The Americas
Considering we live in North America and did not want to start our travels with a massive shipping bill to get the vehicle to Asia, Europe or Africa ( that will hopefully come in future ) a route loosely following the Pan American highway seemed a great place to start. Obviously comfortable travelling Canada and the US, we had also spent significant time ( albeit without a vehicle ) in Mexico, South America and parts of Central America so not much of what we would be seeing would be totally new – doing it in our own vehicle would be. On May 17, 2019, we set off !
I was keen to start at the very top and go all the way to the bottom as many had done before. We would be starting with a road we knew well – in 2011, Lois and I took our small SUV with a roof top tent and drove the Dalton Highway ( of “Ice Road Truckers” fame ) to the shores or the Arctic in Deadhorse, Alaska and back to our home in Kelowna, BC. I was keen to do it again, this time less hurriedly, so Deadhorse ( also known as Prudhoe Bay ), almost 4,000 km’s north, would be the starting point. Since that trip in 2011, and after many years in the planning, the Canadian government completed the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk permanent road ( ‘Tuk’ was formerly only served by a seasonal ice road ) so we also wanted to also get to the Canadian Arctic shoreline – we would not likely get this close any time soon and the seasons were lining up well for us. From Tuk we meandered south through Canada’s Yukon, North West Territories and British Columbia before heading south through the USA, Mexico, Central and then South America.
Covid 19 caught up with us in Chile in April 2020 so we stored our camper in Santiago before returning to Canada for what ended up being an almost 18 month hiatus. Not until October, 2021 did return to Chile to reunite with our rig and finish the PanAm. From Punta Arenas and Tierra Del Fuego we drove north through Argentina and Uruguay before shipping the vehicle from Buenos Aires to Brunswick, Georgia in the US before driving home to British Colombia in Canada. This ended our PanAm odyssey in April, 2022.
New Zealand / Australia
Having sold our truck to good friends ( who called us while we were in South America to arrange the purchase ) we set to work finishing the conversion of the Sprinter 4×4 we had purchase during the Covid hiatus. This took about 6 intensive months and in November, 2022 we drove it to Savannah, Georgia for loading on a Wallenius Wilhelmsen RoRo ship bound for Melbourne, Australia. During the 30 day passage we used a rental van to explore New Zealand arriving in Australia in late January to meet the ship. Quarantine delays meant we did not start exploring Australia till early March, but over the next 12 months we explored the whole amazing country . The van was sensational and took us to many difficult to access remote areas.
South Korea / Japan
The van was shipped from Melbourne to South Korea in March, 2024 again on a Wallenius RoRo ship. After almost a month in Korea, we shipped via the Camellia Line ferry from Busan, Korea to Fukuoka, Japan and spent the next 3 months exploring all 4 of Japan’s main islands.
We shipped out of Yokohama in August back to North America- once home, we’ll plan the next adventure !
