Last Days in the USA

Good news: our transmission has been fixed. For those of you interested in these not particularly interesting details, there was nothing wrong with the transmission; Steve, our mechanic changed the fluid and added another cooler to make sure that it does not overheat again. We took this opportunity to have a thorough revision of the vehicle to avoid any bad surprises on the road. So the camper is as good as new now and should take us smoothly to Tierra del Fuego, we hope. In the meantime, we stayed at Janet and Adrian in San Luis Obispo and did some sightseeing, walking in the hills and barbecuing. That was great, thanks Janet and Adrian for your warm welcome and for taking us around when the van was in the shop. We then drove south through Santa Barbara, where we stayed overnight at Ann. Thanks Ann for the great welcome in Santa Barbara. It is a beautiful place, I would not mind living there one day! We are now in Los Angeles, for our last days in the USA, staying at Dorothy and Carol, in their beautiful house not very far from Hollywood. 

So we are ready to continue on the next leg of our journey, Mexico. If everything goes according to plan, we will cross the border on Sunday in the morning. We have contracted a third party liability insurance covering the camper in Mexico (mandatory); we also have some pepper sprays (courtesy of Adrian), just in case. Let’s hope we will not need them, but each spray can be used 25 times, so we can stand 50 attacks all in all. Better to be safe than sorry, it gives some peace of mind and is better than carrying a gun, that none of us would be able to use in any case… We also made some laminated copies of our driving licences. We read on some blogs that some policemen in South America take the driving licences and do not want to give them back unless they get a bribe. So it is recommended to give them copies, so if they do not give them back, no problem. I do not know whether this is true, but again, better be safe than sorry. We will spend our last night in the US in a camp site right at the border. It is Memorial weekend in the USA this weekend, so all campsites are fully booked, but we managed to book a site for Saturday over the phone. Although I would not mind continuing touring the USA; some friends even suggested we do so and make up some South American stories on our blog; but we have to move on and our next update will be from beautiful Mexico and for real!