An incredible road trip adventure, Ushuaia- Alaska

G'day everyone

My team and I are planning what has been referred to as the ultimate adventure! We will be start the journey in Argentina next January then work our way north. Traveling through Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia before proceeding through central America and finally the USA and Canada. Finishing six months later.

Our team consists of 8 people, most of us are from Western Australia, many of us are also student engineers. We are planning on using two four wheel drives so we can tackle anything the road (or lack there of) throws at us. Our ultimate objective is share this experience with the world and produce a documentary covering our experience and the stories of those we meet along the way. The unique part is our approach

Most documentaries are shot first, then spend 12 months in editing before being distributed on DVDs or on TV as episodic content. We want to revolutionise the genre and make use of the latest web technologies to release content such as blog posts daily, other content such as photos and videos will be released every few days.

The long road of planning lays before us and i doubt the ten months we have left to plan will be enough.We would like to make all of you a part of this journey and hopefully we can help both of our communities to grow.

Andrew

How are you going to get across the Darien Gap?

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

In addition to the Gap, I'm curious as to how you plan to get these 4 wheel drive vehicles in the first place, and what you're going to do with them when your trip is complete.

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Originally Posted by Midwest Michael

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

In addition to the Gap, I'm curious as to how you plan to get these 4 wheel drive vehicles in the first place, and what you're going to do with them when your trip is complete.

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Thanks,

The Darien gap is by far our largest physical obstacle and one that is going to take some time to work around. I am hopeful that there may be a ferry service that has the capacity to take vehicles and cargo from Columbia into Panama, the way i see it there must be some reliable method to transport large goods into Columbia and the rest of South America for trade reasons.

As for the four wheel drives and equipment, hopefully once we have secured grants to build the website and sourced some of the travel papers such as passports, visas etc. We will then be able to approach sponsors who can provide us with equipment such as the four wheel drives in return for product placement.

There is a lot of risk with a project like this one and things wont happen overnight but i have faith we will be succesful. From our small site so far we have already been contacted by people who have invited us to visit their famil or want to be a part o the journey in some capacity.

Well, I've got to think that something of that great expense is going to be very difficult to get sponsored, especially in the current economic climate. However, we look forward to hearing how it goes.

If you haven't yet, I would highly recommend reading the book Road Fever, which is the story of a world record setting trip along the same path you are hoping to take. The trip itself took place in the 80's, so its too old/outdated to be a good travel guide, but it is an excellent read for anyone whose ever even dreamed of such a trip.

The expense will be high but no higher than a lot of other documentaries. In Australia we never had a true recession so i suppose we are more optimistic about things. It is important to remember that the money hasn't dried up, companies still have substantial marketing budgets and governments are still sponsoring grants for small companies.

That book does sound good. I have ordered a few DVDs from the globe busters site. They also set a record for a similar trip i believe. We dont want to do the trip too quickly though :D

As for crossing the gap GLC i have had a bit of a look into it. One method may be to load both of the cars into a shipping container. Not too costly, probably fall under $1500. We would then be free to fly or travel some other way over and then meet our cars when they arrive.