full coverage for the for the robot trip, if you're
12:59
Speaker 3: concerned that's something that happened to the ship, which on
13:01
Speaker 3: the way back we were just a month before that
13:03
Speaker 3: roilroad ship sing all right with all those fancy cars
13:05
Speaker 3: and they were all on fire and everything. The odds
13:10
Speaker 3: are better for our ship or is this a trend? Yeah,
13:16
Speaker 3: hopefully not a startup. Both of our trips were very
13:20
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say easy, but we're fortunate nothing bad happened.
13:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's delays, obviously, there's always delays.
13:25
Speaker 1: So well, one of the questions that I have, I
13:28
Speaker 1: don't have children myself. You know, I spent a lot
13:30
Speaker 1: of time with my nephews, and I just I know
13:33
Speaker 1: how joyful that is to be with them, but I
13:35
Speaker 1: get to give them back for you, guys, how did
13:38
Speaker 1: things change from what you expected travel to be like
13:41
Speaker 1: with the family of five and the realities now that
13:44
Speaker 1: you guys have traveled in Europe together and you've spent
13:46
Speaker 1: so much time in close quarters, what's been the amazing
13:49
Speaker 1: joys from that that things that have changed you as
13:52
Speaker 1: a family. And then what advice would you give to
13:54
Speaker 1: a family that wanted to do something similar.
13:56
Speaker 6: I think when we started, we were like, let's go
13:59
Speaker 6: to Florida and do like our big three month trip
14:02
Speaker 6: and we'll show our kid.
14:03
Speaker 7: The sites.
14:04
Speaker 6: Didn't become what we were going to go look at.
14:07
Speaker 6: It became our bond, you know, was so much stronger.
14:11
Speaker 2: We're still on a three month trip. I love it.
14:13
Speaker 6: Fourteen years later, the bond between us was stronger because
14:17
Speaker 6: we were together all the time. We knew, we knew
14:19
Speaker 6: what we were feeling, and we're experiencing everything together, so
14:22
Speaker 6: we had the same memories, we can talk about the
14:24
Speaker 6: same things. And then once we had more kids, the
14:27
Speaker 6: sibling bond and how much they like spending time together
14:30
Speaker 6: is why we keep doing this.
14:32
Speaker 1: Just as a logistics thing, I'm just thinking about if
14:34
Speaker 1: you're pregnant on the road, like, how do you plan
14:36
Speaker 1: on where you're going to have how does that work?
14:39
Speaker 6: We made a bad financial decision and we left our
14:42
Speaker 6: house empty and we weren't in it until I was pregnant.
14:46
Speaker 2: We knew we're done with having kids.
14:48
Speaker 7: Yeah, and then we sold it up to the third kid.
14:50
Speaker 6: But between the first and the third kid, we left
14:52
Speaker 6: our home empty in California, and I used the same
14:55
Speaker 6: doctor and they were all born in the same hospital,
14:57
Speaker 6: and as you know, as they had their shots and
14:59
Speaker 6: they were clear from a doctor.
15:00
Speaker 7: We went back.
15:01
Speaker 1: And so when you were pregnant, you would come back
15:03
Speaker 1: to California, you would be there and got it after
15:06
Speaker 1: that makes sense, I mean, we have like that sounds
15:08
Speaker 1: like like an adventure.
15:09
Speaker 2: All of itself.
15:10
Speaker 3: People have people have done that. I'm sure I think
15:13
Speaker 3: that we think that's crazy. That is crazy for us.
15:16
Speaker 3: You know, it was never It wasn't about like trying
15:18
Speaker 3: to get all the adventures done before kids. We didn't
15:21
Speaker 3: start until after we had kids. Sure, so it was
15:23
Speaker 3: all part of the equation. We didn't really have a
15:26
Speaker 3: lot of people to kind of ask questions about at
15:27
Speaker 3: the time because social media when we started wasn't really
15:30
Speaker 3: a thing. I think we had blackberries. It's gotten easier.
15:35
Speaker 3: We met a lot of likes like we met it.
15:37
Speaker 1: You know.
15:37
Speaker 2: We had a couple of sessions with other families that
15:39
Speaker 2: want to do this.
15:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we talked to a lot of people and
15:42
Speaker 3: we just we tell them like, clearly, this is not
15:44
Speaker 3: like having kids doesn't mean you have to stop, but
15:46
Speaker 3: you do have to change your mindset about what traveling
15:49
Speaker 3: is like. So we talked to the kids every year,
15:52
Speaker 3: right around like end of the year, we said, do
15:53
Speaker 3: you guys, are you guys still having fun?
15:54
Speaker 2: You still want to do this?
15:55
Speaker 3: You know, because you don't want to have you don't
15:57
Speaker 3: want to drag your kids along on your adventure.
15:59
Speaker 2: You want to be on an adventure that every family adventure. Yeah,
16:02
Speaker 2: that's the mindset.
16:03
Speaker 3: Change you have to have when you're doing it with kids.
16:06
Speaker 2: And we are seeing it more and more.
16:07
Speaker 1: I was traveling through Central America, you would definitely bump into.
16:11
Speaker 2: Like French family.
16:12
Speaker 1: French families in an RV that they bought in France
16:15
Speaker 1: and they shipped them over a row row and they
16:17
Speaker 1: got eighty seven kids in there. You would find that
16:19
Speaker 1: on occasion, and they were all so well adjusted and happy.
16:22
Speaker 1: I mean, we have Graham Bell here in the audience
16:24
Speaker 1: and he's traveled for decades with his kids.
16:27
Speaker 2: People that are doing it.
16:28
Speaker 3: It is funny when you said French family, because when
16:30
Speaker 3: the families would come across in Europe, usually they're French.
16:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, if there's a family, it's French, and it's.
16:35
Speaker 4: So jealous of the French, like and it seemed to
16:37
Speaker 4: like have these like wonderful, peaceful lives with more rose,
16:45
Speaker 4: Matt Rose champagne. You know, it's all come to my
16:48
Speaker 4: complexion this week. You've turned the color of rose. Essentially
16:52
Speaker 4: looking at you makes me thirsty. You are what you
16:54
Speaker 4: drink twenty five percent red bull.
16:58
Speaker 1: Now that you're looking looking back on that trip from Europe,
17:01
Speaker 1: how would you say that having your kids with you
17:05
Speaker 1: has changed YouTube. How have you guys seen your perspective
17:08
Speaker 1: on the world change.
17:10
Speaker 6: We're more aware of the environment, and like when we
17:14
Speaker 6: camp from wild Camp and there's just trash around, it
17:18
Speaker 6: just makes me sad for the next generation. But it
17:20
Speaker 6: makes me excited to raise kids that can see that
17:23
Speaker 6: and say this is wrong, like we need to clean
17:25
Speaker 6: up the earth and take care of the nature.
17:26
Speaker 4: More So, I don't really want to focus on like
17:31
Speaker 4: Western European countries like no fense to like France and
17:34
Speaker 4: Germany and that kind of stuff, but industrialized or whatever.
17:37
Speaker 2: What were the most wild places that you went to
17:40
Speaker 2: in Europe?
17:41
Speaker 3: As Americans, you have to do what's called the Schengen shuffle. Yeah,
17:45
Speaker 3: fortunately we didn't have to deal with that, but we
17:47
Speaker 3: were well aware of.
17:48
Speaker 4: It, and we have for one hundred and eighty days
17:50
Speaker 4: and yeah day.
17:52
Speaker 3: Out of ninety rolling window previous hundred eighty days. So
17:56
Speaker 3: you have to leave Shanngen countries that are the most
17:59
Speaker 3: popular tours and countries, so you're forced to go out.
18:03
Speaker 3: You know, you can go to you go to Morocco
18:05
Speaker 3: and go to Turkey.
18:06
Speaker 2: You can go to we.
18:08
Speaker 6: Did Morocco, during the pandemic, had to wait for rescue
18:13
Speaker 6: votes with all French.
18:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to leave your van there though.
18:20
Speaker 3: No No, so other Americans and Canadians had to because
18:23
Speaker 3: they were only allowing EU citizens or residents back into
18:27
Speaker 3: the EU. I see, So that's what I was saying.
18:29
Speaker 3: We didn't have to do the Shakan shuffle. Because Marling's
18:31
Speaker 3: family is from Croatia. She was able to get dual
18:34
Speaker 3: citizenship for herself and the kids, and then I was.
18:36
Speaker 2: Able to back.
18:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they say you can stay as long as
18:40
Speaker 3: you're with them, so we got back. We're able to
18:43
Speaker 3: come back to Europe during that during that lockdown period
18:47
Speaker 3: because of that. And then there were there were a
18:49
Speaker 3: couple from Montana that was stuck there longer, there was
18:52
Speaker 3: a couple from There was a family from Canada that
18:54
Speaker 3: was stuck there longer, and there was a couple from
18:57
Speaker 3: Malaysia that was stuck there longer. Wow, So we actually
19:00
Speaker 3: felt pretty fortunate. Yeah, but we're sharing our experience pretty
19:03
Speaker 3: much live at the time, so you know, I think
19:05
Speaker 3: it was it was an amazing time.
19:07
Speaker 4: I'm sure it was really stressful, like it would suck,
19:10
Speaker 4: let's be honest. Yeah, but I mean looking back, like
19:12
Speaker 4: that's kind of a unique thing. I mean, the world
19:14
Speaker 4: shut down and you had to figure out how to
19:16
Speaker 4: get you, your family and your car from one continent
19:19
Speaker 4: to another when everything shut down.
19:22
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the fairies to Spain is only a
19:24
Speaker 2: thirty minute.
19:25
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, except Spain was the country that closed itself
19:29
Speaker 3: to Morocco.
19:30
Speaker 2: So we had a way for a fairy that came
19:32
Speaker 2: down from France, which is a yeah.
19:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a two day fairy because it was
19:38
Speaker 3: coming to get people, so they weren't carrying anybody down,
19:41
Speaker 3: so everybody had to pay for a round trip ticket
19:44
Speaker 3: for the fairy to come get us.
19:46
Speaker 2: We still have the return ticket to Spain. Yeah yeah.
19:53
Speaker 6: Talking about favorite countries though, it seems like our favorite
19:55
Speaker 6: countries like we love all the countries, but the ones
19:58
Speaker 6: on the outside, Like okay, we went to Morocco and
20:01
Speaker 6: it's like, oh so cool here we can go further,
20:04
Speaker 6: Like it pushes us, like, oh we love Turkey.
20:06
Speaker 7: How we can just keep going to Central Asia? I
20:08
Speaker 7: think those are somehow of that.
20:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
20:10
Speaker 1: It pushes us and special thanks to the New England
20:13
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20:16
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20:21
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20:24
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Speaker 1: Overland Rally will be one of the largest gatherings of
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21:02
Speaker 3: We're talking to some friends that Richard and Ashley. Yes, yeah,
21:05
Speaker 3: They're talking about their experience in Saudi Arabia and they're like, oh, yeah,
21:08
Speaker 3: you know, it's like when the first time you hear
21:10
Speaker 3: the call to prayers in the morning. It's amazing for
21:13
Speaker 3: an American it's a complete different cultural experience that's incredible.
21:17
Speaker 3: And then people say, oh, yeah, I didn't have time
21:18
Speaker 3: to go down to Morocco. I was in Europe for
21:20
Speaker 3: a little bit. Only if I I've had gone, I will,
21:22
Speaker 3: I will go for like two days to Tangier. But
21:25
Speaker 3: I was saying like, well, you know, if you take
21:26
Speaker 3: it half our frad to Tangier, that's practically a spaceship
21:29
Speaker 3: to Mars, you're in a different planet when you get there,
21:31
Speaker 3: are thirty minutes away. So if you just have that
21:34
Speaker 3: a little bit of time, by all means, go try it. Yeah,
21:36
Speaker 3: Morocco is really special. Yeah, I want to go back.
21:39
Speaker 3: Morocco was like so.
21:41
Speaker 2: Easy to get to.
21:41
Speaker 3: It's it's the equivalent of European even with the surfing too.
21:46
Speaker 2: And it's funny like.
21:47
Speaker 4: You find the airport Americas, like in the parking lot,
21:50
Speaker 4: there's all these overland trucks that's like parked, like it's
21:53
Speaker 4: really cool, like people leave them there, they fly in,
21:56
Speaker 4: they fly out, they Travelsblanci just had a rental car
22:00
Speaker 4: and that little Adacia Sandero or something.
22:03
Speaker 3: Those are like popular down Yeah, really cool. It had
22:05
Speaker 3: like it was diesel and it had like a ninety
22:07
Speaker 3: later dual tank. It was like a lifted Corolla and
22:11
Speaker 3: we may or may not have found some really cool
22:13
Speaker 3: Dakar course by Agadeer, and we may or may not
22:15
Speaker 3: taken off the front skid played on it. But it
22:18
Speaker 3: was really fun place. We wish you had more time.
22:19
Speaker 3: That would end up only having a month before everything happened.
22:22
Speaker 3: We would go back and experience the coast, which is
22:25
Speaker 3: what we missed. The thought was, okay, let's go inland
22:27
Speaker 3: first because it's gonna get hot, and then we'll slowly
22:30
Speaker 3: come back up the coast.
22:31
Speaker 2: And our slow back up the coast was like half
22:34
Speaker 2: a day.
22:35
Speaker 3: Kind of get up there before the border close and
22:38
Speaker 3: yeah you're moving. Yeah, but still, like you're said, like this,
22:42
Speaker 3: the heroin experiences ends up being the ones you remember
22:45
Speaker 3: and you kind of look almost fondly back on it.
22:48
Speaker 4: Well, we were talking about that yesterday, and we're so
22:51
Speaker 4: lucky as humans that were programmed to forget the bad
22:53
Speaker 4: stuff as time goes on. We just remember that those
22:56
Speaker 4: good memories of travel. Yeah, yeah, your stories. Yeah, well
23:02
Speaker 4: they say it's not an adventure until something goes wrong. Yeah,
23:04
Speaker 4: I'm really curious about Eastern Europe. These are very dynamic
23:08
Speaker 4: there at the moment.
23:09
Speaker 1: Moldovia and just going into like Bosnia, Herzegovia.
23:14
Speaker 2: That area, did you guys travel there much? Sure? Yeah,
23:16
Speaker 2: what did you guys find in there? I have not
23:19
Speaker 2: been to that country.
23:20
Speaker 3: So Lea's families from Croatia originally, sure so, and then
23:24
Speaker 3: they left during the Balkan War, sure, or actually before
23:27
Speaker 3: the Balkan War. She would go back as a kid
23:29
Speaker 3: when it was still Yugoslavia.
23:32
Speaker 2: And there was a period in the nineties where they
23:34
Speaker 2: couldn't go back.
23:35
Speaker 3: So we kind of see the Balkans with a slightly
23:38
Speaker 3: different perspective because of that familial history. It feels like
23:42
Speaker 3: home to us because she speaks Croatian. But everywhere we
23:45
Speaker 3: go it diffuses any tension. I mean, yeah, like we're
23:48
Speaker 3: in Bosnia, where's in Serbia? Like we need to park
23:50
Speaker 3: Devan somewhere to go to the Chivapi place. Were parked
23:53
Speaker 3: in front of this house and the guy comes out
23:54
Speaker 3: starts yelling at us in Serbian or Bosnian, and she's
23:58
Speaker 3: asked them in Croatian back because it's the same English
24:00
Speaker 3: practically okay, And he's like, oh, okay, yeah, you can
24:02
Speaker 3: park there, and then his mom comes outstarts yelling, and
24:05
Speaker 3: it says, I know they're cool, They're cool, let him
24:07
Speaker 3: park there.
24:08
Speaker 4: I think a lot of Americans are still intimidated by
24:11
Speaker 4: that area or they just don't know.
24:13
Speaker 2: They don't know it as much more than a war.
24:16
Speaker 1: When I was there about that, I was there, I
24:18
Speaker 1: was under completely different auspices.
24:20
Speaker 2: So that's why I'd like to go back.
24:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd a lot of people who have experienced there.
24:25
Speaker 3: I think they have military experience from being stationed nearby
24:28
Speaker 3: and having it like, yeah, negotiate that stuff. I grew
24:31
Speaker 3: up in Chicago, and I grew up with so many
24:32
Speaker 3: people that came from that area. During the war, when
24:34
Speaker 3: a lot of people ended up in Chicago, there's a
24:36
Speaker 3: lot of CIEs. They didn't have necessari They had just
24:39
Speaker 3: left a country that was at war, you know, so
24:40
Speaker 3: it was like, I really want to push myself together.
24:43
Speaker 2: I just don't know anything about it.
24:44
Speaker 4: And I think a lot of people are in the
24:46
Speaker 4: same boat that they get stuck to the Shangan countries
24:48
Speaker 4: in Europe and they just don't explore and they don't
24:50
Speaker 4: appreciate or recognize the history that is in that whole.
24:53
Speaker 1: Region, and that coastline and it is stunning. Yeah, that
24:57
Speaker 1: was what was the route that you guys did in Croatia.
25:00
Speaker 1: That comes to mind as being more adventurous and maybe
25:03
Speaker 1: a little more remote that you could.
25:05
Speaker 3: Well, the second you go inland, it's like a different country,
25:08
Speaker 3: you know. So when you're along the coast, tourism is
25:10
Speaker 3: by far the biggest industry there, and it's unfortunate because
25:14
Speaker 3: they rely so much on it that it's either you're
25:16
Speaker 3: doing that and you make good money, or you don't
25:19
Speaker 3: then you're poor. If you go inland right away, you
25:21
Speaker 3: still see bombed out houses and villagers.
25:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, people left and just never came back.
25:26
Speaker 3: And then after a few bombed out houses, like a
25:28
Speaker 3: massive mention that somebody immigrated to America poured money back
25:32
Speaker 3: to build up their own family home. So, you know,
25:34
Speaker 3: going inland and then meandering through there, there's a lot
25:37
Speaker 3: of the things that we love most about Croatia is
25:39
Speaker 3: all the communist relics that are still there, like these
25:42
Speaker 3: old like urban exploration stuff that you're just fascinating those
25:45
Speaker 3: abandoned It went to.
25:47
Speaker 6: An abandoned air base and well the police pulled up
25:51
Speaker 6: to make sure we weren't camping there or causing any trouble,
25:54
Speaker 6: or can we go in there? Can we go explore
25:56
Speaker 6: the you know, the old air base. They're like, you can't,
25:58
Speaker 6: but there's bears living in there.
26:04
Speaker 3: They came to talk to us, not because that we
26:06
Speaker 3: didn't didn't want us to be there. They came to
26:08
Speaker 3: warn us about the bears. It's amazing and you wouldn't
26:11
Speaker 3: think about like a bear encounter in Europe. So this
26:14
Speaker 3: is like, this is like straight out of Star Wars.
26:17
Speaker 3: It's an underground under a mountain. This is like where
26:20
Speaker 3: the where the rebels would have hit.
26:21
Speaker 2: Their X wings. You know.
26:23
Speaker 3: It's like deep in the tunnel. There's probably still stuff
26:26
Speaker 3: in there. It's really cool. And it's right on the
26:31
Speaker 3: border of Croatia and Bosnia. So now there were so
26:34
Speaker 3: they're also do patrolling for like whatever, like illegal immigration
26:38
Speaker 3: because being part of the EU now they're sort of
26:40
Speaker 3: at the front. Yeah. And the thing about Croatia is
26:43
Speaker 3: like they've always been like going way back thousands of years.
26:46
Speaker 3: They were the frontiers against the Ottoman invision, you know.
26:49
Speaker 3: So now there's the frontiers against non European Union countries, right,
26:52
Speaker 3: Serbia sort of aligning themselves with Russia. And there's some conflicts,
26:56
Speaker 3: at least ideologically there too. There's always been, you know,
26:59
Speaker 3: profoundly be in Croatia there's and it's the war is
27:02
Speaker 3: still so.
27:02
Speaker 2: Fresh, yeah, for everybody.
27:04
Speaker 3: But I will say though, within the last twenty years
27:06
Speaker 3: a lot of the younger people's mentalities have changed. You know,
27:09
Speaker 3: her cousin who lives in Croatia was dating a Serbian
27:11
Speaker 3: girl for years and years and twenty years ago.
27:14
Speaker 2: We would never imagined that. Now.
27:17
Speaker 6: Camping there's great and while the thing is a lot
27:19
Speaker 6: of countries have the ban wild camping, which is boondocking. Here,
27:22
Speaker 6: if you get away from the coastline and you're not
27:25
Speaker 6: in peak summer season, then there's trails and places to
27:28
Speaker 6: camp and leave camp by yourself.
27:31
Speaker 3: And what people don't realize, you know, there's these popular
27:34
Speaker 3: apps kind of like what we have here, our user
27:36
Speaker 3: contributed like ourverlanda works there, but then they have this
27:39
Speaker 3: other one called park for Night. A lot of the
27:41
Speaker 3: properties are private properties, and you have to really be
27:44
Speaker 3: mindful because having friends and relatives that live there, we
27:47
Speaker 3: know when we go to her family's village, all this
27:50
Speaker 3: land is owned by somebody.
27:51
Speaker 2: It doesn't look like it, sure it's owned by somebody,
27:54
Speaker 2: you know.
27:54
Speaker 3: So when we go to like places like Portugal or
27:56
Speaker 3: go to like you know, other more countries with a
27:58
Speaker 3: lot of like wide open rules space, we're mindful that
28:01
Speaker 3: somebody may own this land. So let's not tell everybody
28:04
Speaker 3: to come here. You know, if they let us stay,
28:06
Speaker 3: you know, that's awesome, But let's let everybody else who
28:08
Speaker 3: tries to come here first communicate with those locals figured
28:11
Speaker 3: it out, you know, instead of just sharing it with
28:14
Speaker 3: the world. And then like while we were there, like
28:16
Speaker 3: Portugal shut down all wild camping because it has gotten
28:19
Speaker 3: so bad.
28:20
Speaker 2: So you know, it's something to be mindful of, and
28:23
Speaker 2: it'll happen here if we don't take responsibility. It feels
28:26
Speaker 2: like it has in some places for sure.
28:28
Speaker 1: As shut a bunch of stuff down, Sedona, shut a
28:31
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff down.
28:32
Speaker 2: So the party will be over if we don't take
28:34
Speaker 2: care of it. Absolutely.
28:36
Speaker 1: So now let's talk a little bit about your van,
28:38
Speaker 1: talk about what you've done to modify it to meet
28:40
Speaker 1: your needs, and any advice you'd have for someone that
28:43
Speaker 1: was looking for a sprinter.
28:44
Speaker 3: We bought our sprinter four months before we shift to Europe.
28:48
Speaker 3: For us, it was really more about comfort. We don't
28:50
Speaker 3: have anything in our van that's there just to look cool.
28:54
Speaker 2: We do have a store. Plan was to drive through
29:01
Speaker 2: across Mongolia.
29:02
Speaker 3: Yeah sure, But now we're sitting around with a snorreclad like,
29:05
Speaker 3: oh yeah, we're such posers.
29:07
Speaker 2: It's the overland wave. We just kind of add things
29:10
Speaker 2: as needed. You know.
29:11
Speaker 3: We added skid plates last year and snorkel last year
29:15
Speaker 3: with the intention of driving across Central Asia, Mongolia, Russia.
29:18
Speaker 3: That's an amazing route. I hopefully, we hope to be
29:21
Speaker 3: able to do it. I think it's going to take
29:22
Speaker 3: a while. It's gonna take a while. So I think
29:24
Speaker 3: what we'll do is when we go back to Europe,
29:26
Speaker 3: we'll buy a different vehicle from there. I think it
29:28
Speaker 3: opens up more possibilities not having California license plate when
29:31
Speaker 3: we start going to eastern part of that area Central Asia,
29:35
Speaker 3: like former Soviet block and stuff like that. Especially now
29:39
Speaker 3: people in Europe go drive through Iran, which is a
29:42
Speaker 3: beautiful country. But as an American passport or US passport holders,
29:46
Speaker 3: it's challenging. They're dual citizens with Croatia. I'm dual citizen
29:50
Speaker 3: with Taiwan. But the California license plate is what gives
29:53
Speaker 3: us a way.
29:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I drove across the Silk Road with UK plates. Yeah,
29:57
Speaker 2: and it was easy.
29:58
Speaker 1: Right, you're on a V five recognize the document oftentimes.
30:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's not unusual. And we feel like having
30:04
Speaker 3: kids also help. Always use the situation.
30:07
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:09
Speaker 5: Order, we got a couple of military age males in
30:12
Speaker 5: a vehicle.
30:12
Speaker 2: It always raised suspicions.
30:14
Speaker 3: Wearing wearing multi cam yeah, all tactical, all tactical gear.
30:19
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:19
Speaker 7: We roll down the windows and like kids, smile away.
30:22
Speaker 6: Yeahanguage and it okay, you guys are good.
30:26
Speaker 1: Makes a big difference. So you added the skid plate
30:28
Speaker 1: in the snorkel for Mongolia? What else have you guys found?
30:31
Speaker 2: Like, well, this really made a difference for our travels.
30:34
Speaker 3: I mean, we have a four wheel drive sprinter, but
30:36
Speaker 3: I don't think it's absolutely necessary, but having good tires
30:40
Speaker 3: always help. We would go smaller if we could, just
30:42
Speaker 3: to fit into more places. You know, we switched from
30:44
Speaker 3: the four wheel camper for Europe partially because it was
30:47
Speaker 3: easier to find parts or something broke for an F
30:49
Speaker 3: two fifties, Like, you're completely out of luck. If you're there,
30:52
Speaker 3: you're stripping it in, you're paying more for fuel with
30:54
Speaker 3: a vehicle like that. And also it was six inches
30:57
Speaker 3: in narrower, and that made all the difference in some places.
31:00
Speaker 3: Sure it meant either dragging your car along this rock
31:02
Speaker 3: wall or just barely fitting.
31:04
Speaker 7: Well.
31:04
Speaker 1: All the goods in Europe are delivered to the little
31:07
Speaker 1: stores with a sprinter. Yeah, that was exactly what I
31:10
Speaker 1: said when or like a little citrus some equivalent.
31:14
Speaker 3: Right, they're all the same size, right, Yeah, I said
31:16
Speaker 3: this the other day. They gotta have beers delivered here
31:20
Speaker 3: in a sprinter. If they're not delivering beers to this place,
31:23
Speaker 3: I don't want to go.
31:25
Speaker 2: I like this. It's a good philosophy. This is a
31:27
Speaker 2: good philosophy.
31:28
Speaker 4: What did you guys do in the interior for like
31:29
Speaker 4: a build out? I mean obviously you're living in it.
31:31
Speaker 6: Yeah, permanent bunks in the back because we don't want
31:34
Speaker 6: to set up anything. So the kids sleep on top,
31:36
Speaker 6: all three together, and then Dan and I sleep below.
31:39
Speaker 6: We have two cabinets, so our bed's a little bit smaller,
31:42
Speaker 6: and then we have our garage below that.
31:44
Speaker 3: Before the spinner, our full camper was their front Dynet version. Yeah,
31:48
Speaker 3: so you had the cab over a king sized bed
31:50
Speaker 3: and then the dyne underneath, so that's sort of like
31:52
Speaker 3: a bunk bed with the galley and fridge on the
31:55
Speaker 3: side like this, So we actually really like that. We
31:59
Speaker 3: just want to hard sides. Yeah, so that's why the
32:01
Speaker 3: Sprinter helped. So we sort of mimick that layout, but
32:05
Speaker 3: instead of having the dyna and the cab over, we
32:07
Speaker 3: had upper and lower bunks, so we're on the bottom
32:09
Speaker 3: of kids on the top.
32:09
Speaker 2: And then we had the sort of galley style kitchen.
32:12
Speaker 3: And what's nice about the Sprinters that we don't lose
32:14
Speaker 3: the cap space.
32:17
Speaker 2: You can turn it around favor. Yeah.
32:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, so even though we don't have like a nice
32:23
Speaker 3: big Dynet tabletop to kind of play games or do
32:26
Speaker 3: stuff in, but we can still sit.
32:27
Speaker 2: And where do the kids sit while you're driving?
32:30
Speaker 3: We have they called the crew crew crew Okaya, Oh
32:36
Speaker 3: I see the.
32:36
Speaker 2: Second row bench I see, yeah, got it, that makes sense. Cool.
32:39
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was completely empty but the bench seat and
32:42
Speaker 6: some headliner.
32:43
Speaker 7: Yeah, and then we built the rest out ourselves.
32:45
Speaker 2: Okay did it? Okay? I was wondering if somebody did it.
32:48
Speaker 7: No, it was my parents.
32:51
Speaker 3: They're vendors here that have you know, seat bases that
32:54
Speaker 3: attached to l track, sure fully customizable.
32:56
Speaker 2: Stuff like that, So we would have gone that rang
32:58
Speaker 2: if we couldn't find this.
32:59
Speaker 3: Man, this was the van that we we would have
33:02
Speaker 3: built on the Mercedes website if we were to build one.
33:05
Speaker 3: And in fact, when we decided to switch from the
33:07
Speaker 3: four wheel we went to the website.
33:08
Speaker 2: It's oky, so what would it be like for us
33:11
Speaker 2: to build one?
33:11
Speaker 3: So it picked stone gray because that was a cool
33:13
Speaker 3: color that we wanted. We picked the one seventy crew
33:16
Speaker 3: four wheel drive and we built this on that looks great.
33:19
Speaker 3: I'm like, we're never going to find this. This doesn't exist.
33:21
Speaker 3: You can order one. Happened two years after. It went
33:24
Speaker 3: to the closest Mercedes dealership and it was like there,
33:27
Speaker 3: it was just sitting there talk about it to be
33:30
Speaker 3: that's incredible. It was somebody had ordered it and then
33:33
Speaker 3: decided that they couldn't get enough for their trade in
33:35
Speaker 3: and just said give it to somebody else.
33:37
Speaker 2: And we showed up.
33:38
Speaker 3: We're like, this is two thousand and eighteen and it
33:41
Speaker 3: was already hard to find by then. Yeah, and there
33:44
Speaker 3: was like no deal for four wheel drive. They finally
33:47
Speaker 3: come to the US madness.
33:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I arned no discounts.
33:50
Speaker 3: You're paying MSRP and they only give us one thousand
33:52
Speaker 3: dollars off. Were like those people a thousand dollars and
33:56
Speaker 3: that would look like genius.
33:57
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. I mean just to get it at
34:00
Speaker 2: MSR just.
34:01
Speaker 3: To give at any price, Really, it is impossible.
34:05
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34:07
Speaker 8: premium quality print publication. The magazine was founded in two
34:11
Speaker 8: thousand and six with the goal of providing independent equipment
34:15
Speaker 8: and vehicle reviews, along with the most stunning adventures and photography.
34:19
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34:48
Speaker 2: What is coming up next for you? Guys? What now
34:51
Speaker 2: you're back in the US. What's the plan? So we
34:53
Speaker 2: have a fifteen year old?
34:54
Speaker 3: Okay, so in three years, she can choose to leave us,
34:59
Speaker 3: but she doesn't want to know. She wants to keep adventuring,
35:01
Speaker 3: and we talk about it each year. So when we
35:03
Speaker 3: came back, we weren't originally planning on shipping the van back.
35:06
Speaker 3: We came back because her brother's getting married. She only
35:08
Speaker 3: has one brother and we can't knock up. So that's
35:11
Speaker 3: in two weeks. So our obligations back here ends in
35:14
Speaker 3: two weeks. And then the next obligation is the kids
35:17
Speaker 3: have missed trick or treating in the US because they.
35:19
Speaker 2: Don't do that in Europe.
35:20
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a big.
35:21
Speaker 3: Deal, so we want to do that this year. And
35:23
Speaker 3: then after that we really miss Baja, so we want
35:26
Speaker 3: to go back down there. When it goes twenty twenty three,
35:29
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, it becomes guy's the limit thing again.
35:32
Speaker 3: So we we're talking about possibly shipping to Ugui and
35:37
Speaker 3: then starting the PanAm coming up, going down and come
35:40
Speaker 3: up the other way or also I'm from Taiwan originally,
35:43
Speaker 3: so the kids really want to go, mostly for the food,
35:46
Speaker 3: and I also have to show them that orange chicken
35:49
Speaker 3: is not the best dish. One he loves it. That's
35:55
Speaker 3: his favorite. Dude, He's like, I can't wait to go
35:57
Speaker 3: to Taiwan. It's God to panda. We don't have handle there.
36:01
Speaker 3: If we do that, though, I don't think we'll ship
36:03
Speaker 3: a car South America sounds amazing. Yeah, so we have
36:06
Speaker 3: lots of friends that have gone. I mean, you know,
36:08
Speaker 3: you spend a lot of time down there, so it
36:10
Speaker 3: seems like it seems like something that we could one
36:14
Speaker 3: of the easiest things for us to do because we're neighbors, right,
36:17
Speaker 3: and it's beautiful down there.
36:18
Speaker 7: It's yeah, yeah, and there's penguins.
36:21
Speaker 2: There's right, that's right.
36:24
Speaker 4: How do you feel about shipping down there and driving
36:26
Speaker 4: up versus driving down and shipping back? Like, is there
36:29
Speaker 4: a particular method or reason as to why you've chose.
36:32
Speaker 2: To do that.
36:33
Speaker 6: I'm scared of the heat in Central America with these
36:36
Speaker 6: two cats, and we don't have an air conditioning by
36:40
Speaker 6: our choice.
36:40
Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm a little worried, Like you you'll do
36:43
Speaker 2: Central not.
36:44
Speaker 7: For sure, I don't know.
36:46
Speaker 6: I think it's easier for us to be in the
36:48
Speaker 6: weather that we can mount as we can escape to.
36:51
Speaker 3: Also, logistically, for people that drive down, you got to
36:54
Speaker 3: ship across the deer and gap anyways. Yeah, you come
36:56
Speaker 3: all the way down and what do you do at
36:58
Speaker 3: the bottom, But you just turn itun and drive. You
37:00
Speaker 3: can do them. You can drive a different route up.
37:02
Speaker 3: A lot of people go up and ship from Buenos
37:04
Speaker 3: Aires or or Montevideo anyways to come back to Texas
37:08
Speaker 3: or something, So if you don't want to sort of
37:10
Speaker 3: do a lot of double backing, and you do have
37:12
Speaker 3: to kind of play everything by weather. So if we
37:15
Speaker 3: can time it right, we just go down and then
37:16
Speaker 3: we never have to like redo any roots and just
37:19
Speaker 3: come up.
37:20
Speaker 2: And it also sort of minimizes the amount of shipping
37:22
Speaker 2: you have to do.
37:23
Speaker 3: Unless you're shipping from monte Video to South Africa or
37:26
Speaker 3: Europe or something, then it makes more sense to drive
37:28
Speaker 3: down and then ship out. So if you're going to
37:30
Speaker 3: come back into the US, you know, it seems that way.
37:32
Speaker 3: And then we would love to just have the last
37:34
Speaker 3: place we'd be before we come.
37:36
Speaker 2: Back be Baja again. Okay, yeah, perfect, that's perfect. Yeah,
37:41
Speaker 2: I like driving up is good. Yeah.
37:44
Speaker 4: I've always been stuck on this romantic notion of driving
37:48
Speaker 4: down and ending in Ushuaia, Like I just don't think
37:51
Speaker 4: that I could do it any other way or that
37:53
Speaker 4: is when I eventually go crazy by a motorcycle and
37:56
Speaker 4: call my wife from Panama.
37:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is different.
37:59
Speaker 3: To start from that, then you have to sort of
38:01
Speaker 3: picture yourself ending at prutal By.
38:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you're going to encounter a lot more travelers
38:06
Speaker 1: that are heading south. You'll meet a lot more people.
38:10
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're all going the same direction, maybe you
38:13
Speaker 1: kind of interact with folks. But if you're going opposite
38:15
Speaker 1: of traffic, yeah, then you're going to bump.
38:18
Speaker 2: Into a lot of You become the guys who tells
38:20
Speaker 2: people where things are exactly exactly.
38:22
Speaker 1: Well, we're getting close to the end, but you want
38:24
Speaker 1: to bring your kids up so they can we can
38:26
Speaker 1: introduce them and you guys, you guys.
38:29
Speaker 2: Want to do that or no?
38:30
Speaker 1: Not interested? Just come say hi. You guys are the
38:34
Speaker 1: awesome ones going around the world.
38:37
Speaker 2: Cool, he's ten.
38:39
Speaker 3: Okay, so we got Luca introduce yourselves, and.
38:45
Speaker 2: Eva, well we are.
38:47
Speaker 1: We are so impressed by all of you and your
38:50
Speaker 1: stories and your adventures around the world.
38:52
Speaker 2: And cats aren't here, Okay, what are they? The cats? Okay?
38:57
Speaker 3: Twin the gray one.
39:02
Speaker 2: Is there such thing as a nice copy? If you
39:05
Speaker 2: compare them too, then there's a nicer one. Well, thank
39:10
Speaker 2: you guys. Any other questions that you've got, mat No,
39:13
Speaker 2: this has been so good. I've been able to ask
39:15
Speaker 2: all my selfish questions.
39:18
Speaker 1: Well, we so appreciate all of you being on the
39:21
Speaker 1: podcast and inspiring so many other families to go see
39:25
Speaker 1: the world and not be afraid to do that, and what.
39:27
Speaker 2: An amazing thing to experience together.
39:30
Speaker 7: So thank you, Thank you for having us too, Thank you.
39:32
Speaker 3: Guys for being on the podcast. We thank everybody for listening.
39:36
Speaker 3: We'll talk to you all next time.