With the premise of “alternative living,” a French family travels across America by truck Diario El Sol Mendoza

Changing the same scenery in the window to multiple destinations across the entire American continent, leaving the comfort of a four-story home Paris For a 12.5 square meter truck equipped with three bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a dining room, to visit 16 countries. Such is the spirit of the 22-month journey they have embarked on. Rita And Victor 48 years old with his two children.

This Parisian family was in Mendoza For a month because they had mechanical problems with their truck and left this weekend to go south to discover the Camino de los 7 Lagos. Although they are unable to choose a preferred destination, They highlighted the beauty of Peru and the people of Argentina.

The original idea was to travel for three years, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they had to postpone their departure from Paris, although Rita highlighted the positive side: Confinement gave them extra time to better prepare the van that would later become their home for the next 22 months.

A door when closed becomes a blackboard, a window opens and behind it is a bed Simi 10 years. What looks like a container roof is actually a room Nihlo Out of 14. Everything turns out quickly within the 12.5 meters that this Parisian family travels the continent.

Truck assembly started before the pandemic hit. My husband Victor did it all. We bought a cooler box in Poland and he adapted it, he did everything himself. He always built things with his hands and was learning along the way.”Troy Rita.

this It’s not this family’s first trip with home on their backs: “This is our second trip, on the first there was only our first son who was two and a half years old. We traveled for a year and covered parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, South Korea, Thailand by truck by boat, ourselves by plane, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and New Caledonia. We stayed there to live for five years, in fact, Simi was born there.”remembers Rita and marks each of the countries they have traveled to on a map.

They left France on November 1, 2021 and their first destination was Halifax in Canada, where they traveled by plane and shipped by truck. Since then, the journey has continued on four wheels.

Rita lived in Peru when she was young and there she learned to speak Spanish. The rest of the family has never been to America, which is why they chose this adventure destination.

On the reasons that encouraged them to make the trip, he mentioned: “Curiosity led us to discover other countries and other cultures, to get to know people, to discover the landscapes of the continent. And also the possibility of living in an alternative way, not working for two years and taking advantage of life and adventure.”

Rita works as a nurse and Victor is a teacher for adults. In order to make this journey, they required a two-year license and rented their house in Paris in order to be able to financially support themselves during their long journey. but, Nihlo and Simeo could not abandon their studies during their months away from France.

In this regard, Rita told how they managed to solve it: “Every day, every morning, there are no Saturdays, Sundays or holidays, the children sit down to study. In France there is a method called distance learning, we have books and notebooks, they also do homework and exams online. Every month we send an assessment that the teachers mark and it comes back to us. Right now they don’t have bad grades.”

Although it may seem complicated to take this kind of trip with a girl and a teenager, for Rita and Victor it was more than anything an opportunity for their children to discover another way of life: “The decision with the kids wasn’t difficult. We think it’s also very lucky for them to discover different things every day, we change cities and landscapes all the time.”

On the family’s routine outside of having fun and walking, Rita details: “We clean at home and cook a lot inside the van, because we strive to maintain a healthy and varied diet.”

Although they never miss Paris, they admit that at first it was difficult for their children to be away from home, family and friends, and then they became excited by the dynamics of discovering so many new places and waking up each day with different landscapes from the day before.

The homecoming will be on August 30, before Nihlo and Simeo return to class and give up their traveling lives.