Real-time Update: Are We Still Going to Africa?

In case you’re new here, we’re an American family of three driving around the world in a Jeep. We’ve been at it for more than three years. So far we’ve driven through Mexico, every country in Central America, and much of South America (we recently made it to the southernmost city in the world at the bottom of the continent). In the original plan, we were going to ship our Jeep to Africa next to continue our overland journey.

YES, Africa is still the next continent as we continue to drive around the world! Our Jeep will go on a container ship from Montevideo to Cape Town, South Africa. We will meet our Jeep (who we call Dauntless) at the port, unload him from the shipping container, and keep this party going.

BUT the timeline has changed.

The change of plan happened fast, just in the past month. It has been chaotic and hard to make decisions. Eric and I have had a lot of conflict to work through due to separate desires and perspectives.

As we wrap up two+ years in South America and move into the next chapter, I thought I’d take a moment to explain the obstacles to our original plan and why we decided to pivot.

SPOILER: while our Jeep is going to Africa next, we are not.

Why the original Africa timeline is not ideal

Here was the original, albeit very rough, plan:

1. Make it to Ushuaia at the bottom of the world.
2. Drive to Montevideo, South America’s major Atlantic port and the place we wanted to ship from.
3. Put Dauntless in a container bound for South Africa.
4. Move into our backpacks for 45 days while the Jeep is in transit. Maybe fly to Rio de Janeiro and meet my (Brittany’s) parents there for a visit.
5. At the right time, fly to Cape Town and be at the port to unload Dauntless.
6. Start our Africa overland travels right away.

We crossed one thing off the list:

1. Make it to Ushuaia at the bottom of the world.

That same day in early February, I turned to Eric and said, “We should probably plan Africa now.” And that’s when things started to go downhill. Because we fleshed out the rest of the original plan:

1. …Start our year-long carnet de passage, which will cost several thousand dollars.
2. Drive around southern Africa for almost six months.
3. Find an international airport with trustworthy storage nearby, in a country where we can legally fly out and leave our foreign-plated vehicle.
4. Fly back across the Atlantic to the U.S.
5. Spend the holidays with family, while keeping our carnet running back in Africa.
6. Return to wherever the Jeep is and continue overlanding Africa.

Once we had the mental space to consider this, Eric and I agreed this didn’t work. It didn’t make sense to fly across the Atlantic in May and fly back across in late October. Flights would be expensive and the three of us would have to wade through cultural shifts (and jet lag) twice in a short time. And speaking of expensive, there was the issue of our carnet. It couldn’t be “paused” while we gone from Africa, so we’d be wasting at least a thousand dollars being away for two months.

A big mess: weighing the alternatives

What now? What are we doing with our lives if we aren’t going to Africa right away?

The bottom line was we wouldn’t start traveling through Africa until January 2026, after Christmas in the U.S. That’s a long time from now. We started throwing out alternatives.

What Eric wanted to do: Eric wanted to ship Dauntless back to the U.S. There are maintenance and repairs we need to do, and Eric wanted to work with trusted shops in our home country, where parts would be easily accessible. He liked the idea of sharing our Jeep home with community members who haven’t seen it, whether at expos or wherever. He was also burnt out and thought extended time in the states would help him recuperate before Africa.

My counterargument: I would’ve stuck with the original plan, even though it was financially and logistically questionable. But I agreed to let it go. When it came to Eric’s U.S. idea, though, it didn’t work for me. Shipping back to the U.S. felt like going backwards, not forwards. And financially, it was essentially impossible. When we are in the U.S., we spend almost 100% more every month than we do in Latin America. We can swing this for a normal two-month visit back, but not for 10 consecutive months. Doing that would empty the savings we need for flying to Africa, our carnet, etc.

I am being very transparent when I say we went through several weeks of major conflict. It wasn’t pretty. I was also burnt out (from the electrical failures, inclement weather, rigorous travel schedule of Patagonia) and was having a hard time communicating calmly and objectively.

New plan for 2025

Somewhere along the 3,500 or so kilometers between Ushuaia and Montevideo, we reached a compromise. Once we agreed, we had to talk to several people and research to make sure our compromise was feasible.

This is the new plan for 2025:

1. Store Dauntless in Montevideo.
2. In November, have the shipping company send a tow truck to pick up Dauntless and drive him to the port.
3. Have the shipping company load Dauntless into a container and send him to Cape Town.
4. We will meet Dauntless in Cape Town and unload him from the container.
5. In the 10 months in between, we will live out of our backpacks. We’ll spend six months at some international destination (or several) that are within budget. Around September 1, we’ll fly to the U.S. and stay through Christmas.

Four months in the U.S. is a big part of the compromise and may have been my offer that made Eric agree! It will be a financial stretch, but it’s important for Eric to have that extended time back in the states. Due to his law enforcement background and the responsibility he feels for our family, he isn’t on such high alert in the states as he is everywhere else. Being in the states is much more restful for him in general.

Where in the world are we going for the next six months?

That leaves only one question: where to next? We are finishing a week at an Airbnb in Montevideo. Early tomorrow morning, we fly out of the Montevideo airport to begin a backpack-only adventure.

Right now, we only have plans through April 15. We honestly don’t know what will happen after that. We are researching travel to several continents!

But tomorrow we are going to…Mexico! 🇲🇽 We’ll fly into Mexico City and spend three nights in a hotel in the historic center. Then we’re taking a bus to Guanajuato, which you might remember is our very favorite city from three+ years driving through Latin America. (Fun fact: Eric’s favorite city in the world is New York City and mine is Rome.)

Guanajuato feels like the perfect end to our extended overland journey through Latin America. How appropriate we would return to our favorite city in our favorite country. And what perspective we’ll return with! When we were there before, we didn’t have much to compare Guanajuato to. How will it seem this time? Will we find that it has changed?

Here are our Guanajuato videos, if you want a sneak peek and to see why we love it so much:

So that’s the whole story for anyone who is curious! I’ll tell you what: full-time international overlanding requires constant travel planning, and sometimes the decisions are super tough to make. But I think we’re through our rough patch and into a chapter of recuperation and fun. We’ll need to take our A-game to Africa.

Leave your questions in a comment! Happy to explain more about the logistics of storage and shipping to Africa, what it’s like to move into backpacks, and anything else you want to chat about.

-B