I’ve been hunting high and low for the oil for the transmission and transfer case for about a month now, without success. A couple of places have had something very very similar, though I’m not one to risk it with something that important. I luck upon a Jeep dealer in Cuenca, the first one I’ve seen for a long time, and am surprised when it turns out they still don’t have exactly what I need. I eventually find the right ATF for the transfer case and swap that out and after reading up I decide the transmission is fine for a long time yet.

Three months of infrequent driving and a lot of music in the driveway found me draining the battery one too many times. Even after a push start and an hour long drive into town, the battery only just spins the starter. Cleaning up the old battery reveals the following:
“Chrysler Motor Corp. Consult manual for replacement procedure”.
I’m pretty happy to be replacing an eleven year old battery, for the seemingly fixed world-wide price of $100.

Since I bought the Jeep the 4×4 shifter has been clunking – not a problem at all – it just drives me insane on the back roads I frequent. A friend from jeepforum.com bought the new washers and bushings I need, and I take a sunny afternoon to swap it all out, for a completely rattle free Jeep (is that an oxymoron?)

Jeep and Cotopaxi

All in all, things are going great with the Jeep, I couldn’t be happier with it.

-Dan

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

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

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

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

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 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

I noticed only a couple of things:

• The front diff is still leaking, but only a little and it’s not a problem.
• All the brakes & suspension are in good shape.
• Everything in the front end appears to be fine, which I was worried about after hitting a nasty speed bump (tope) at about 80 km/h.

Dan & Jeep enjoying a sunset over the Pacific Ocean

The road rolls on for the Jeep and I.

-Dan

It’s a scenic 30 minutes around to Pichilingue where I wait in line for almost an hour while a lady ahead of me fills out the paperwork for literally eight vehicles. My turns comes and it’s soon clear the girl behind the counter speaks about as much English as I do Spanish, but it doesn’t seem to slow us down much. A note to anyone who attempts to temporarily import a vehicle into Mexico – before you get in line, make sure you have one copy of each of your passport, registration, title and your Mexico Tourist Card you got when you entered Baja California South or moved south from the main US/Mexico border. Walking around the corner to get a copy of my Tourist Card is not nearly as bad as it could have been when I am allowed to jump back to the front of the line. I sign a few forms, answer some standard questions, pay $USD 30 and in less than 10 minutes I’m issued a shiny sticker for the windshield of the Jeep, officially allowing it to be driven by me throughout Mexico for the duration of my Tourist Card.
Interestingly, I was never even asked for my Mexican car insurance policy (which is required by law and I do have).

Now the Jeep is actually allowed onto the mainland, we tackle the task of ferry tickets. It seems the ferry companies go bankrupt and change hands every year or two, so all my planning ahead is way off the mark in terms of schedules and prices. Anyone reading the information here should remember it’s very likely to have changed since my trip.

Baja Ferries are a little more expensive and do not have a ferry leaving until the next day so we walk over to The Transportation Maritime of California offices to try our luck. There is a ferry leaving this afternoon at 4pm, and we’re told maybe there is room for us. Returning at 2pm we are given the all clear and purchase our tickets – $2, 950 pesos ($USD 227) for the Jeep and I, and 800 pesos ($USD 62) for Duke.
The customs inspector checks out the Jeep’s nice new sticker, verifies the VIN number and simply asks me if I am me, which I think is kind of obvious.

Rounding a building we see our home for the next 16 or so hours, The San Guillermo – a rusty looking old thing that is just perfect. The loading guys wave me aboard and I drive onto a hydraulic lift behind a small truck, which I think is a great novelty having never seen a lift on a vehicle ferry. The lift brings us to the upper deck which is already about half full of extremely tightly packed 18 wheelers and other massive trucks. When I park the Jeep it’s clearly the smallest vehicle and is quickly sandwiched between the heavily loaded trucks. They are all chained to the open deck, and it occurs to me that a little movement in any direction will not be a good thing at all.

The Jeep packed on the ferry

We grab a few things to entertain us and move up to the ‘passenger area’. Purchasing the cheapest possible tickets means we don’t have a fancy cabin or anything like that, we have to roam around the ship and find our own space. One room is provided for us cattle class passengers, and it’s filling fast by the time we find it. The truck drivers are obviously well practiced in this routine and have stripped the seats of cushions and are sound asleep on the floor, in the isles and sprawled across multiple seats. The air in the room is already stale and snoring seems to be a local contest.

It’s great entertainment to sit on the back deck watching the loading process continue, each truck pushed within inches on all sides. When the upper deck is clearly full another 18 wheeler is brought up and I don’t need to speak Spanish to know I’m not the only one that thinks it won’t fit anywhere. The driver reverses off the lift until the rear of the trailer is just where he wants it, leaving the front sticking out sideways about 4 meters (12 feet). The prime mover is disconnected from the trailer, does a fifteen point turn and is reconnected to the trailer at a right angle. The driver is obviously in a crazily low gear as he revs the engine hard and reverses, ever so slowly forcing the fully loaded trailer to slide sideways into the small space. All of us spectators stand to get a better view of the screeching tires and many nods of approval are seen as the trailer comes to a stop in a gap that can’t be more than 3 inches longer than the trailer itself.
A neat trick, for sure.

The sunset in the haze of the smoke stack

We sit outside on the deck to watch as we cast off and power out into the calm open ocean. Striking up a conversation with some guys our age draws a small crowd of drivers and we are soon using my pocket dictionary to conjure up all sorts of horribly broken sentences. The drivers befriend us and invite us to eat dinner with them in the galley which we are elated to learn is already paid for by our ticket price. Dinner is simple rice, chicken, re-fried beans and tortillas and hits the spot perfectly. We stay up late talking to the drivers, who are taken aback to say the least to learn of my trip – they find it hard to believe I could save enough money in two years and think I must be rich.
We share soda, cookies & beer until we are kicked out to get some sleep.

Trying to communicate with my little dictionary

The night air is still perfectly warm so we find a place up on deck to roll out our sleeping bags for the night. I lay awake thinking about the enormity of what I am doing for a while, enjoying the slight rocking of the ship across the ocean. I’ve been pretty amped all afternoon at the situation I find myself in; I’m riding the biggest ferry of my life, in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language and I’m enjoying myself immensely.
For the first time it dawns on me what I’m doing is on a pretty big scale and getting bigger by the day.

Where I slept on the open deck for the night

I’m awakened in the morning by the sunrise and watch a whole pod of dolphins playing along side the ship, birds noisily landing on deck and a couple of turtles that float by. Again we enjoy breakfast with our new trucker friends, who wish us all the best for the road ahead as we pull into Mazatlan at around 8:30am.
The entire loading process is run in reverse, and we find ourselves wide eyed on the streets of Mazatlan at 10:30 on a beautiful sunny day.

-Dan

I’m not much of a 4×4 enthusiast; I bought the Jeep as a vehicle to get me where I want to be, not so much to tear up the countryside driving it back and forward. That being said, I did some great hiking in Arches and it only seems fair to let Jeep have a run as well. I’m told to take the Shafer trail down 400 vertical meters (1,400 ft.) to the White Rim mesa, explore around for a while and follow the Potash Road out to Moab.

The Shafer Trail winds down

I first head to the overlook to get a good idea of what I’m in for. No doubt about it, the trail goes down
The canyon is mighty big and impressive too.

The scale of the canyon was ridiculous

The trail is a mix of red dirt, loose rock and occasionally flat rock slabs. Never was it an actual test for my Jeep, only how much bouncing and jarring could I tolerate. I slowly drive around the rim and begin the decent into the switchbacks. In first gear the Jeep rolls much too fast and after a little experimenting I find low range second gear to be the perfect gear. A pathfinder passes in the opposite direction, the only other people I would see all trail.

On the Shafer Trail

Did someone say it was steep?

Once on the canyon floor I make my way around the White Rim Road a little way to checkout the Colorado River. The short walk out to the lookout is well worth the effort, the mighty river another 200 meters (700 ft.) below.

The mighty Colorado River

I slowly back-track along the rim and head out the Potash Road. I might have underestimated how long it was all going to take and find the light fading quickly. Before long I’m driving along in the pitch black, bouncing and jarring over unseen obstacles. I guess my way at every intersection and find my way to civilization on the first attempt.

The lush green river seems so out of place

The rock formations are amazing

It was an awesome afternoon, and Jeep and I sleep soundly.

Jeep and Dan loving Canyonlands

-Dan

I just did another oil change and tire rotation, which gave me another chance to crawl all over the Jeep and have a good look. I noticed a few things:

• My ‘new’ tires are wearing much faster than I had hoped. At this rate I don’t think they’ll make the whole trip, but we’ll see what happens. I picked up another flat a couple of weeks back bringing the count to two.
• The pinion seal on the front diff is leaking again… it really shouldn’t be doing that, but it’s never going to amount to much so I’m going to leave it.
• The passenger foot well is soaking wet sometimes which I think is either the heater core leaking, water getting in between the windshield and hood or a missing drain plug in the floor. I still haven’t figured out exactly when it happens so I need to keep thinking about it.
• Even after 10,000 kms the engine oil was still pretty good, I think it really likes the highway driving.

The Jeep has been running brilliantly, with only one ‘problem’ for the whole trip. I think it was more operator error, but I’ll let you decide
The plastic drain plug on the bottom of the radiator had been leaking a few drops here and there since I flushed the whole thing before leaving. When I was in Skagway, Alaska I noticed it was more than the usual few drops, so I tried to tighten it. Of course I went for too much, and the plug broke off in my hand. I ummed and arred for a while before finally deciding to pull the whole radiator out – I didn’t want any little plastic fragments floating around in there waiting to hit the water pump blades or puncture a hose.
The whole deal took about an hour and a half, and it’s nice to know it’s all fixed properly.

-Dan

The leaves are beginning to turn here, a clear sign I need to get moving south and escape winter. I set off on the gravel road to Telegraph Creek which comes highly recommended.
I flash past a sign that says “WARNING: Steep mountain road ahead. Grades up to 20%” before I really have time to read it.
20%? that doesn’t sound right, I must have read it wrong. Still wondering about this, a corner sign whizzes by, then a recommended speed sign of 10 km/h. Ten? I’ve never seen a recommended speed that slow, something must be going on here. I start to gear down and am happy I get into second by the time I get a glimpse of what is coming. When recognition sets in I double-clutch and push hard to notch first gear even though Jeep complains loudly. The corner is a full 180˚ hairpin and without doubt the steepest public road I have ever seen. Even in first gear I have to ride the brakes hard to keep my speed under control.

The highway continues in this fashion for the next 60 kms, hugging the Stakine River the entire way. The river has carved such a huge canyon it’s known as “The Grand Canyon of The Stakine”. The guys that built the road seem to have made it a personal goal to see how close to the edge they could build.

The Grand Canyon of the Stikine

I have no idea what to expect in Telegraph Creek and order a coffee at the only building that looks like it’s for out-of-towners. I spark up a conversation with the cashier, Leaf, about Mt. Edziza and my desire to hike there. It is an extremely remote park on the other side of the river that encompasses a huge volcano, volcanic rock formations, glaciers and high plateaus. With the relatively recent volcanic activity there are also a few hot springs in the park that caught my attention in the first place. I’m pretty hiked out from my recent adventures, so at this point my interest level has dropped to half-hearted. I am told very few people hike in from this side due to an abundance of chest deep beaver dams, $30 one way river crossing and the steep elevation gain. My enthusiasm continues to fall, which I’m not at all sad about, in fact I’m kind of pleased.

It turns out the building we’re sitting in is the original Hudson’s Bay Trading Company building, the one that started it all for Canada. Leaf’s family moved here in the 70’s as part of a “back to the earth movement” – not hippies she says, “these are very hardworking people, they want to do everything for themselves”. Their house is the most beautiful log cabin I have ever seen, and constructed more precisely than most city buildings.
We talk long into the night, and Leaf’s mum Lynn is bursting with pride about the life and home she has created for her family. She’s a little annoyed she had to go to work for six weeks this year and assures me it will be less next year.
I can’t help thinking that most people would be elated if they got six weeks of leave time.

I drive south the next morning and I know that I am rushing, the one thing I said I would not do on this trip. I’m really excited to see my brother soon so I don’t care. I want to rush. I want to be hanging out with him right now. It’s raining now, the first continuous rain I have seen in two months. I’m cold and tired, so I pay $12 for a campground in Stewart that has a hot shower. In the morning I cross the border into Hyder, Alaska which bizarrely has no customs or government presence at all, I just drive straight on in.

Glacier on the drive to Stewart

Hyder is known as the bear capital of North America, so I make a stop at Bear Creek and wander down the boardwalk to see what all the fuss is about. I’m amused by the throngs of paparazzi with telephoto lenses jostling for position on any bears that might unsuspectingly show up for lunch. I wait all of 20 seconds to see a grizzly sow swim across the small pond 20 meters in front of us. Cameras go crazy and everyone “ohhhs” and “ahhhs” as if on command. The bear walks under the boardwalk and everyone sits transfixed in place, still staring where the bear used to be. I look around and start thinking about where the bear will re-appear. As I trace the route in my mind, I begin to walk; it must have gone under there, around that and behind this. Bam. The grizzly appears less than 3 meters away, strolling down the river looking for salmon. I’m the only person to have solved the riddle and so I walk down the boardwalk alone, parallel to the bear for 40 meters snapping photos and being thoroughly entertained by it’s behavior. Once she has had her fill, everyone else seems to realize and comes running down the boardwalk, just in time to see her disappear into the bushes.

Step one: wander around the river looking for a juicy salmon

Step two: swat at the salmon

Step three: that would be lunch

I drive up a very windy, steep gravel road that has more glaciers per kilometer than anywhere I’ve been yet. I drive and drive until I’m in the clouds and can hardly see the front of the Jeep let alone any more glaciers. The view from the top is nil.

Another glacier

On Mark’s recommendation I continue along the road, dropping down into the next valley jam packed with glaciers until eventually hitting barriers where there is active mining.

A glacier in the clear

Enjoying the view

-Dan

That all cost me $525 CAD for an average of $1.16/L CAD
or $472 USD for an average of $3.96/gal USD.

I always thought this Jeep got 20mpg when I drove it conservatively, now I have confirmation that it’s pretty close to that.

There are some points to note here:

1. More than a few tanks of gas I did not go over 80kms/h (50mph) due to road surface and speed limits.
2. The average price is high because gas was $3.99/gal USD in the Arctic Circle.
3. I didn’t adjust my speedo after putting on my 31″ tires which have a different circumference than stock. It reads somewhere around 10-15% low, so the mileage figures are in reality a little better than the above.

I just did an oil change, air filter and tire rotation as well which was a great chance to crawl all over the Jeep and have a good look. As far as I could see, everything is going great. Oh, I did smash a headlight on the Dalton so I’ll have to get a new one of those. It doesn’t really matter for now though because it hasn’t been dark enough to use them yet.

-Dan

Alaska Highway

I know I use the word a lot, but driving around Alaska really does seem to be epic. The rivers are epic, the wildlife is epic, and the mountains are especially epic. The Canadian Rockies were my backyard for two years and I explored them pretty well – but Alaska seems somehow different.
Bigger. Stronger. More.

Mountains on the side of the highway

I hope I can give you a sense of that over the coming weeks.

The mix of summer colors & sunshine with the obviously fresh snow on these mountains really screams out that something is going on here. Within the first one hundred miles I’d seen a couple of moose and a calf. One of them was standing in a picturesque knee deep river, just until I got my camera all lined up, when it wondered off into the bushes.
Even big moose are skilled at disappearing I’ve discovered.

I’ve been working on my ‘Guerrilla Camping’ skills as I go along. This is what I call the fine art of free camping. It takes a lot of skill and practice to find a nice spot to camp for free – not too close to the road, a really nice view, minimal mosquitos and most importantly somewhere that nobody will yell at you. I like to think I’m going to get so good at this that one day other people will show up and upon seeing the superlative campsite I have chosen, will ask where they have to pay.
I can dream

Guerrilla Camping

On the downside, camping like this means I don’t meet other travelers or even locals. In fact, I often don’t see anyone else at all. I’ve been doing it about 2 nights in 3, and I’m yet to find the balance of free vs. meeting other people to share the bears with.

I met George at Liard Hot Springs and after we’d chatted around for an hour or two he invited me to checkout his gold mining operation in Central, Alaska. The drive out was fantastic, over a mountain pass and down into a little town that time had forgotten. My instructions were to ask for directions to George’s mine at the one and only store in town. I wasn’t sure how well this was going to work, but sure enough, they immediately knew who I was talking about and gave me perfect directions. I found George happily working on one of his eight or nine strong fleet of barely running CAT heavy machinery. This early in the season all efforts were on getting everything running again, no gold was actually being mined yet. We chatted around for the entire day, while George showed me around, introduced me to everyone and working on the starting mechanism of one of the big CATs.
I had a great time out at the mine, and I really hope to see George again sometime down the road.

Rusty Old CAT

-Dan

On the front page

The Sunraysia Daily Article

-Dan

The Completed Storage Box

I originally wanted to use MDF, but a lot of people said plywood would stand up to water better and my local store had it in 3/4 inch (19mm), so I went with plywood. I was hoping it would be strong enough to hold my weight without any kind of support in the middle which it turned out to be. It does flex a little when I bounce my weight right on the leading edge, but I don’t think there is any danger of it cracking.

Mike and I cut out the top piece first, only needing the small cutouts for the roll bar on each side before it would fit nicely. Once it was in place, we made a template for the tailgate cutout and a quick pass with the jigsaw had the tailgate closing nicely.

Mike showing off his construction skills

Next was the vertical back wall. It was tricky to get just right, so I spent about an hour making cardboard cut outs for each side where it needed to tightly fit the wheel wells – each side was a little different. I also chose to mount the back wall just behind the “dip” in the floor for the rear footwells – I played around with this for a while and decided it was as big as I could get the box while still being able to recline the two front seats a usable amount. I really wanted the box to be secured from the inside to make it harder to remove or get into so I used the original mount points from the backseat to bolt that piece in place.Cutting off the extra length in the bolts meant I lost only the nut width in storage depth.

Rear wall secured from the inside

After we screwed the top piece down to the back wall using glue and about 15 wood screws, we thought for a while about how to really secure it down. We found a hole and mounting bolt left over from the seat belts in the perfect spot on each side. Another right angled bracket on each side gave it a lot of strength so it couldn’t be lifted up and off. The brackets slid in behind the carpet, so it’s a little hard to see in the photos. Again I cut off the extra length in the bolts to minimize the amount of storage space lost.

Inside the box

I covered the box in carpet in the hope it will be a little stealth – hopefully most people won’t even know what’s going on with the floor in my Jeep. I also mounted my three extra 12v outlets behind the passenger seat and threw some big hooks on top for a cargo net. I had to be careful where I put the hooks so they would not interfere with the soft top bows or the canvas of the top when it was folded down.

Mounting the extra 12v outlets

I’m very happy with the result and already have it full of gear.

-Dan

The completed box from the passenger seat

TJ Storage Box Plans