Let's be honest, all the vaccinations you have to get for such an adventure. Hepatitis A and B, Cholera, Typhus, Mumps/Measles/Rubella, Rabies, Yellow Feaver... Wow, I should be able to eat of the floor now.
And the time it takes, so a good plan is very helpful. Best look for a doctor who is authorized to give Yellow Feaver shots, not every physician may do so, and make a plan for your vaccinations. Naive as I am I thought I'd simply walk into a pharmacy and pick up the serums and pills there. No such thing as simple. You really need to be lucky because they may not have them on stock, not even the big pharma companies. They don't have them available from each manufacturer and the pharmacist has to call up the companies to find out which of them as which vaccine on stock. If your out of luck you may have to wait for a couple of weeks.
In that sense I was lucky and the vaccines were available within a week or so. Never the less, since July I had almost one vaccination a week. That's no fun, let me tell you. Also only because I already had Hep-A and B, otherwise I would have run out of time.
Maybe I should make a few comments on planning. To make a long story short, there was no planning.
But, first things first. After I quit my job an idea was forming. That it would be a good time to travel the panamericana with an RV. Well, forming isn't the right word. Such ideas don't form in my head. They just pop up and cry for realisation. There is little room for thorough considerations.
When I made the decission in April I began searching for an offrad RV. Together with Isolde and her brothers familiy we even visited the "Abenteuer&Allrad" fair in Bad Kissingen. Really worth a visit. However, it quickly became clear that a new RV would be way too expensive, around €90,000 and that building my own RV would take too much time. Also, it turned out that the big offroad RV manufacturers weren't idle and not exactly waiting for someone like me! Unblievable! There are so many pensioneers in Germany that don't know what to do with their time and money. Some of them even sell their house and then buy a really luxurius RV.... Really... Anyhow, I would have had to ship the RV to South America somehow. I found out that you could also ride along as passenger on these RoRo ferries and that they have 10-15 passengers (e.g. www.sea-bridge.de). A picture was forming in my head. A small group of soul mates, captains dinner, discussions, good food. Exactly what I need or so I thought. Well, after I'd dumped the idea with the camper van the idea with travelling on the container ship remained and I found one on www.langsamreisen.de. I didn't have to think long and booked a crossing on the Cap San Antonio, a cooling container ship operated by Hamburg-Süd. Captains dinner, equator crossing with champagne, here I come!!!
A good friend of mine once gave me the nick name "Mr. Partial Information" 😛 As it tourns out such a character trait isn't easy to get rid off... Recently I became more curious was as to what I'd signed up for on the ship. On a Swiss page I found some information. Cap San Antonio, cooling container ship, 1082 feet long, 158 feet wide, 55.296hp, crew German/International, cabins, double cabin owner, single cabin machinist (the kind I booked). Right, but how many? There's something missing here... Right? Hmmm? Nooooooo, one each! That means a maximum of three passengers, not counting the crew. There go my dreams of captains dinners and good cooking... Well, maybe the cook isn't half bad after all. I'll know for sure on Monday whether or not I'm the only passenger or if there are one or two more. Otherwise I'll have to learn Kiribati to talk to the crew. Well, lucky me, English is the official language in Kiribati.
So the moral of the story is, plan well and don't rush it...
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