As already indicated in the last post, there were a few decisions to be made. First of all, despite the dental treatment in Dresden, I still had a lot of toothache and could actually only chew soup and yoghurt on the right side. Thank God there is a dentist in our family who actually has his practice not that far away (near Basel) and offered me to take a close look at my problem and try to fix it (despite a completely full schedule). Many thanks to Christoph at this point again for your commitment 😉
Since a toothache can spoil the joy of traveling pretty quickly, the next stop after the weekend was clear. It went west again and to Christoph. He drilled out my new old filling from Dresden and put in a temporary filling to test if that would solve the problem. Lo and behold, in the evening I was able to chew my burger on the right side with pleasure. We looked for a cozy place high up in the southern Black Forest, made a fire and grilled burgers. We stayed here the next night and tried to arrange our further travel plans (not so easy without internet connection).
Regarding the problem: Originally, the plan was to take the ferry from Greece to Israel and then drive to Saudi Arabia via Jordan. Since Corona, however, this ferry connection has not existed, but only a freight shipment from Mersin (Turkey) to Israel. This is very expensive due to the freight shipping. After we then wanted to explore the Arabian Peninsula a little, we planned to take another short ferry from the United Arab Emirates to Iran and from there to Central Asia in the spring. But everything turned out differently than expected. In Iran, the ongoing unrest started. From our point of view, this is certainly a "positive development" (if you can say that), but not ideal for us as travelers, because we were really looking forward to the culture and the cities in Iran. After reading from other travelers that tourists too were randomly detained and accused to be spies, that was the point for us to cross Iran off the travel list. The risk, especially with children, of being imprisoned separately somewhere there was a bit too much.
As a result, the entire other construct collapsed a bit, because then we would actually only be able to travel back to Turkey on the same route or to ship from the Arabian Peninsula. But where? To India, which we actually only had in mind as a transit? No. Or straight to Australia? Somehow we didn't really like that either, then we would have left out Central Asia completely and thus many exciting and different countries.
But then the option with South America came to mind again. The advantages are obvious: many large countries, no visa requirements, easy travel around and at the time virtually no conflicts that would have prevented travel. And there is so much to discover. The decision was not easy to abandon the original desire to go back to Central Asia, this time taking the southern route, through the Pamirs and the Karakoram to India and Nepal. But it was actually clear that we didn't really have a sensible option for the eastern route. So within a week we decided to go completely in the other direction.
We started asking shipping companies about shipping to Uruguay - the container prices were horrendous, around €5000 for a 40' container (i.e. for two vehicles) plus customs clearance and port fees. RoRo shipping was out of the question - we have almost our entire life in the bus - you don't give that up voluntarily. Then came an offer from Robert WWS for a good 3000€ all inclusive per vehicle in a 40' container. The ship was scheduled to leave Rotterdam on November 21, 2022, the container on November 16 to be loaded. That was, so to speak, in 1.5 weeks.
Friends of ours, also traveling with a Syncro, who were in Turkiye, also wanted to go to South America. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough time to drive all the way to Rotterdam to share the container with us. We also tried to find something from Turkiye, but that seemed very difficult because it was unusual and also much more expensive. So we decided independently of each other to start the journey in the tin box.
Now there was some movement in the small travel group at Zacharias. We were intensively looking for a container buddy to share the container with. It's not that easy when it's so spontaneous. Most people plan a shipment for the long term rather than the start of their long journey. Fortunately, just before the deadline for the documents, we found a dutch guy with a Defender who was also looking for a ride to South America as soon as possible.
In order to organise everything else, we drove to Juliane's parents again, who, however, had just gone away during the week. We repacked the bus, made the interior seaworthy (at least you should - in the end nobody checked whether everything was securely stowed away in cupboards), organised our travel bags for the flights and packed them. It was very stressful but we managed somehow. The search for suitable flights was not easy either. With four people, a relatively small price difference per passenger is a big one in the total price. But here, too, the problem was solved and we should be on 21.11. start from Amsterdam Schiphol. On Friday of this week I had the second appointment with Christoph to exchange the temporary filling for a permanent one. It worked perfectly, but of course the stress level increased a bit because another day was lost. In the meantime, the loading of the container has been postponed to 18.11., which gave us a little more time for the journey.
We started in Switzerland on Monday, drove past Thomas (TK Carparts) in Zweibrücken and then on to Amsterdam. There we spend four nights with Astrid, Bart and their children in the middle of the city on the little island of Prinseneiland, which we met in Norway in July. On 18.11. I started early with Zacharias to Rotterdam in order to drive it into a large overseacontainer at around 8am. It was a little exciting, but everything went like clockwork. Then Hans, our container buddy, drove me to the train station in Rotterdam and I had a few minutes of rest on the train back to Amsterdam. We enjoyed two really cold days with the first frost and biting cold wind between the canals of Amsterdam on Prinseneiland and then really started our big journey - across the pond...
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