drive the americas

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Joyful Find: Kristin and Chris of The Darien Plan

December 16, 2009 in Joyful Finds, Other Joydrivers, argentina by kels | 1 comment

Once in awhile, in a rare occasion some cosmic forces collide and by sheer coincidence you end up meeting some people who you know will be your friends for life. We were extremely fortunate to meet up with Kristin and Chris by chance in Puerto Escondido, Mexico and continued to meet up and hang out with them on our long driving adventure.

From Mexico to the end of the world we have managed to:

share ridiculously small spaces and not kill each other (5 weeks, 4 adults, 120 square feet and a cold shower
listen to the most amazing music mixes including Jolene and Dreadlock Holiday
ship cars from Central America to South America and have them arrive to the right port
deal with inane border bureaucracy smoothly
work the system to find the best accommodation deals
stumble through language issues with the locals (between 4 of us we managed)
survive unsafe handling of fireworks
sample as many wines as possible in South America
create the best website about driving the Americas
whine about what we miss from home
handle long blamming drives
laugh through every crazy and funny bit of it!

These two have made our trip all the more special and saying goodbye (only for now) was pretty sad but all of us know we will meet up again soon…Carnaval 2011 we hope!

Some delightful pics of our amigos we like to call “Los Rubios” (the blonde ones).

Who the hell is Vesper?

A definition of Transitable

August 28, 2009 in Bolivia by kels | 7 comments

Concerned about which way to enter Brazil we started asking all the Bolivians we came into contact with what the roads to Paraguay (option 1 to get to Brazil) or to the Bolivian / Brazilian border (option 2) were like. The response was that the roads were good but that the road to the Brazilian border was better than the one into Paraguay. Perfect, now we knew which road to take. We continued asking around and when we were about to leave Sucre we asked our lovely hostel owner if the road was really ok…

Si, she replied, si es transitable.

So we headed east.

The road from Sucre to Saimaipata was bad, the road from Samaipata to Santa Cruz was worse and the road from Santa Cruz to San Jose de Chiquitos …. oh lordy, it was the most excruciatingly painful road we have driven in this ENTIRE trip.

Transitable = a bone-jarring 10 hour drive to go 250 km, frustration, no gas stations, instantaneous irritability (the kind when someone talks and you immediately get angry for no apparent reason, it’s just that they have spoken…to you), thoughts of calling the whole trip off, borderline breakdown tears (me not Tom) and to top it all off we watched a semi fall over right before our eyes.

It truly was an exercise in patience as well as a huge test for us as a couple, which we passed since both of us are still living and we have decided not to go our separate ways after being trapped in the car together for probably the longest 10 hours of our married life.

Semi down on Joydrive's worst road ever

For more about driving in Bolivia (and it’s awesome roads) as well as other tips about driving the Americas click here.

How to drive the Americas?

January 20, 2009 in El Salvador/Nicaragua, Other Joydrivers by kels | No comments

We have been hard at work with our friends to create a website with the most up-to-date information for driving the Pan-American highway. When we began planning our trip we were frustrated with the lack of current information available so the four of us decided to create a site to fill the void.

After 2 weeks of computers, brain-storming, banana smoothies, scrapping ideas, coding (or learning code), writing and fireworks we have started www.drivetheamericas.com. We hope to encourage those who have driven, those who are driving and those who plan to drive to post up helpful tips, ideas, suggestions and anything else that would help a curious driver get on their way to driving the Pan-American Highway.

We have launched the site and hope that those of you out there who are looking for answers stop by and that those of you already on the road do too (we are looking for driving information for South America).

Our work environment was pretty ideal and provided the comfort we needed to really dig into this project so we owe Mango Rosa a big thank you. In between work bouts we found time to relax, read and plan for more upcoming travels.

I think I need to mention how amazing this team is…Tom brought his design prowess to the table, Kristin wrote tons of great content and also began her career as a coder and Chris, resident web-ninja, has been patient with all of us as we learn more about building a site–his enthusiasm definitely is a force to be reckoned with. We are really happy with the start of the site and aim to continue providing helpful and insightful information as well as a place for roadtrippers to connect.

And, of course, a website isn’t complete without a launch party…for those of you who were invited and couldn’t make it you missed out on a good time…drinks, laughs and cul de sacs.