Who, What, When, Where and Why  (and this is subject to change.)

Who: Me, Cynthia Hatch (54) and my husband, Lance (62).  We are newly retired Washingtonians.  We are an ordinary couple with a big dream.  Read on.

What:  We are planning to travel south to the southern United States and then into Mexico, and continuing to Central America, spending some time in Belize, and then moving on to Panama and eventually settling in in Ecuador.  

When:  We will leave our home state in about 12 to 15 weeks time, approximately the first week in April 2015, and then spend about a 4-6 weeks in Denver area, and when the weather begins to cool a bit we will head to Arizona.  Once in AZ we will make preparations to drop down into Mexico, and south, slowly southward, to South America.

Where:  We are a bit vague on the where part of our plans because we want to be very flexible.  If we like a place a lot, we want the freedom to stay there until we are bored or wish to move on for any reason.  A few places that are a must are San Felipe, on the Sea of Cortes, Columbia, Belize, and Ecuador.  Paraguay and Uruguay are definitely on the list, as is Argentina.  Ecuador seems to be a landing place that we would like to make our home for a long time, however long that is.

Why:  Because we want to, mainly.  Many years ago we realized that we spend a lot of time on the recurring theme of living elsewhere, for instance, South America.  We daydreamed of it until we could no longer deny the fact moving elsewhere, to another country, was a strong mutual desire. We realized that, to make it happen would take a lot of work and determination, and we had to rid ourselves of everything... and I do mean all our stuff!  In a nutshell, we want a big adventure and this is it!  We are pulling out the stops.

What have we done so far?  Lance has retired from his profession  when he turned 62, we sold our house, yard-saled all the stuff that we didn't give to the kids, sold the things that nobody wanted, (tee-hee,)  gave tons of stuff to charity.  I finished my college degree because I wanted to get my AA  before leaving the States, and  to take much needed Spanish classes.  I  also developed some hobbies that require little space, and began communicating with others who have already moved to out of the country.  We established a pass-through mail forwarding system, talked over our banking needs with our bank, and now, after several years of preparation, we are without a house, without our stuff and have multiple methods of keeping in touch, this blog being one of the methods.  We purchased our 22 foot RV to pull behind our truck and plan on camping and sightseeing our way through Mexico. ( At some point we will sell this rig and fly to Ecuador, we think.)

Little House on the Highway

This is our home away from home and our main means of transportation for the next year.  We like this particular rig because it is small enough, and it is big enough.  It's just right, for our needs.  We have taken it out over the summer to see if we can make everything work, and more importantly, to see if we can stand living in such close quarters.  We think we can do it!  Another thing we like about this basic rig is that it is really plain, ordinary and unpretentious, like us.  We think it is quite nice looking and have become very fond of it. Our friend Bink,  dubbed it, " the little house on the freeway."  So it is named, forever more. 

 Right now we are in a holding pattern until we get the winter behind us and we are waiting for, what we think, is our last grandchild (never say never) to be born in February. Then we will pack up and take off in April. 

My goal is to blog about  a few of the travails of our experience so far, until we actually go.  Many people have been supportive and a few think it is crazy.  Maybe, but I think it is terrifically exciting.  We will see.  If we hate it we will come home.  Either way we will have had an adventure, complete with war stories and scrapes and bruises.  We will have had a richer life for having made the attempt.  Time will tell.