A French family travels across the United States in a truck, with the premise of “Living in an Alternative Way” • Diario El Sol Mendoza

Transferring the same terrain in the window to several locations across the entire American continent leaves the comfort of a four-story house. Paris 12.5 square meter truck with three bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and dining room to travel to 16 countries. That was the spirit of the 22-month journey they embarked on. Rita And Victor 48 years old with two children.

This Paris family had Mendoza After a month of mechanical problems with their truck, this weekend they set off south to discover the Camino de los 7 Lagos. Although they could not choose a preferred location, They highlighted the beauty of Peru and the people in 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: The incarceration gave them extra time to prepare the truck that would be their home after 22 months.

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

“The assembly of the truck started before the pandemic. My husband Viktor did everything. We bought a refrigerated box in Poland, he modified it, he did it himself. He always built things with his hands, learning along the way.Rita explains.

This is This is not the family’s first trip with the house on their back: “This is our second trip, the first with only our two-and-a-half-year-old son. We spent a year traveling through parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, South Korea, Thailand by truck, boat, plane, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and New Caledonia. .We stayed there for five years and in fact, Simi was born there.Remembering Rita, he marks each of the countries they visited on a map.

They left France on November 1, 2021, and their first destination was Halifax, Canada, where they traveled by plane and trucked. From then on the journey continued on four wheels.

Rita lived in Peru as a child, where she learned to speak Spanish. The rest of the family had never been to America, so they chose this place for adventure.

Among the reasons that encouraged them to undertake the journey, he listed: “We were driven by the desire to meet other countries, other cultures, people and discover the landscapes of the continent. There was also the opportunity to live in an alternative way, taking advantage of life and adventure, without working for two years”.

Rita works as a nurse and Victor is a teacher for adults. To make this trip, they applied for a license for two years and rented their house in Paris. however, Nihlo and Simeï could not abandon their studies in the months after they left France.

In this regard, Rita said how they managed to solve it: “Every day, every morning, there is no such thing as Saturday, Sunday or holiday, children sit down to study. In France there is a system called distance learning, we have books and notebooks and they do homework and exams online. Each month we send an evaluation that teachers correct and return to us. They don’t have bad grades this time”.

Although undertaking this kind of journey with a woman and a teenager may seem complicated, for Rita and Victor it was an opportunity to find another way of life for their children: “Decisions with children are not difficult. We think they’re lucky to discover different things every day, we’re always changing cities and landscapes.

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

While they don’t miss Paris, at first they admit it was difficult for their children to be away from home, family and friends, then they were interested in the dynamics of discovering so many new places and waking up to a different landscape every day. than the previous day.

Nihlo and Simi return home on August 30, just before they return to class and give up their traveling lives.