The Start of the Journey: Pittsburgh to Colorado to Uruguay

With both excitement in our blood and a tinge of sadness in our hearts, Nikki and I packed up our dogs and drove through the Fort Pitt tunnel, saying a final goodbye to Pittsburgh for a while. No matter how much I cursed this tunnel for causing traffic delays on my work commute, we always smiled as we drove through it because it served as a portal to our new city home. With one last pass through the tunnel, we knew our adventure had started.

The two day drive back to Colorado was uneventful other than deciding which dog got to sit on the passenger’s lap. Ollie was the obvious first choice due to her size, but after a couple of hours of driving, Naiya’s anxiety would decide that she needed snuggles and she would crawl her way into the passengers lap regardless of space available. Upon arrival to Colorado, we were able to spend some time with our families and get the dogs adjusted to living with them for the next two months. Soon enough our brief stopover in Colorado came to an end and we found ourselves standing at the entrance of Denver International Airport laden with our backpacking backpacks full of US food we knew we would not find down south.

Memories of setting foot in Buenos Aires almost exactly five years ago flashed through our minds as we disembarked the plane in Montevideo, Uruguay. The feeling of being completely dependent on ourselves and the freedom that comes with that both weighed and lifted our spirits while we found our way to a hostel by the port. We knew the next couple of days were going to be hectic but also extremely exciting while we worked with our shipping broker to retrieve our truck and home for the next 8 months.

Thanks to Nikki’s diligence of booking the truck shipping, the retrieval process went so much smoother than it did in Argentina five years ago. There were still a few hoops to jump through, like going to the immigration office to obtain official documentation of arrival and buying car insurance, but soon enough we were in the brokers office with four other overloading couples ready to head to the port and retrieve our vehicles. Each couple sent their representative to go with the broker and retrieve the vehicles, which left me to chat with the remaining significant others. Three of the other couples were from Switzerland and had all shipped together in shared containers while the last was from South Africa. One of the fun parts of overloading is connecting with like-minded people. Everyone was very excited to share details of their travel plans, vehicles and any other bits of information that people could benefit from. Everyone was very interested that we had started this exact trip five years ago and now were back to finish it. During our last trip we felt like the babies of the overloading community, just starting out, but now we were most informed couple in this group in regards to overloading in South America and everyone was asking advice on what the must-see places were. I spent the better part of the next two hours chatting with everyone while Nikki was doing the hard work of breaking open all the shipping containers and, sometimes manually, hauling out everyone’s vehicle. Soon enough our group of gabbers saw what we had been patiently waiting for. Like a scene from camping-centric Macy’s day parade, all five vehicles turned the corner and one by one drove past us. Our excited bubbled and we stood to watch the pageantry as if we were proud parents watching our children march across the stage at a school play, leaning over to each other and asking “which one is yours?”

With the dramatic entrance over and all five vehicles parked side-by side, each couple was reunited and thrilled to share their side of the day’s story. The cafe-dwelling gossipers shared all the new information they had gleaned from our conversations while the sweat drenched, port-working sides of the couples told their tales of opening each container like a present to reveal the vehicles inside. After the joyous reunion, everyone knew this is where we would part ways. Our lives had come together for a brief but consequential moment. We all came as strangers but after just an afternoon together and a shared love of travel, we would leave as adventure confidants. WhatsApp numbers were shared, Instagram handles followed and blogs subscribed to, but in the end we all drove out of the port in Montevideo, went our separate ways and started our own journeys.