Whenever you come back from a trip everyone always asks, “How was your trip?” I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, trying to figure out how to answer it, and realized I can’t. When you go on vacation you and all of your friends back home have the expectation that the vacation will be “Great” or “Awesome.” That’s why you went on vacation, right? Because you want a break from the routine, a short period of time where every day is amazing.

When you’re away for longer than a month or so, every day can’t be amazing. The “trip” starts to become “life.” There are highs and lows, good days and bad, just like at home. So how was the trip? It was life, differently. Or as another group of travelers called it, “Life Remotely.”

What I can say is that over the past two and a half years we’ve covered over 40,000 miles in our van. That in itself isn’t amazing – the average car in the United States travels almost the same distance. What I think is cool is that almost none of our miles were ever the same twice. During our life pre-trip, they almost all were. That means that most days we were seeing or doing something new, going somewhere we’d never been before. So yeah, that was pretty amazing.

Enough waxing philosophical, time to get on with the show – our last road segment in South America!

The next day we drove to Mendoza and spent a day there just relaxing – we realized it had been a couple of weeks since we’d stayed in the same campground for more than one night. We couldn’t leave Mendoza without visiting a winery. There are so many you could spend a lifetime and not see them all, so on the advice of our friends from Buenos Aires we choose Domaine Bousquet, one of the few organic vineyards in the region.

From there it took about three more days to reach Buenos Aires. We spent an afternoon driving around looking for the parts we needed to build the security wall in the van for shipping, then headed for Herman Zapp’s house where we’d stayed way back in June. Herman and his family have been traveling the world in a classic car for the past 8 years and are currently in the Middle East. Eduardo and Clarita, who live in and care for the house for the Zapp family, organize parties for a living and since it’s they’re busy time of year they unfortunately were away from home during our stay. But they generously allowed us to use their house which made it much easier to pack up for the transition from “van life” to “backpack life” and to get the van ready for shipping.

On a Monday we said a sad farewell to the Sparksmobile, our home for the past two and a half years, as we left it sitting a the port in Zarate waiting for a boat to take it to Jacksonville, Florida.

Now toting our backpacks, we took a bus to an apartment we found on Craigslist in the Recoleta district of downtown Buenos Aires. It was nice to be able to visit a city without the stress of trying to find a place to park the van!

One of the main tourist attractions in Recoleta is the cemetery. Argentina’s rich and famous are buried there, including the famous former first lady of Argentina, Eva Perón.

After a few days in Buenos Aires, we boarded a plane for Santiago, where we would spend the rest of our time before heading to Philly for Christmas. The flight was KLM, and it was great! Plenty of leg room even in the cheap economy seats, on demand in-flight entertainment, and OJ imported all the way from Holland (and probably made with Spanish or Moroccan oranges)!

Instead of staying in the city of Santiago, we decided to rent an apartment through AirBnB in Valparaiso on the coast. Our apartment is on the 17th floor giving us an amazing view of the city and the harbor. Valparaiso is a funky town and we’re looking forward to exploring it for the next couple of weeks.

It was over a year ago that we first met Rick and Letitia from California in Colombia. We enjoyed a Superbowl party with them in Ecuador before parting ways as we continued South. After spending more time in Ecuador and exploring Peru, they are now heading for Southern Chile to explore the Carretera Austral and Southern Patagonia. Our paths crossed once again in Villarica and we got a chance to meet up once again.

We spent a few days catching up with them as we explored the lakes and mountains of the region camping in Villarica, Pucón, and on Lake Caburga. It was great to spend time with friends once again, and although our time together was brief, we were grateful for the opportunity to share a few dinners and laughs with them.

On the advice of a couple we met in the campground in Pucón, we decided to visit Villa Baviera. Formerly known as Colonia Dignidad, it was started by a group of German immigrants in the early 1960s. It has a dark history and is the subject of the recently released film Colonia.

On our way north along Ruta 5, we happened to cross paths with Peter and Lesley from the UK who we first met a few weeks ago in the lakes district. We told them of our plans and they decided to join us.

The colony is only now transitioning from being a closed, secretive community led by the autocratic Paul Schäfer, to a venue for weddings and events. When we arrived we were greeted by people wearing traditional European clothing. This wasn’t something put on for tourists, this was how they dressed. Everyone spoke to each other in German, and it felt much more authentic than the other European influenced regions we’ve visited.

Thanks to Debbie for the idea for the Google Maps screenshot to provide a reference of where we’ve been! I should have been doing this for the whole trip. Oh well, better late than never. This map leaves off at Puerto Pirihueico, because Google apparently hasn’t heard about the ferry we took across the lake to Puerto Fuy. So we made it a bit farther than is shown on the map, but this gives a good idea of where we’ve been.

If the Carretera Austral reminded us of the Pacific Northwest, as we’ve gone north we feel like we are at home in Colorado. Gorgeous mountain lakes are framed by the now capped peaks of spring, and remote back roads offer stunning lakeside campsites.

If you haven’t been following along on the Sparks Tracker, take a look at it. The points on the map are almost all places we camped or stayed for the night. If you zoom in on Southern Chile and Argentina, you’ll see that our points are very close together. The conversation goes something like, “Oh, look, we could camp on that lake! Yeah, but it’s only noon. That’s okay, we’ll just hang out here for the day.”

We’ve decided that part of the reason we’re enjoying this part of the journey so much is more than just the natural beauty. We know that our trip is coming to a close (only two weeks before we ship the van back! Yikes!) and we’re trying to savor every minute that we can. It’s going to be cold in Colorado when we get back there in January!