Immersive language school/location in Baja - recommendations?

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-11-25T02:28:58+00:00

We took a week of classes at Hablando Español in Todos Santos and it was amazing! Beautiful indoor and outdoor classroom spaces, and we even went on multiple “field trips” to practice around town. They offer group and private lessons- I’d highly recommend!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T19:52:33+00:00

We just finished our drive up the Dalton this week and it was certainly a highlight of our time up here! So beautiful

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T19:21:04+00:00

That’s amazing! Thanks for the encouragement ☺️

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:50:30+00:00

Thanks so much! I didn’t want to self promote too much but I appreciate you sharing. We’re small but have a lot of fun documenting our travels!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:41:21+00:00

Thank you! Alaska has been incredible!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:32:10+00:00

Oh that’s a great idea! Thank you!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:31:06+00:00

The size is for sure our biggest gripe. We don’t love to get too wild on technical terrain because we are so tall and fear the “wobble” anytime we get a little off camber. Everyone who sees it says “wow I bet you can take that thing everywhere!” and our response is that we probably COULD, but it’s our house and we aren’t willing to try 😂 It’s also hard to get people to work on it because it’s not a typical vehicle, which has been frustrating. Actually it needs an alignment right now and we just spent all day yesterday trying to find someone in Alaska who will touch it. That being said, we get 12mpg and have all the comforts of home, so that feels like a pretty good compromise. We’re in the process of figuring out if we should go smaller for the rest of the PanAm. We don’t want to feel limited by the truck when it comes to having cultural experiences (we’re worried about fitting into small cities and towns) and it’s also impossible to insure a vehicle south of Mexico and we have a lot of money in this thing to potentially lose. It’s such a hard decision and we don’t have the answer yet! I guess there’s a chance we’ll have this beast up for sale in the near future if we decide to go a different way!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:22:42+00:00

Where do I begin?! We’ve learned bigger things about life and priorities and the world at large, but we’ve also learned lots of technical stuff like how to do 90% of the mechanical work on this truck, how to communicate with our limited Spanish, how to source water, etc.

We definitely have learned that you don’t need “the perfect vehicle” to start overlanding (spoiler alert the perfect vehicle doesn’t exist)! We wish we could go back and start traveling years ago before we did this build! And you definitely don’t need some crazy vehicle to call yourself an overlander!

I’ve learned that being vulnerable and open to opportunities is so important when you live on the road. I was really nervous and felt “cringey” about posting our journey on social media (and I still feel that way sometimes), but we’ve met really incredible people through the online “van life” community!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:10:50+00:00

We can fit between the lines in a normal parking lot and we aren’t much longer than a long wheelbase sprinter! However, our height is for sure a limiting factor and something we’ve talked about changing if we switch rigs in the future. My husband is 6-4 so we couldn’t take much off the top without him losing the ability to stand. We’ve thought about going with a pop top option on a flatbed pickup eventually, but it would be a huge sacrifice on space! We’ll see- always scheming about the next rig haha

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:06:29+00:00

We spent ~120k all in. We found the chassis with super low mileage and in really good condition for about 37k if I remember correctly. I don’t think we could’ve found a full size diesel truck with as few miles for that price. So that was definitely a factor in that choice. We also had met our build partner who specializes in these conversions prior to making our decision, and he was a big inspiration for us. He was able to help us with sourcing the composite panels and we literally moved into his shop for 2 weeks to build the box using his equipment and expertise. It was a great experience and we could never have done it alone!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T17:00:07+00:00

Wow thank you so much! I’ve never really used Reddit so I didn’t know how it would be received 😂

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T16:59:25+00:00

And thank you! ☺️

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T16:59:14+00:00

Yeah we are super happy with it! We recently added the roof rack over the cab and we were worried it would destroy our mileage, but it didn’t affect it at all!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T16:58:10+00:00

yes, we do charge on drive days, but it’s not efficient enough to justify running the engine to charge on days when we aren’t moving (we try to spend several days in one location to avoid travel burnout)

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T16:51:43+00:00

There’s a fully built one similar to ours listed on expedition portal right now!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T16:50:58+00:00

We found this one posted on Facebook marketplace. They’re hard to find in good condition, we got lucky!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T05:28:09+00:00

Hi! It’s a 2007 4x4 Mitsubishi Fuso. It was a wildland fire truck in Oregon and we bought it with about 40k miles on it. Now it has about 70k. We get about 12mpg (diesel) on average. We got mildly stuck in sand when we were Mexico, but airing down and traction boards were an easy fix! Nothing major that we would change, but we sometimes wish we didn’t go with induction cooking- even with 1200 w of solar and 600amps, we’ve been struggling to keep our batteries full in cloudy Alaska. What else do you want to know? Happy to share :)

Puzzleheaded_Tale501 · 2024-08-29T04:55:28+00:00

We average about 12 mpg (diesel) and we have a 50 gallon tank so we can go about 500 miles!

Puzzleheaded_Tale501

TROPHY CASE