Traveling is very good. Even better when you can share the love of going on the road with someone. Raul, for example, was lucky to find Adriana, who has this feeling of discovering the world.
They took a few car trips together and stayed that way when the kids came. Every year the family arranged to have a few days off to drive around. Their profile on Instagram (@calugui_expedicoes) is even a tribute to the names of their children: Caio, Lucca and Guilherme.
Recently they traveled to several countries in South America and, as the road bug always bites us, they now want to make an expedition to Alaska, traveling across America by motorhome.
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Our story begins when Dri and I made the decision that collecting roadside moments would be our way of life. My interest in the subject was born in childhood. My parents immigrated from Argentina as soon as they got married, so my family has always been in the habit of traveling long distances by car.
In 1985 I visited the Motor Show with my parents and brothers and I remember being impressed by the Kombi Safari Motorhome. I mentioned to my father that that vehicle would be ideal for our holiday trips. That struck me and I thought to myself: one day I’m going to have a motorhome and go out into this big world.
Time passed and I met Adriana when I was working in the family business. In 1999 I took her to meet my relatives in Argentina and it was her first long-distance trip (20 days and 7,500 km). There I discovered that she liked to hit the road as much as I did.
We got married, the kids arrived, we continued working on our projects and whenever we could, we took the car with the whole family and went around (we organized ourselves so that we could be on the road 15 to 30 days a year).
From 2015 we started to carry out our expeditions to more distant places. In March of that year, we traveled to Argentine Patagonia, in a total of 25 days and 8,500 km. The following year, we made an expedition to the region of Mendoza, Argentina, and the famous crossing along the Caracoles road to Chile via the Andes Mountains.
During this trip we had the opportunity to meet travelers from all over the world, in motorhomes, motorbikes and even bikes. Many of them are pursuing the challenge of reaching the southernmost city on the continent, Ushuaia. No sooner had we completed our Mendoza-Chile expedition, and we were already planning our next destination: Ushuaia.
2016 was a year of much planning and research to organize the expedition that would follow, reaching the most extreme point of the South American continent, located in Tierra del Fuego. In January 2017, the five of us traveled: Me, Dri and our three teenage children in a regular SUV vehicle.
It took 32 days and 15 thousand km along Routes 40 and 3, in Argentine territory, and the beautiful Carretera Austral, in Chile. During our expedition, we were able to visit magical places such as Perito Moreno Glacier, Capillas de Marmol, Torres del Paine, Punta Arenas, Punta Tombo, as well as several parks located in the Argentine and Chilean Patagonia.
It was on this trip that Dri decided to increase the bet and proposed a new challenge. At the end of Route 3, in Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego National Park, there is a sign with the inscription of the distance from there to Alaska: 17,848 km. If we had already met the penguins by now, it was time to go in search of the bears!
Still in 2017, we did another expedition, this time to fulfill our children’s dream of discovering snow, and we traveled again to Argentine Patagonia, in the San MartÃn de los Andes region, in July. We were blessed with the biggest snowfall in the last 30 years and computed another 8,000 km to account!
In these years of Calugui Expeditions (@calugui_expedicoes), we have already covered more than 72 thousand km and experienced many adventures, which provided us with incredible moments and memories! In fact, the name Calugui is a tribute to our three children: Caio, Lucca and Guilherme.
On this journey, we had the opportunity to get to know the countries of the southern cone (Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile) and also Brazil, which has been our destination at this time of pandemic. There is a lot to know about our country, rich in beauty and natural diversity.
Honoring and exploring this immense coastline that we were presented with, and especially the one in the Northeast, is the project we are working on now and for the next two years. The expedition is scheduled for early 2022 and precedes the planning of the largest of all expeditions, the one to Alaska.
In this year, 2021, we were able to fulfill our dream (the one I shared as a child, and shared with my wife) of having our Camper-type motorhome, one more step towards our great goal. In partnership with a company in Paraná, we acquired our equipment and our vehicle is now properly prepared to travel long distances with all the essential support and support for maintaining our routine and primary needs for rest, hygiene and food.
All this change in life was, however, driven by serious health problems that I faced and that made me face life in a different way. Calugui Expedições was born from this new perspective, from the understanding that life is there to be lived in its fullness, from this desire to travel and discover the wonders that our planet has to offer, taking care, caring for and respecting it as it deserves .
Savor experiences, collect moments and perpetuate memories, that’s what it’s all about! There is a phrase I really like about Thomas Hardy who says: “Happiness does not depend on what we lack, but on the good use of what we have.”
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Notice to passengers 1: The Barros family has been traveling since 2017 in a van and aims to reach Hawaii. For now, they are enjoying Bahia
Notice to passengers 2: Lucas and MaÃra, who traveled across the country during the pandemic, also hit the road in their car.
