The road chose me

It’s crazy to think that I’ve only covered 10,000kms from Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, which shows just how tiny the countries in Central America are.

A few things about the Jeep are worth noting:

• After hunting high and low around Colombia for 10W30 motor oil I finally found some at a garage that threw in an oil change for free. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever had someone else change the oil on my vehicle, which is a little strange. An idea my Dad came up with a long time ago was to get someone else to change the oil so I could have a really good look underneath while on the hoist. I did exactly that and am really satisfied everything major is going great.

• The steering stabilizer I bought soon before setting out has basically crapped out, leaking oil and doing not a lot of stabilizing. This means I get vibrations through the steering wheel that will tend towards death wobble and the Jeep wanders a little on the highway. I’ll keep an eye out for a replacement, though I’m not too concerned about it.

• Ever since I bought the Jeep there has been a really strange hollow clunk in the front end when on rough roads, which I always assumed was something steering/suspension related. It’s been getting worse lately, so I’ve been investigating. It turns out the shift lever for 4×4 is really poorly designed and they are notorious for clunking loudly. I verified this was the case while climbing around underneath. It’s great to know what the problem is and that I can safely ignore it.

• Back in Costa Rica when I was driving on a lot of really bad gravel roads the Jeep developed a really strange clunk/clang noise that was worrying me a lot. After some poking around underneath it turned out where the exhaust bolts onto the headers was not tight, causing the whole thing to rattle. A nice simple fix.

• For the first time ever, I could actually notice a drop in the oil level before the change. The couple of gaskets that weep don’t appear to be getting worse, so maybe she’s burning a little oil now that she’s getting a little long of the tooth. It didn’t drop much, so I’ll keep a close eye on it.

• I’ve finally bought some silicon to fix the ‘water on the front passenger floor mat problem’

These Willys Jeeps are all over Colombia, usually overflowing with people and gear

-Dan

Day Four – Stuffing
The big day has arrived to ’stuff’ our vehicles into the container and we’re moving at 7:30am, driving across the city in rush hour traffic. First stop is the office of Mario for some last minute paperwork and payment, which we don’t want to do until the job is done. After we mention his customs guy ‘bribed’ us $20 to get our forms corrected a huge argument breaks out where Mario throws the paperwork at us and tells us to do it on our own. Eventually we calm him down and get things happening again.
While waiting for an hour we get our cars washed, hoping to avoid Colombian officials finding mud and charging for exorbitant fumigation.

We finally negotiate with Mario to send along his customs guy who clearly does not want to and proceeds to drive like a maniac as we follow him along the toll road to Colón and the port we will ship from. We stop in at the Manfret office to get more copies of paperwork and more important-looking stamps then move to the ‘free-zone’ and customs. Here we hand over everything we have and receive a permit for our vehicles to exit the country. Again everything is in triplicate, including stamps and signatures. The stamps in our passports that prevent us from leaving are also cancelled here.
It’s funny when we bump into the French travelers once again, who somehow talked their way around their paperwork problem and are back in the game.

Back at the port a random guy is asking for us and calls us in to get a security pass. He explains in great detail where we must take the cars, which sounds easy enough. Back outside Mario’s customs guy tells us to stand in line X and hand over our paperwork before he bids us farewell and disappears.

Time is rapidly ticking down and we’re starting to get a little anxious about the closing time of the port.
Forty five minutes later we’re still waiting in the scorching heat and summarize our position:

• We have no idea why we are standing in line.

• We have no idea why we gave all of our paperwork away.

• We have no idea why we must pay $5 each.

• We hope like mad we are in the right place doing the right thing.

We eventually get everything back and jump in our cars, excited to actually load the container. The directions we got earlier turn out to be useless and we are quickly driving aimlessly around the port with no clue where to go, even driving along a muddy gravel road that negates our car wash plan. At one point I follow Vince into a security check point where the guards furiously yell and wave their arms at us before we can even ask directions.

On a complete guess we try to walk into a yard with a lot of cars around and a guard takes our passports and hands us another security badge. We realize we are at the extremely busy RORO section where people are furiously getting cars inspected for importation. Still with no idea if we are in the right place we ask a lady who takes half of our paperwork into an office then gives the other half to another man, before they tell us to wait with the 25 guys importing cars.

We both have doubts we are in the correct place and now we don’t even have the paperwork we’ve invested so much time in.
We stand around in the hot sun feeling lost and helpless.
Heat, exhaustion and frustration make losing it look like a valid option at this point.

Finally we get an indication of progress when the guards from earlier are alerted to our permitted entry. We drive into the yard and wait for an inspection by the K-9 unit. The dog climbs in and on everything, never once looking more than downright bored. Again we wait, with the clock approaching 4:30pm, knowing the port closes at 5. Finally a customs guys says he can take us to our container so he jumps in with Vince and away we go deep into the port.

The K-9 unit throughly searching the Jeep

I’ve never been to a major shipping port like this and can’t help but be in awe. We drive right down to within 20 meters of the water where enormous cargo ships are slowly gliding by. Directly overhead is a crane that is simply too big to be real and shipping containers are stacked high all around us. When we park in front of our container we both know we’ve made it and begin to smile and joke around at our success against all odds.

Photo of the dock I was not supposed to take

A few minutes later we get another K-9 inspection that also walks through the empty container before we drive inside. We got a 40 foot ‘high cube’ container so Vince can drive straight in with his roof tent and we have plenty of room to spare lengthwise and about 40cm on each side. While waiting for the lashing crew to show up, I sit quitely on the concrete at 4:45pm, feeling happy and exhausted at the same time.

Waiting to drive into the container

All four wheels are chocked and the four corners are tied down. We do a quick inspection, take a few photos, and sign a few forms as customs close and put a special seal on the container, now ready to go.

Vince driving the Land Rover into the container

At 5:30 we are back at the entrance to the port and I sit on the gutter to eat my ‘lunch’ of fried chicken, fries and coke, the first thing I have had to eat or drink since 7am. We catch a taxi into downtown Colon, the express bus to Panama City and another taxi back to our hotel.

Home for the next few days

This is by far the biggest, most insane few days of paperwork I’ve gone through in my life and as I drift off to sleep I can’t help smiling at the enormity of it all.
32000kms, nine months and ten countries down the adventure continues to grow.

Lashed down and closing up

-Dan

This story concludes in Shipping across The Darien Gap Pt. 4

One of my recent life goals is to become a travel writer writing articles for publication in various magazines. – I thoroughly enjoy sharing my adventures here on my blog and I hope to reach a larger & broader audience through magazines and other publications.

I’ve just had an article published in the Australian Jeep Action Magazine, which I’m really excited about. Below is the finished product in low-resolution. You’ll have to buy a copy of the magazine to read the full article!

Jeep Action Magazine first spread

Jeep Action Magazine second spread

-Dan

We roll into Belize City and quickly find that everything we were told is more or less true – it’s not a very nice place to be, with lots of crime and very dirty rundown streets. The major roads have bigger cracks and potholes than most gravel roads I’ve driven on and are strictly a first gear affair. We stumble across a cheapish hotel that will let me lock up the Jeep for the night and Kate puts herself to bed feeling sick while I head out for Jeep repairs.

The zips on the rear window of the soft top have been acting up since I hit major dirt & mud in Alaska and I’ve been ignoring it as much as possible, kind of pretending it’s not there and hoping it would just go away. Yesterday one side gave out completely, not closing at all and jamming badly no matter how hard I tried to make it work. A close inspection shows both sides are worn down to the point of looking like flat plastic instead of zipper teeth.

The phone book yields only one auto upholsterer, so I set out in the pouring rain trying to navigate the city with a cheesy tourist map that has pretty pictures of animals and a smiling sun in the top corner. I quickly figure out that everyone in the shop is a Jeep enthusiast (Jeeper) and everybody either owns one, or has done at some point. The main guy has replaced many such problem zips and assures me he can have it as good as new. I shoot out quickly to buy the actual zip needed and upon my return the guys move all the furniture out of the showroom and I drive right up in there to escape the still pouring rain.

The Jeep all naked

In five minutes flat I have the entire roof off which disappears out the back to be repaired. I take the opportunity to clean and re-organize while it’s so easy to reach inside and move everything about. Everyone in the shop is really excited to hear about my trip and can’t stop admiring the map on the hood. I take out my paint and update my moving yellow line and they almost fall over to see my just painting it like that

The new zip doesn’t take long to install and we put everything back together in no time. It’s a very heavy duty zip which doesn’t go around the corners so well, but the guy assures me it won’t give any trouble for at least ten years and my assessment is that it’s about ten thousand times better than a zip that doesn’t close. All up it costs me about $75 USD and I’m really happy to have everything working 100% again. While we’re on the topic of Jeep repairs I forgot to mention a week back one headlight went out, so I changed it with my spare and bought a new one that same day.

The city itself is not very nice and we almost feel like prisoners in our hotel, hiding from the bad guys on the outside of the impressively tall perpetually locked gate. My advice to anyone coming to Belize is to give the city a miss, there really is no reason at all to come here.

-Dan

Today marks six months on the road for me and the odometer on the Jeep shows I’ve done 24,000 km, making this the halfway point of the trip in both time and distance. This feels like a good time for some reflection. First of all, I can’t believe I’ve been on the road for six months – it’s not until I click back through this website and read my stories and see photos from the whole trip that it actually feels real. I also can’t believe the trip is half over – in so many ways I’m really just warming up and not at all ready to think of the trip as winding down.

On a couple of occasions over the last few weeks I’ve seriously thought about whether I can handle this trip and make it all the way. More than once I caught my reflection in the mirror and actually stood and had a conversation with myself. Granted, those times were when I was tired, sick and seriously struggling with Spanish, but it’s still very daunting even at the best of times. Traveling through Mexico is a lot different than the previous four months and it’s going to take some getting used to. At this point my Spanish is good enough that I can get around – I can buy food, gas and a room for the night without too much trouble, but I want so much more. I really want to be able to sit down with local people and find out about their country, their opinions on everything & also the places I really should be visiting along the way.

Learning Spanish will have a big impact on the rest of my trip. So far, I have not put in the time.

I also genuinely have no idea if I am safe or not, something I think about constantly. Nothing has happened to indicate I’m not, but I just can’t shake the endless warnings I was given. Every time I step out of the Jeep I am nervous and hesitant to really move about people and explore, and I constantly have that strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. This is not a feeling I like, and something I need to work on. It’s getting better as my Spanish improves and will hopefully continue in that manner.

Central America here I come...

Money is not something I’ve been stressing about, although I’ll admit that it comes into my thoughts more often than I would like. I went massively over budget in Canada and the US, and managed to bring it in some while Duke was paying for half the gas. Paying for hotels is not going to help, although I can’t see another option right now. Hopefully I have a good tax return and some money I lent out coming my way soon, which will really help out there.

At my current pace I will be around the bottom of South America right in the middle of winter, not really an option when living in a tent & driving on cheap all-season tires. So far I’ve come up with two possible options; slow down a little so I don’t get too far south until Spring or keep moving at my current pace and try to work a season at a ski resort somewhere in Argentina or Chile, then continue south in spring.
Going with my usual plan of not really planning at all, I’m just going to keep going with the flow and I’ll figure that one out when the time comes.

For now the road continues to chose me, and visa versa

-Dan

I’m all set to leave La Manzanilla when Jason’s mustang blows a head gasket and he needs my help getting it back to town. What the heck, one more night can’t hurt We walk for an hour along the beach at night to an old restaurant where a movie is being filmed and Jason is pretty sure he saw Pierce Brosnan there. The filming this night is a long way back from the beach so we can’t see much, and even though the security guard is friendly I don’t want to push my luck, so we turn around to walk home keeping an eye out for any turtles laying eggs – of which there are none.

I finally hit the road late the next afternoon and am immediately driving through beautiful dense green mountains right by the ocean before a quick stop for a re-supply in Manzanillo. I heard about the surfing hotspot of La Ticla from a few different people, the target of today’s drive. I don’t want to be on the road when the sun goes down and the military guys with fully-automatic weapons at the checkpoint are taken aback when I voluntarily stop to ask for directions. They end up laughing at me and I’m relieved to hear it’s only another 20 minutes down the road.

I pull into the campground just as the sun touches the ocean, casting everything in a beautiful orange light. The beachside campground here has tons of Canadians and Americans who’ve made the trip down for the waves, which look nice, if not a little choppy. I had always intended to buy a board sooner or later on this trip, by lately the urge has been wearing off. For one thing boards here are very expensive because they are all brought down from the US. Secondly, everyone keeps asking me “Did you come down to surf?” and I kind of like answering no to that – I feel like surfing immediately puts a person in a stereotype that I don’t really belong in. The ocean is great, but it’s by no means my focus.
Maybe I’ll get a board later. Maybe.

Waves rolling in

I’ve booked in for a home-stay a long way south near Puerto Escondido and because I stayed in La Manzanilla an extra night, I now have two enormous days of driving ahead of me. I’m on the road at 9am and drive for the first few hours on very windy, steep mountain roads directly next to the ocean. I watch a couple of spiders crawl across the road, and then entertain myself for half an hour thinking about just how big a spider needs to be for me to see it while driving along at 50km/h. Those were some very big spiders.

I roll through Lazaro Cardenas & Zihatanejo without stopping, and begin making my way through an almost endless procession of small towns, with very slow moving trucks and ever-present Topes. A quick 10 minute stop for gas and lunch and I’m back on the road, watching the world roll by. The military presence here is huge, and I’m stopped about every hour for the routine questions of where I am from and where I am going. This is by far the biggest day of driving I have done for the entire trip, and it’s kind of a novelty. I had hoped to make it south of Acapulco before dark, but end up just short of the city. In nine hours of almost non-stop driving I cover 450km – an average of only 50km/h. That’s a pretty good indication of the road conditions, topes, trucks & other obstacles I have dealt with all day.

City by the sea

I pull into a hotel and am confused when the girl explains the price to me – per hour. I’ve never stayed in a per hour establishment and it’s all kind of amusing. I have a tiny room with air conditioning, a bathroom with cold shower and a place to park the Jeep for about $15 USD after some serious bargaining on my behalf.

I said I would leave at 6am and am not surprised to be woken by a knock on my door in the early morning. In my sleepy haze I fully open the door, to be greeted by a grimy mexican man who is obviously drunk and reeks of alcohol. At first I’m not sure what he wants, but it becomes all to clear when he first points at me, then himself, and finally the bed, nodding and grinning a toothless grin the whole time. I don’t know how to say “Go away” in Spanish, so I have to rely on the tone of my voice and my body language to get the message across, which doesn’t work so well. I end up physically shoving him out of the way to close and lock the door and he keeps talking through the door anyway.

Needless to say I don’t get any more sleep after that.

My new friend comes back in an hour and tries to offer me a beer, which I obviously don’t want. By the third time I can see the sky getting light outside and so decide I may as well get up and get moving, because I’m not sleeping any more. I’m horrified to learn my new friend actually works at the hotel – he is carrying the sheet of paper with my checkout time on it. By now he leaves nothing to guesswork and his hand gestures confirm what I had previously guessed.
I throw my stuff in the Jeep and get out as fast as I can.

It’s 7am, and within 10 minutes I am in heavy traffic leading into Acapulco, something I had not bargained for. I creep along in first gear for about 45 minutes before I find myself in the city proper at full-on rush hour. Up until this point I have described driving in Mexico as “make-it-up driving” but this is something altogether different. Cars are moving in every possible direction, cars are forcing their way in at merge points, horns and 4-way flashers are a means of communication and lanes and turn signals are completely irrelevant. On a road that allows for two lanes in each direction a momentary lapse in the opposing traffic means the lanes there sit open. Cars from all around me dart over and immediately convert the road into a four lane, one-way street, until they come head-on with traffic and frantically push their way back over. Most intersections don’t have lights or any form of control, so making a left-hand turn is a matter of just going whenever you can physically fit, the other cars seem to just flow around.

I really have no idea where I am going, and basically follow my nose until I see a sign that I need, which seems to work out pretty well in Mexican cities. In the cities themselves there are very few street signs, but as soon as I get near the outskirts the major highways are well signed. Before long I am on the correct highway, which has heavy construction and has turned into a parking lot in both directions. I move less than 1 km in an hour, a fact that everyone around me wants to tell the world about with their horn. The temperature and humidity are rising and all around me cars and trucks are spewing out thick black smoke, making the air heavy enough to chew. A gap opens up and I use the “When In Rome” philosophy, darting onto the wrong side of the traffic barrier and hurtling towards oncoming traffic. To my amazement they move out of my way, and along with a stream of others, we make great time driving on the wrong side of a divided highway, until such time as I come within centimeters of other vehicles pushing my way back in. I can’t be certain if it’s my gringo appearance, the height of the Jeep, or just how things normally work, but cutting people off seems to be a perfectly valid way of getting where you want to go.
I clear the city at 10.30am – three hours after I entered.

The day rolls on much like yesterday, although the novelty of driving has clearly warm off. I can tell I’m tired and pushing a little too hard when I hit two consecutive topes doing about 40 km/h, having not seen them at all. Again I’m driving through beautiful lush green jungle, winding mountain roads and endless little dusty towns. I make the routine 10 minute gas, bathroom and lunch stop and immediately get back on the highway, trying to beat the fast falling sun.

An unknown bay along the way

For the first time the military guys with big guns at a roadblock ask me to step out of the Jeep to search it, and I happily oblige. The whole experience is very friendly and the guard searching speaks pretty good English so we chat the whole time about where I’m from and why I’m driving alone. He is very thorough in his search and smiles broadly when he announces everything is fine and I can move on. I’ve come to like these military guys – they are always smiling and polite and simply go about their business as nicely as possible, which is perfectly fine as far as I am concerned.

Upon arrival at my final destination just before sunset it’s been a 10.5 hour day of driving for another total of 450km. I’m not in any hurry to do that again.

When I see the place I’ll be staying for the next week, I instantly know it was all worth it

-Dan