After coming up with the idea from reading online blogs about adventure travel written by people who slept in the back of their vehicles, Ashley Giordano and her husband Richard made plans to travel around Costa Rica in their truck.
The couple had thought about doing a backpack trip to Costa Rica, but instead, inspired by what they had read, bought a Toyota pickup truck, named it Little Red and shipped it to Costa Rica.
In October 2013, the Giordanos sold everything, rented out their condo, quit their jobs and toured the rugged South American country while living out of the truck.
“We were both working full-time office jobs and it was a major burnout,” said Ashley. “We decided we needed to get out and do something.”
According to Richard, after seven months their finances ran out.
They drove Little Red from Costa Rica back to BC for a year to save money and then took off again.
“We really wanted to explore further south,” said Richard. “After that year was up, we spent the following year in South America, all along the west coast from the Andes down to Patagonia.”
Richard said they travelled back in June of this year, driving up the eastern seaboard and then started exploring Canada’s Maritime provinces.
“We decided that we’d been to 15 other countries, but hadn’t really seen our own,” he added. “We took the long way back home. We were in the Maritimes for a couple of months and then drove across Canada.”
Ashley said they arrived back at her parents in Kelowna on October 5, the same place they had departed from on that first trip to Costa Rica three years earlier.
Experiences garnered by the couple during their travels are posted at desktoglory.com, a blog developed to record everything that happened along the way.
While growing up in Powell River, Richard said he became a car guy, picking up his mechanical know-how mostly from his father.
“My first car was a ’67 Mustang, which I still have” he said. “I kind of built from the ground up when I was 15. That was my daily driver going back and forth to Brooks [Secondary School].”
Ashley said she had no idea her future husband was into cars or what she had gotten herself into when she climbed into the truck he picked her up with for their first date.
“He picked me up in this 4Runner that was all jacked up and super loud,” she said. “It wasn’t really what I was expecting. He pulled out this red bucket from inside so I could step into the truck.”
Now back in BC, Ashley and Richard said they have decided to put down roots in Victoria for the next five years and are happy to be in one spot, sleeping indoors rather than in a bed inside a truck tent and having regular access to hot water.
“We have it out of our system and then some, for now,” said Ashley, but not quite totally out of their systems, she added.
According to Richard, the couple are on a friends and family tour right now and just recently visited Powell River.
Richard said he might look for another project vehicle now that the couple will be settled for a while.
