Drove to South America

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I left Colorado in September to drive the Pan American Highway south. I am in southern Colombia near the border with Ecuador, and plan to head south after the new year. I spent anywhere from 2 weeks in Guatemala to one day in Honduras.

I shipped the truck (2015 Toyota Tacoma) from Panama to Cartagena because the Darien Gap is impassible. I shared a container with a couple driving an RV. He barely fit after deflating his tires.

I changed the oil in Panama right at the 5000 mile mark with Mobil 1 EP 5W-30 that I brought with me. I also lubed the u-joints. I have 2000 miles on the new oil. Not sure I'll change it again. I lubed the u-joints again after hitting season floods in the Guajira Desert near Venezuela. I also checked the gear boxes for moisture, and they looked good. I see a lot of Castrol 20W-50, but occasionally I'll see Havoline or Chevron API SN that I can use.

If everything goes according to plan, I'll either ship the truck back from Valparaiso Chile to the US West Coast, or Buenos Aires to Houston. I'm told it starts to get cold in Southern Argentina and Chile around late April.

https://thepanamericanhighway.blogspot.com/

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Gotta say, You have TITANIUM balls to do that trip with a US plate on your vehicle
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So much corruption, Crime in the areas you visited i'm honestly more surprised that your STILL alive !!!
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Not trying to be a "wet blanket" glass half full

Dave
 
Originally Posted by GMguy84
Gotta say, You have TITANIUM balls to do that trip with a US plate on your vehicle
shocked2.gif


So much corruption, Crime in the areas you visited i'm honestly more surprised that your STILL alive !!!
15.gif



Not trying to be a "wet blanket" glass half full

Dave


You have to take precautions, but the risk is manageable. The biggest risk is actually the way people drive down here. I can do 12 hours on the US Interstate. Down here, after 5 or 6 hours of dodging chickens, horses, cows, motorcycles, dangerously overloaded pickups hauling bananas, I'm done for the day. I almost had a cattle truck topple over on me while crossing the Andes on a one-lane dirt road that is the principal route over the mountains. He hit a rut while we were passing. That was a thrill.

I was pulled over for speeding in Panama, but the cop was nice, not looking to shake me down, and I talked him out of it after showing him dash cam footage. The device paid for itself that day.
 
I was going to ask you how you got from Panama to Columbia. I've looked at that area on Google Maps, and it didn't look like there was any roads across the border. Did you drive all the way to the Darien Gap and found that it was impassable, or was the road closed and posted as impassable? Interesting stuff, and very adventurous.

What's next? Driving to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska?
 
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Originally Posted by A_Harman
I was going to ask you how you got from Panama to Columbia. I've looked at that area on Google Maps, and it didn't look like there was any roads across the border. Did you drive all the way to the Darien Gap and found that it was impassable, or was the road closed and posted as impassable? Interesting stuff, and very adventurous.


Oh no, I planned it for years. I contacted a shipping agent a few months before leaving, and we kept in touch, and she matched me with another overlander for sharing (about $1,200 each). She pretty much serves overlanders fulltime. I will add that Cartagena is miserable in November. I can't imagine what summer is like.
 
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Is the vehicle anchored with chain into the shipping container. Couldn't it slide and hit the inside of the container if in handling the container it was not always level?
 
Originally Posted by Donald
Is the vehicle anchored with chain into the shipping container. Couldn't it slide and hit the inside of the container if in handling the container it was not always level?


There's various ways of doing it. Some people nail chocks to the container floor. My shipping company just used 4 heavy ratchet straps.
 
Someone else will remember this better than me. But didn't a group of first generation Corvairs do the entire trip in about 1963 as a publicity exercise for GM. It was all about demonstrating the off road capabilities of the Corvair. I remember videos of Corvairs in awful mud holes but I'm not sure whether they drove the Darien gap.

That must have been quite an exercise when even the good roads were bad.
 
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