Should we stay or should we go?

The next few days we stayed in an Airbnb posada in Santa Maria (a small town further north in Brazil along the border to Uruguay/Argentina). The objective of our stay, was to find out what to do next – should we turn south or north? After several pro/con evaluations including many estimated variables and discussing worst-case scenarios, we eventually decided to go North. And frankly, evaluations are important, but in the end of the day the most important for us eventually was to follow our initial wish and objective to complete our South America tour by land and return to Colombia and Cartagena where it all started well 2 years ago.  And so, we did.

Number crunching is therapeutic, it makes you feel more objective and rational, but in the end it is easy, knowingly or unconsciously, to manipulate numbers till they tell you the story you want to hear…I am not saying we did it, but it is possible and in the end we made the decision we wanted to make. And of course it’s “rational”, at least for us in our context and trajectory.

[Add photo from Santa Maria hotel].

Naturally, 9000+ km in a 27-year-old vehicle is not without risks, however, as so many have commented (many have even requested me to open the hood to let them admire the old simple diesel engine), the vehicle is unstoppable. But without putting it to the test, you won’t really appreciate it. So, we decided to do so!