Short answer: We’re driving down to Argentina!

Longer answer: We began our journey May 2019 from California and have been on the road ever since. We spent seven months in the US and Canada and then crossed into Mexico in the end of December 2019 and have been in Latin America ever since. We plan to spend the next 2 years making our way south through Central and South America. Our end destination is Ushuaia, a small town near the southernmost tip of Argentina.

Follow our adventure on Instagram @asobolife

Before we purchased our van, our initial estimate was to arrive at the southern tip of Argentina in 12 months.

However, and only partly because of Covid-19, we have been on the road for almost 1.5 years and still haven’t entered Central America.

We anticipate being on the road for at least 4 years.

Since his early 20s, Eric has always loved to travel and had backpacked all across Asia and Europe.

Together, Yuko and Eric would travel to different regions in Asia and especially loved their road trips around New Zealand and the Japanese island of Hokkaido with rented cars.

So the combination of traveling to a completely different continent (South America), with our own vehicle, and the vehicle also being our own ‘tiny home on wheels’ made this opportunity too good to pass up.

Yuko’s Top Three
1. Zion National Park, Utah, USA
2. White Sands National Park, New Mexico, USA
3. Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, CANADA
4. Tlacolula Sunday Market, Tlacolula Town, Oaxaca, MEXICO
5. Snorkeling in Huatulco, Oaxaca, MEXICO

Eric’s Top Five
1. Canyonlands National Park, Utah, USA
2. Lake Louise & Morraine Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, CANADA
3. Copper Canyon, MEXICO
4. Farmer’s Markets in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, & Nova Scotia, CANADA

1. Embrace Uncertainty
As human beings, we are attracted to predictable outcomes, reducing risk, and creating habits/routines. Being on the road and living out of a van has encouraged us to embrace uncertainty and to break free from the human desire to have a comfortable, stress-free life.
Not knowing where we will sleep most nights, interacting with people who do not share a common language or culture with us, and driving out to new locations and not knowing exactly what to expect; we’ve come to embrace these daily issues and appreciate the diversity of our days.

2. It’s The People You Meet
We’ve witnessed stunning geography, gorged on scrumptious foods, and snapped photos at ‘must-see’ sights. But what makes our journey special and memorable are the people we meet along the way; the locals running the food stalls and stores, guesthouse and campsite owners, and even all the fellow travelers we’ve met along the way. We may speak different languages and come from different cultural backgrounds, but we are also all human beings first and with that comes kindness, compassion, and friendly curiosity in almost everyone we have met.

3. Anybody Can Do This
I used to think that only superstar travelers could undertake a journey like this. That you would need to speak the local languages proficiently, have high tolerances to stress and inconvenience, and have a good amount of money to sustain your travel.
While some of this is true and there is a learning curve and life adjustment process, we, and the other travelers we’ve met, are no superstars. Just ordinary folks, like most other people. We’ve learned that the hardest part of traveling like this is simply taking the first step out the door. Everything else afterwards just falls into place.

We keep our Instagram account up to date on our Pan-American adventure. Follow us @asobolife

‘Asobo’ is a Japanese word with an English meaning that’s difficult to capture. But it roughly translates to “let’s play”. In the context of this website, we use ‘asobo’ to mean having a playful life, filled with curiosity and an adventurous spirit.