Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Heartbreak to Horsepower: Joey Jordan’s 26,000-Mile Vanlife Redemption

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From Heartbreak to Horsepower: Joey Jordan’s 26,000-Mile Vanlife Redemption · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder what's How did
• 0:17
  they get that job or become that person?
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  With tonight's guest, we can easily wax poetic about all his Mazda cup
• 0:32
  and touring car races, but instead we need to focus on an amazing 26.
• 0:37
  thousand mile journey that SRO TC America driver Joey Jordan and
• 0:41
  his van Flacco took in order to make his return to motorsports.
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  I had the pleasure to meet up with Joey at the Porsche Experience Center
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  in Los Angeles, where he works now.
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  But before we get there, we have to rewind and unpack this telenovela
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  filled with stories of man versus machine, love and hate, and even
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  some South American jail time.
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  So without further ado, welcome to break fix Joey Jordan.
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  Thank you, Eric.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  This is going to be a lot of fun.
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  So let's start off by what drove you to leave GT racing and head to South America?
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  What kicked off this whole adventure?
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  Yeah, it's kind of hard to like nail down exactly why I chose the
• 1:22
  path to go down to South America.
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  I know why I left racing and it was like a hard decision.
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  It was my childhood dream to become this race car driver.
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  I just put all my like life energy into it.
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  Pissed off girlfriends, pissed off friends, you know, all of this for racing.
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  And I just got to realize as I started to progress through my racing career, that
• 1:41
  it wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be.
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  You know, I had some hard moments.
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  So basically it was like my trip down to South America and this big travels,
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  like my long walk down the beach after I was heartbroken by my childhood dream.
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  You know, I was like, wow, this thing that I've been trying.
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  to do my whole life isn't really for me, I guess.
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  And that was my journey away from it, I guess.
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  So you got a couple of bucks in your pocket.
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  You pack your backpack.
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  You get on a plane at LAX.
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  Why South America of all the places in the world to go to?
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  See, no, I didn't get on a plane.
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  I drove to South America from my house in California.
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  Whoa.
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  In a van that I imported from Japan.
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  I still liked cars.
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  My little breakup from racing didn't exclude my fandom towards cars, so I
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  chose a specific van from Japan, a Toyota Hiace, four wheel drive, diesel, manual.
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  Yeah, so I drove it down from Southern California.
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  And you named it after our elite quarterback, Joe Flacco, right?
• 2:41
  No, not quite.
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  I've been going to Mexico a lot in my life.
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  Anyone who's like tall and skinny, or they'll be ironic,
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  who isn't skinny, they'll call them Flacco, which means skinny.
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  And this van, because Japanese vehicles get a higher tax if they're
• 2:54
  wider than five and a half feet, was only five and a half feet wide.
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  So that's why we call it Flaco.
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  So you drive from LA all the way down to South America.
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  So where do you find yourself?
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  What happens next?
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  It starts in Mexico and that's pretty much smooth sailing.
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  I'm kind of trying to find myself and figure out what's going on.
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  And yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how to do it.
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  Like I'm living out of a van, meeting new people.
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  I'm trying to figure out different rules of the road.
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  One of the first things I did in Mexico besides surf a lot and
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  drink a lot of Mexican beer was actually went to the World Rally
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  Championship Race, WRC, by Leon Mexico.
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  And that was great.
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  cool and crazy.
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  And yeah, W.
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  R.
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  C.
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  As many of the know, is near and dear to that oftentimes I'm the
• 3:40
  o organization or even in t W.
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  R.
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  C.
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  So I feel you th
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  Yeah.
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  And to do it with the fans in Mexico, they were so like crazy and passionate.
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  And I was camping with like this one family and they gave me a
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  lot of mescal and tequila and was just, it was a fun time.
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  It was crazy.
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  Was there a shift for you there now on the other side of the fence with the fans
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  and feeling their enthusiasm and their excitement versus being on the track?
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  What was that transition like?
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  It was different because the rally watching rally racing,
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  I'm used to road racing.
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  So I was kind of trying to figure it out with the fans.
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  Of course, I have a little more inside perspective of what the driver might be
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  going through, but I kind of went into it not knowing what to expect at all.
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  And quite the spectacle, all wheel drive, crazy to see them just
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  hook it around those corners and power out barely counter steering.
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  Was there any one brand that stuck out to you?
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  Were you cheering for the Toyota Yaris's or the Hyundai's or.
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  Not brand specific, but there was a local driver racing in one of the,
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  like, the lower classes that the guys that I was hanging out with told me
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  about, and I think he was just driving, like, it was a Subaru of some sort.
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  I related to him.
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  They didn't have much money.
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  It was a beat up car, and he was just going for it.
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  You continue to make your way South.
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  Then what happened?
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  Let's see.
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  I go South and I'm just kind of cruising along.
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  I meet like crazy Australian guy.
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  He starts traveling with me and then I meet a German girl and a British girl.
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  So we're all going along as a band of four in this tiny little
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  five and a half foot band.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  We would stop at like hostels and stuff, or we, I also had like a tent
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  and hammocks and it's really warm.
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  It's like the jungle.
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  So we would just.
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  Park on the beach and they would sleep in the hammocks or tents
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  or wherever we could fit people.
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  Sometimes in cities, we'd all have to pack in all five of us sleeping in the van.
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  But yeah, then we made our way into Belize, which is the like Southern
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  East part under the Yucatan of Mexico, much like most Americans.
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  I didn't know much about Belize at all.
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  And it is, you know, I kind of thought it was an island, but
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  no, it's part of Central America.
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  And it in Belize, it's, you know, Kind of like what you would think of Jamaica
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  as they speak English, first of all, like they speak like a Creole English,
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  which is, I didn't even know existed like a different dialect of English.
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  So it's kind of like Rastafarian.
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  That was very interesting.
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  Probably car wise, most interesting thing because they were part of the
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  Commonwealth, their gas prices are way, way high, just like England.
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  So they use like the same form as England did because it used
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  to, it was an English territory.
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  So because it's so high and it is a poor country, they actually
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  convert a lot of their cars.
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  It's, I guess it's kind of a hybrid system, but to propane powered vehicles.
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  So they have a big propane tank in the back of a lot of
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  their cars, essentially a bomb
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  and I had a guy like show me how it worked.
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  They had like a switch that would turn it from the combustion
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  engine to the propane engine.
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  And yeah, that was just wild.
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  Totally different kind of car scene down there.
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  So is Belize like we are to believe it was as we've seen it on like top gear or on
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  the world's, you know, greatest roads and toughest roads and all that kind of stuff.
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  I mean, there's some that are really, really bad, but it's mostly
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  just like pretty doable overall.
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  The road wise, it's the other drivers that can make it like hairy.
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  There's definitely some bad roads, but like, if you wanted to go to Belize
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  and drive through it, and if you did research, there's plenty of good roads
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  to get you to wherever you need to be.
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  Just when you go off the beaten path and get lost, like I have
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  did several times, that's when you encounter these crazy, crazy roads.
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  So any issues with the van up until this point?
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  It was, uh, pretty reliable, except like, I had a top bunk bed thing set
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  up, like almost like a hammock and the Australian Dan, I think was sleeping
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  in it and that fell like on me.
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  We had to scratch that idea, you know, had an obnoxious amount of rust.
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  It was kind of like driving in a candy wrapper.
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  Were you ever worried that if something broke, you wouldn't be able to find
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  parts for it or anything that being an imported vehicle from Japan?
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, that's part of the research that I did.
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  So.
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  I knew it'd be fresh from California, but once it got into South America, this van,
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  except for in the United States is one of the most ubiquitous vehicles they make.
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  It's everywhere.
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  It starts in Panama.
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  There's a big Toyota Hiace scene there.
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  They modify them.
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  And then in South America, they have, they're everywhere.
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  They're like the regular taxi van.
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  So I wasn't too worried about parts, but if I broke down early, it would
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  have been a little bit of an issue.
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  You had a diesel and you had a Toyota.
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  So it's Reliable and reliable, right?
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  So, yeah, exactly.
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  And I got one beat up on purpose.
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  Cause from previous adventures, I've learned that you kind of have the best
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  time when it breaks down or like when you have something unexpected happen.
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  I didn't over engineer it at all.
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  It was just kind of what it was and I drove it, but yeah, up
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  into this point, no major issues.
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  Do you think it helps you blend in too, with the locals
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  as you're kind of traveling?
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  I mean, that's a big thing too.
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  So I grew up in San Diego and I went down to Mexico a lot
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  and that's where I learned.
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  You want to blend in with your cars down there.
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  I have friends who go down there in their Ford Raptors and they're going to
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  get pulled over by police all the time.
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  They're going to get hassled.
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  Yeah, it's a big part of it was about blending in.
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  As we continue this journey, what are you guys doing for money?
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  Are you just living off of reserves?
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  Are you kind of living off the land?
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  How is that working as you're continuing down this path?
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  I was living off of reserves.
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  I saved up a lot of money, but you can live cheaply, especially when
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  you don't have to pay for hotels.
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  And I did harvest a lot of food.
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  Like I'm a spearfish too.
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  So I would spearfish for food.
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  I wasn't doing as much spearfishing then, but there's like coconuts and
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  the food's just really cheap overall.
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  Like I remember we're staying on one hostel.
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  where I met some of the girls I ended up traveling with and like mangoes would
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  just fall into the pool that you're swimming in and you just take it eat
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  that like I don't know it's pretty easy to live you know cheaply down there
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  that's part of the appeal I guess Belize to Guatemala and in Guatemala you find
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  yourself back behind the wheel of a race car how did that come to be yeah
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  Guatemala beautiful country first of all I was so shocked by its beauty and it's
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  like so close to us You know, like here in Southern California, I think it's
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  like a four or five hour plane ride.
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  And it's not like a hot jungly place that I thought it would.
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  They do have some of that more like cloud foresty, almost like
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  San Francisco type of weather.
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  And really green and beautiful.
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  Love Guatemala.
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  Got up in there and climbed up their huge mountain into the capital city.
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  All right, keep on, you know, I did have some plans like, okay,
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  I'm breaking up with racing here in motor sports for a little bit, but it
• 10:04
  was hard to completely like let go.
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  So I had some ideas of like, well, maybe I can film how different cultures
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  race, you know, and take a part of it.
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  And I can make like some little sizzle reel and then send that off
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  to whoever was a part of the race.
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  Like if they were on Yokohama tires, I could send that off to Yokohama, you know,
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  and see if we could work out something where they could give me a little.
• 10:24
  extra cash to help me with my travels and I could provide
• 10:26
  them some cool, genuine content.
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  But yeah, that, that was part of my idea is like, maybe I could
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  see Anthony Bourdain, you know, parts unknown where he, he sees
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  different cultures through food.
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  I was going to think maybe I can do that through cars and racing.
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  Yeah.
• 10:40
  I just started kind of shopping around on Facebook, found a guy from
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  Ireland who knew some people who's an expat who actually lives down there.
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  And I already knew where the, there was a racetrack near
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  where I was kind of staying.
• 10:52
  Honestly, how I found his Wikipedia, there's a really long,
• 10:55
  awesome list of racetracks all across the world by country.
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  And you can click on those tracks and then just like put that on
• 11:01
  the Facebook and you'll see all the local races that run there.
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  But yeah, then I found my way into a Toyota Yaris and the Yaris Cup.
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  You walk up with your helmet and you're driving soon.
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  They said, Oh, Joey, we see you in SRO and they let you in.
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  I mean, what was that process like?
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  Yeah.
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  They don't really have as much regulations there, right?
• 11:20
  It's um, and that's kind of the beauty of it.
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  It's almost like I felt like I was racing like in the 70s there and they
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  were excited to have an American driver.
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  I don't think they've ever heard of me, an American race car driver that
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  just gave me like some credentials and I know they, they sidestepped me.
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  Step their local licensing process and let me run as they told me in Mexico on
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  my way down, you know down there It's the true by eastly, but it which is the real
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  free country You can kind of do what you want and that's the same in that race.
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  You didn't need a license So, how did you do in the yaris cup?
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  I think I was like mid pack They were, they did not want to let the
• 11:54
  gringo go by or be anywhere near them.
• 11:57
  There were some good drivers, but it was like a crazy tight track.
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  And I was, I don't know what equipment I had anyways, race car driver,
• 12:05
  excuses, excuses, but yeah, I was about mid pack and just got beat
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  up on by everyone, a lot of fun.
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  Great to meet everyone.
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  Crazy amount of fans.
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  Insane amount of fans with all the flag girls and promotions and wild experience.
• 12:19
  There's a volcano erupting in the background.
• 12:22
  You know, I remember that we were on pre grid and I feel a vibration, you
• 12:25
  know, I'm starting to tune into the car.
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  I'm like, what was that?
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  I'm like, wait, the car's not even on yet.
• 12:30
  I didn't know if like the engine was shaking.
• 12:32
  Yeah.
• 12:32
  I remember like finding out, oh yeah, the volcano was just erupting.
• 12:36
  It was just right behind us.
• 12:37
  That's pretty awesome.
• 12:38
  It was a road course, not like a rally cross or anything.
• 12:41
  No, it was a road course, tight little road course, probably like only a mile
• 12:46
  and a half long, a bunch of corners.
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  I think my favorite part of that race, this will give you an idea of
• 12:52
  exactly how much they've lived in the past and how much, uh, they don't
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  really have rules or regulations.
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  There was a guy who broke down.
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  In the inside of turn one, he was like maybe a foot off the track and he hops
• 13:03
  out of his car, which is my first red flag, like, Whoa, Whoa, you don't do that.
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  But then he runs over and finds his mechanic in the
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  paddock with his full gear.
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  He ran across the front straightaway mechanic with the right amount of wrenches
• 13:17
  and they start working on their car.
• 13:18
  There's just a standing yellow flag and they're working on the
• 13:21
  car on the inside of turn one.
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  Uh, no protection.
• 13:24
  They get it running.
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  Mechanic runs back across the track.
• 13:27
  The guy gets strapped in and yeah, he finished the race.
• 13:30
  Wow.
• 13:32
  It's insane.
• 13:33
  I can't even, you know, the first rule of, of any of these schools
• 13:36
  and even the races never get out of your car unless it's on fire.
• 13:39
  Right.
• 13:40
  I mean, it's just like, wow.
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  I know.
• 13:42
  I know.
• 13:42
  People are just watching like, oh yeah, good job.
• 13:44
  Get your car running.
• 13:45
  That's great.
• 13:46
  So from Guatemala, you head to Nicaragua and you make your first
• 13:50
  set of mods to Flacco the van.
• 13:53
  Nicaragua is where things started to not go to plan, and that's a big part of
• 13:57
  Latin America, is it's hard to kind of plan in that kind of long form of travel.
• 14:00
  Things are going to go wrong.
• 14:02
  I was actually planning on doing another race in Costa Rica that I
• 14:05
  was trying to get down to, but in Nicaragua, forgot the president's name.
• 14:08
  I think he's still the president, Ortega.
• 14:10
  He's been the president forever, but there is a bunch of protests.
• 14:14
  It started something with students, but basically it was the typical,
• 14:17
  like it turned violent and it was government versus the people.
• 14:20
  It just got really crazy in Nicaragua pretty fast.
• 14:23
  And I think Nicaragua is one of my favorite countries.
• 14:25
  So it's a shame that was happening, but yeah, I get into Nicaragua.
• 14:28
  There's a bunch of protests going on, like roadblocks.
• 14:31
  I knew I wanted to get to the South quickly and Nicaragua takes
• 14:35
  up the whole Central America.
• 14:37
  I can't go anywhere around it.
• 14:38
  So I have to go through Nicaragua.
• 14:40
  I know these protests are going on.
• 14:42
  I had to go through like crazy roadblocks and backroads and a bunch
• 14:46
  of local families helped me out.
• 14:47
  A lot of times the roadblocks were violent, so it was pretty edgy.
• 14:51
  But then I got down to the southern part of Nicaragua where there's a bunch of
• 14:55
  surf and just kind of hung out there.
• 14:57
  Pretty stressful drive down.
• 14:58
  So I partied quite a bit, kind of cut the edge off and enjoyed myself.
• 15:03
  And then, the protests just kept getting worse.
• 15:06
  So I was like, well, time to go to Costa Rica.
• 15:08
  I go to Costa Rica.
• 15:10
  They just look at my car and they're like, what, what's that?
• 15:12
  I'm like, what do you mean?
• 15:13
  It's a car.
• 15:14
  And they're like, this is all in Spanish, but like, we don't
• 15:16
  allow right hand drive vehicles.
• 15:18
  That's when I found that out.
• 15:20
  So right at Costa Rican border, just completely unprepared.
• 15:23
  My journey ends there.
• 15:25
  If I can't drive through Costa Rica, Costa Rica is thanks to American
• 15:28
  tourism, a little more built up and they actually have rules and regulations.
• 15:32
  There's certain situations in Latin America where you can just bribe them.
• 15:35
  And I think I got up to like a grand and they were not budging
• 15:37
  on letting me through at all.
• 15:39
  So there I was, I have violent protests pushing on me from the north.
• 15:43
  I was just trapped in this one little kind of touristy town called San Juan
• 15:47
  del Sur in the southern western part of Nicaragua, but I didn't know how
• 15:50
  bad the protests were going to get.
• 15:52
  They were talking potentially full civil war, like I needed to get out of there.
• 15:56
  So I could have just left the van there and hope that it'd get better
• 16:00
  and continue my journey on foot.
• 16:03
  I could just stop my trip.
• 16:04
  I could have put it on a boat, but nothing seemed very legal or like organized
• 16:09
  the boat that I'd have to put it onto.
• 16:11
  I would have had to go to the capital city, which was a really bad situation.
• 16:15
  I guess being an idiot and thinking I can just get my way with things.
• 16:19
  I came up with another option, which is.
• 16:22
  I bet I can just move the wheel to the other side of the car, drive across
• 16:27
  the border, super late at night, just engineer something, put like a fake
• 16:31
  dash and hopefully they won't notice.
• 16:33
  And I can just sneak through because I know once I was in Costa Rica,
• 16:36
  none of the officials would care.
• 16:38
  It was just the border officials that cared.
• 16:40
  And you're not alone.
• 16:41
  So your passenger, who is technically in the driver's seat, could be operating
• 16:46
  the pedals while you're steering from the left hand side of the car.
• 16:49
  That was the crazy part.
• 16:50
  To get this fabricated, I had to go into the city just north of me, where
• 16:55
  they did have protests called Rivas.
• 16:57
  I asked all these different fabrication shops if they could help me.
• 17:01
  It was the dirtiest, grimiest one that said yes, eventually, like the last one.
• 17:06
  And it was essentially a muddy parking lot with a chain link fence.
• 17:10
  I remember when I walked in, they were Welding over a bunch of
• 17:13
  spilled diesel fuel and there's a spark shooting on that fuel.
• 17:17
  I was like, Ooh, this is going to be, I guess is the adventure I'd asked for
• 17:20
  and took a steering rack out of another Toyota that would fit my steering wheel.
• 17:25
  And we welded it in the passenger side through the glove box to my
• 17:28
  dash, basically another steering rack.
• 17:30
  And then we welded a pulley, like a drive pulley to both steering racks, ran a belt.
• 17:36
  The wheel would actually drive the car on the other side.
• 17:39
  And this took a few days.
• 17:40
  I slept in this dirty, diesel y lot with these crazy mechanics who are
• 17:45
  just smoking cigarettes and welding.
• 17:47
  It was a pretty authentic experience.
• 17:49
  But yeah, and then we built like this fake dash around it.
• 17:52
  I didn't come up with a way or really felt like at the time
• 17:54
  to do anything with the pedals.
• 17:55
  So the pedals stayed on the right side of the car while the wheel was on the left.
• 18:00
  And the crazy thing is, is I had to drive it to where I had some friends in
• 18:04
  the partying town I was hanging out in.
• 18:06
  I had to drive it to them by myself.
• 18:09
  So I'm on the right side with the pedals and driving the stick shift with my
• 18:13
  left hand holding the steering wheel.
• 18:16
  That was pretty crazy, especially because I had to go through a pretty
• 18:19
  intense road block to get back there.
• 18:21
  Some guys and machetes trying to slash at my tires.
• 18:24
  It wasn't good.
• 18:25
  But so did this modification render the steering wheel on the, what would be the
• 18:30
  right hand side of the car inoperable?
• 18:32
  Or did they both work?
• 18:33
  There was no steering on the right side.
• 18:35
  Cause I just took one off and put it was normally the passenger side.
• 18:39
  You did a quick release.
• 18:40
  So you could go from one side to the other, right?
• 18:42
  I know that would have been smart, but I don't think they
• 18:44
  had any quick releases there.
• 18:47
  I was pressed for time, right?
• 18:48
  There was like.
• 18:49
  In hindsight, I should have just hung out longer, but they really
• 18:52
  didn't know what the situation was going to be like in Nicaragua.
• 18:54
  They said, their thing is going to get really bad.
• 18:56
  Everyone was recommending to just get out of the country.
• 18:59
  So it was kind of like my only option.
• 19:01
  Yeah.
• 19:02
  Then I got to the town, San Juan del Sur, where I had a few friends left over.
• 19:06
  I asked this Canadian guy to wait for me and we, uh, drove it across together.
• 19:09
  So we could at least mimic, you know, a driver and a passenger and.
• 19:13
  Hilarious.
• 19:13
  We were in tears driving it to the border , um, in Costa Rica
• 19:17
  because it's, it's just so funny.
• 19:19
  Like, I think top Gear's done some racing series like that where
• 19:22
  someone does the pedals and another person does a steering wheel.
• 19:24
  Great exercise.
• 19:25
  I didn't think they didn't get across in that episode how fun that
• 19:28
  is, but it was super entertaining.
• 19:31
  So you now find yourself in Costa Rica with a modified van?
• 19:35
  Not yet.
• 19:35
  Oh, not yet.
• 19:36
  No, no, not yet.
• 19:38
  So there's no real, uh, shortcuts to the story, but we go to the, we
• 19:43
  drive to the border crying, laughter.
• 19:45
  We get there and there's so many different checks to go through and we get through
• 19:49
  probably eight of those checks for on the Nicaragua side, three in the Costa
• 19:53
  Rican side, and we did it at midnight.
• 19:55
  So no one could tell.
• 19:56
  And people were looking inside the car.
• 19:57
  It was going perfectly last guy comes out in the Costa Rican side.
• 20:02
  He basically was like looking for the VIN and then he saw that
• 20:04
  there was no pedals underneath the steering wheel and then he shined his
• 20:07
  light and he could see everything.
• 20:09
  I would later learn to know him as El Jefe, which is the boss.
• 20:13
  Wrong man to find at midnight and he wasn't very happy with me.
• 20:17
  He's like, you're never coming into this country.
• 20:19
  You have to go back.
• 20:20
  He actually let my friend who was with me go, because I just pleaded
• 20:24
  with him and said like, Hey, he had nothing to do with this.
• 20:25
  So they let him go.
• 20:26
  So he walked into Costa Rica and found a bus.
• 20:29
  So I was by myself.
• 20:31
  I tried to go back to Nicaragua to just kind of gather myself.
• 20:34
  The word got around fast and Nicaragua all of a sudden made up
• 20:37
  a law that said they don't allow on right hand drive cars anymore.
• 20:40
  Even though I was just there, I was like, I just drove through here.
• 20:44
  What do you mean?
• 20:44
  So I was stuck.
• 20:46
  It was about 200 yards in between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
• 20:49
  Yeah.
• 20:49
  Of no man's land.
• 20:51
  I would spend a few days there.
• 20:52
  I'd later call it Nicarica.
• 20:54
  It was my own country Nice Yeah, and so yeah, I was stuck there.
• 20:59
  I was really again left with no options I could have potentially gone
• 21:03
  on foot and just left my van there Talking to some of the officials and
• 21:07
  they said maybe you could do that.
• 21:08
  Maybe you couldn't so I was just playing with those options I ended
• 21:12
  up going into Costa Rica on foot.
• 21:14
  They did let me in and I left the van there.
• 21:17
  And then I just had to come up with the option of like, okay, do I leave the van
• 21:20
  here and continue the journey on foot?
• 21:22
  Does Costa Rica have my van now?
• 21:24
  And I really thought about just giving it up there.
• 21:26
  Cause it was like a lot, you know, going through Nicaragua that
• 21:29
  was on the brink of a revolution was a lot on my consciousness.
• 21:33
  So.
• 21:34
  I ended up going back to Rescue Flacco when I tried to bring it
• 21:37
  back and just come up with a way to just get it through there.
• 21:40
  They essentially put me and Flacco into this, I don't even know what
• 21:44
  it was, I wasn't allowed to leave, I just call it a terrorist prison.
• 21:47
  Essentially it was this huge fenced off barbed wired yard.
• 21:50
  where they had other cars and other people who weren't allowed really in
• 21:54
  the country, or they had some issues.
• 21:56
  There's a few Germans there and another American family there
• 21:59
  who also ran into issues and we weren't really allowed to leave.
• 22:03
  We were stuck until we could figure out our issues.
• 22:05
  We were there, there's a bathroom, Wi Fi, and this little muddy lot.
• 22:09
  Yeah.
• 22:09
  And I don't even remember how long I was there for.
• 22:12
  It wasn't too long until I jumped through all the hoops and litigations
• 22:16
  to tow Flacco all the way across Costa Rica and into Panama.
• 22:20
  So that ended up being the solution.
• 22:22
  Yeah, I had a little stint there in this, I don't even know what to call it,
• 22:26
  this little tucked away, locked in yard.
• 22:29
  In town block, right?
• 22:31
  Yeah, exactly.
• 22:32
  That brought me into Panama.
• 22:34
  I kind of had to leapfrog Costa Rica.
• 22:36
  So in Panama, what did you end up doing there?
• 22:38
  Or did you just kind of continue your journey on?
• 22:41
  Up till now, that's like four months of my trip.
• 22:44
  First, I had a van with two steering racks, so I was trying to figure that out.
• 22:48
  Just kind of trying to process what was happening, what I should do with my trip.
• 22:51
  I lost a lot of money.
• 22:52
  I had to spend nearly four grand to just tow the van.
• 22:55
  I was kind of documenting my trip a little bit and I just scrapped that.
• 22:58
  I was just doing some soul searching in Panama.
• 23:01
  But I also had the next task of, you can't actually drive across
• 23:04
  in between Panama and Columbia.
• 23:07
  It's known as the Darien Gap.
• 23:08
  I think a couple of Americans did it once and just the Darien Gap, it took
• 23:12
  them three years to drive through.
• 23:13
  You basically have to like cut through the jungle.
• 23:16
  So what you have to do is put your car on a, on a boat.
• 23:19
  I was figuring out how to do that.
• 23:21
  We actually have to put it in a shipping container and ship it to Columbia.
• 23:24
  So in Panama, I was doing a lot of spearfishing, hanging out at the beach.
• 23:28
  Trying to figure out the process of how to ship my van across.
• 23:30
  Trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my journey.
• 23:32
  You know, I'm young, I'm 23 years old.
• 23:34
  I'm just trying to like, also go on this journey to like, find myself and find
• 23:37
  what I was going to do with my life.
• 23:38
  A lot of introspection, a lot of hanging out at the beach, doing some
• 23:42
  surfing, doing some spearfishing.
• 23:44
  Panama was a beautiful country as well.
• 23:46
  So you and Flacco then end up in Columbia.
• 23:49
  Yeah, I'm in Columbia.
• 23:50
  I start to really find my groove of doing this whole van life thing.
• 23:55
  And this was in 2018, just to give you guys an idea.
• 23:59
  You know, I got really comfortable with spearfishing, harvesting
• 24:02
  coconuts, living very cheaply.
• 24:04
  You know, I was starting to figure out my money problem.
• 24:07
  I was making these.
• 24:08
  Psychological gains of just spending all this time with myself and
• 24:11
  thinking, and I was feeling really good about myself and figured like
• 24:15
  I had things just figured out.
• 24:18
  So was racing on your mind at any point?
• 24:20
  Did you have flashbacks to being on the track or was it the furthest
• 24:23
  thing from your mind at that time?
• 24:24
  After I missed the race in Costa Rica and I lost a lot, it was like the furthest,
• 24:29
  I think it was pretty far out of my mind.
• 24:31
  I was still always looking at cars and the car culture and seeing what they're doing.
• 24:35
  And, but racing, yeah, it just seemed like a distant dream, you know, like
• 24:41
  that you like, yeah, that was a profound experience, but what kind of progression
• 24:45
  did you see the further you went South?
• 24:46
  How did the car culture change and what kind of vehicles were you
• 24:49
  seeing as you moved through this?
• 24:51
  I would say that the theme of central America and like Mexico and Guatemala and
• 24:56
  all those countries is just improvisation.
• 25:00
  Anytime they have a problem with the car, they're so creative and making it work.
• 25:04
  And I really love that.
• 25:05
  I mean, I remember seeing a car that the whole sidewall was pretty blown out except
• 25:09
  for a few stitches and they just stuffed hay in the tire and this like work truck
• 25:13
  and that's what they're driving around in.
• 25:16
  Yeah.
• 25:16
  I remember, I think we got a flat tire somewhere or someone I was
• 25:19
  traveling with got a flat tire.
• 25:21
  Someone drove by like, Oh no, that tire is good.
• 25:23
  That has at least like 10 more years on it.
• 25:25
  And like, just put some stuff in it.
• 25:27
  Everyone just seems a little more mechanical down there.
• 25:30
  Cause you have to be, if your car breaks down, you have to fix it.
• 25:32
  But lots of Toyotas, lots of Japanese vehicles, everything
• 25:36
  was older, more beat up.
• 25:38
  In Guatemala, they have crazy like chicken buses, which are all the
• 25:43
  school buses from the 1970s in America that they imported down there, that
• 25:46
  they just stuff with people and just go flying through these dirt roads.
• 25:50
  Yeah, in the style of driving, but just a lot of improvisation through there.
• 25:53
  But then in South America, it started to kind of change more
• 25:56
  and get their own personalities.
• 25:58
  I won't get ahead of it there because that really started to
• 26:00
  happen towards like Ecuador and Peru.
• 26:01
  I don't want to get ahead of that.
• 26:03
  Columbia is, most of their cities are out like in these rain cloud forests.
• 26:07
  So it's very high up in the start of the Andes and it's heavily populated cities.
• 26:12
  So the roads are absolutely insane.
• 26:14
  Like that's exactly what you saw on like the top gear traveling episodes.
• 26:19
  Like I think the world's dangerous road is.
• 26:21
  It's somewhere around there, but they drove on famously, like it's
• 26:24
  pretty similar to that, except even busier going into Medellin.
• 26:28
  The road is really tight and narrow and you have these truck, the truck
• 26:31
  drivers in all these countries.
• 26:32
  There's, they have to be like the best drivers ever.
• 26:35
  I think they should be put in a world rally car and see how they do.
• 26:38
  They drive flat out, huh?
• 26:40
  Yeah.
• 26:41
  Yup.
• 26:41
  I hung out with a few of them at some truck stops and they're
• 26:44
  just a crazy wild bunch.
• 26:46
  I'm sure they got some stories to share, huh?
• 26:48
  Yeah, and lots of drinks and they have a lot of energy.
• 26:53
  So did they give you tips on how to continue your journey?
• 26:56
  Like some of the best roads to take and places to avoid and things like that?
• 26:59
  I'm sure you probably gained some knowledge from those truck drivers.
• 27:02
  They would tell me like some roads that were good and bad, but they also had a big
• 27:05
  sense of humor and would just like to like mess with this random gringo like hanging
• 27:09
  out, usually talking to them or hang out with them from like 10 o'clock at night
• 27:14
  until everyone woke up to drive the next morning and they would just cut loose.
• 27:18
  So they weren't really in an advice frame of mind.
• 27:21
  And yeah, in some places like Colombia and in especially Bolivia,
• 27:25
  they had a lot of energy and that energy wasn't really natural, right?
• 27:29
  It was kind of augmented by other substances, especially in
• 27:32
  Bolivia where it's legal to just have cocoa leaves in your mouth.
• 27:35
  So that's the leaves that make cocaine out of, and that's just what they're
• 27:37
  chewing on, drinking a whole lot of.
• 27:40
  stuff.
• 27:40
  Yeah.
• 27:40
  In Bolivia they drink, uh, this like spit juice that is fermented.
• 27:44
  People chew on it, these things, and it's called like chizza.
• 27:47
  I don't know.
• 27:48
  They made me try some.
• 27:49
  It wasn't too bad, but So did you ever get to ride with any of the truck
• 27:53
  drivers while they were on some of their runs to get the full experience?
• 27:56
  Hell no, I would never want to do that.
• 27:59
  No, I'm basically implying they probably weren't sober while they were driving.
• 28:03
  Yeah, I got you.
• 28:04
  I got you.
• 28:05
  No, no, no, no, no.
• 28:05
  And the way they drove, like, I don't think they cared.
• 28:08
  And that was kind of their mentality.
• 28:09
  They're almost like these rock stars.
• 28:11
  They didn't really care if they crashed or if they made it, they're
• 28:13
  just there to make some money.
• 28:14
  They live or died, whatever.
• 28:16
  Full send, right?
• 28:17
  Full send.
• 28:17
  Yeah, that's it.
• 28:18
  They were happy to be there that night and to have enough money to
• 28:21
  buy a bottle of whatever liquor that country had, and that was it.
• 28:26
  So what was the political climate like once you crossed into Colombia and the
• 28:29
  other countries all the way through?
• 28:31
  Was it, were you faced with more of these hazards or more of these
• 28:35
  protests or was it different?
• 28:36
  Colombia kind of has just a long lasting political battle with like the FARC, who
• 28:42
  the people who operate the Darien Gap.
• 28:45
  I did find some trouble because so right when I crossed into Colombia, I was just
• 28:50
  right in that part where I thought I had everything figured out, you know, that
• 28:53
  was just this like, like, okay, I made it through that Costa Rican debacle that
• 28:57
  Nicaragua one, I stayed in Nicaragua longer than most of the other tourists.
• 29:00
  I think I know what's going on.
• 29:02
  So I was camping along the beaches in northern Columbia, just not paying for
• 29:07
  campsites, like I'll just find some random beach myself on some dirt road
• 29:11
  and camp for free, like save money.
• 29:13
  I was fishing a lot for food, catching crabs on the beach for food.
• 29:16
  I Just really becoming like Tom Hanks and Castaway.
• 29:19
  Like I had my Wilson and Flacco and we were just grooving.
• 29:23
  That ended up leading into kind of a rough patch there.
• 29:27
  And before I explain this, it's really sad to me how afraid people are to
• 29:31
  travel to Latin America because of stories like what I'm about to tell.
• 29:35
  But, All these countries can be extremely safe, Nicaragua, all of
• 29:39
  them, and they're extremely beautiful if you're not an idiot like me, okay?
• 29:42
  I thought I could get away and just, and treat it like
• 29:45
  it was my own country, right?
• 29:47
  My own California where I, I am safe and there's secure places.
• 29:51
  If you just do a tiny bit of research, if I would have just done a little
• 29:54
  bit of research, I would have known that right hand drive vehicles
• 29:57
  aren't allowed into Costa Rica.
• 29:58
  It's all over the internet.
• 30:00
  A lot of people have had similar problems like me.
• 30:02
  And then if I would have researched or just looked at a map, any of the
• 30:05
  traveling maps that they have, I would have seen that a beach that I was
• 30:09
  about to go camping to in Northern Columbia was deep, deep fark land.
• 30:13
  And lots of bad stuff happened there.
• 30:16
  But basically, yeah, you could go to Columbia and be perfectly safe.
• 30:19
  If you just do a little bit of research.
• 30:21
  I'm just an idiot.
• 30:22
  And I also like to find trouble.
• 30:23
  So.
• 30:24
  Camping on a beach in Columbia, like completely secluded.
• 30:28
  I passed by like one house with this kid playing like soccer
• 30:32
  with like a literal rag ball.
• 30:34
  Set up a fire.
• 30:35
  I was looking for crabs.
• 30:36
  Like I saw some crab holes.
• 30:38
  I found a coconut.
• 30:38
  I walked around naked for a little bit.
• 30:40
  Like I was fully in it.
• 30:42
  Like I'm jungle man.
• 30:43
  I was making this fire bent over and I heard like a twig
• 30:46
  snap and I turned around.
• 30:48
  One guy with a gun and one guy with a machete.
• 30:51
  Yeah, I remember the weirdest thing was like when I heard that something
• 30:54
  behind me I turned around I almost like apologized because every time in my life
• 30:58
  before i've been startled It's just been like someone coming in the room like oh,
• 31:02
  sorry Like I didn't see you there and I almost like oh, sorry And then until
• 31:05
  I saw there was a gun pointed at me.
• 31:06
  I could tell pretty quickly by the size of their pupils They you know, we're all
• 31:11
  filled with confidence But basically, yeah, they tied me up beat me up pretty
• 31:15
  good pretty serious situation You They told me they were going to kill me.
• 31:19
  They cocked the gun in the back of my head.
• 31:21
  I thought that was it pretty much ripped everything out of Flacco.
• 31:24
  For some reason, they didn't pull the trigger and they left me just
• 31:28
  tied up and beaten up on the beach.
• 31:30
  Do you think the fire was kind of the beacon that they knew you were there?
• 31:33
  Maybe had you not made that mistake, they wouldn't have known, or was it
• 31:36
  just you, the sole car that was out of place that also maybe got the
• 31:41
  attention of the community or something?
• 31:43
  The fire wasn't even at a point to where it would alert anyone yet,
• 31:46
  because it was like twilight, so you couldn't see the glow of the flame yet.
• 31:50
  Like, I remember the sun was just setting, and it was a beautiful sunset.
• 31:54
  I think they saw me roll up, maybe that kid who saw me playing soccer, saw me
• 31:59
  drive past, was like, Hey, guess what?
• 32:01
  I saw some gringo.
• 32:02
  And then that's such a weird thing to see for them.
• 32:05
  That news spread across probably a bunch of other small houses.
• 32:07
  I didn't even know were there.
• 32:09
  Yeah.
• 32:09
  And it becomes like a scene in a bad movie, like a Tarantino film
• 32:12
  suddenly or something, you know?
• 32:13
  Yeah, exactly.
• 32:14
  I think I have my private jungle beach.
• 32:17
  I'm walking around naked.
• 32:18
  They're probably laughing, doing lines of Coke, getting ready
• 32:21
  to take everything from me.
• 32:23
  Pretty harrowing experience.
• 32:24
  And yeah, I really don't feel, uh, any like anger towards them at all.
• 32:29
  Like who knows what situation I'd be in if like I was in their shoes
• 32:32
  and how poor some of them live.
• 32:33
  If I saw some punk white boy walk onto my beach and he had like this
• 32:37
  fancy camera and my daughter's like picking coffee beans and she has to
• 32:42
  be out of school, I would rob that guy and sell that stuff so my daughter
• 32:45
  could go to school in a heartbeat.
• 32:47
  So yeah, I don't take anything away from them.
• 32:49
  Just learn some things.
• 32:51
  Pretty, pretty crazy experience.
• 32:52
  So you graduated the school of hard knocks in Columbia, it seems like.
• 32:56
  So we've got to take a step back though.
• 32:59
  We've got to talk about Flacco for a minute.
• 33:00
  You did all these modifications in Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
• 33:04
  So did you have to undo the mods?
• 33:07
  What happened with Flacco at that point?
• 33:09
  Obviously, like you said, a lot of stuff got taken.
• 33:10
  So now you're there naked and afraid and the van's empty.
• 33:14
  What transpired next?
• 33:15
  Yeah, so I guess to catch you up with Flacco, he in the city just not
• 33:20
  too far away from where I ended up getting robbed, Barranquilla, Colombia.
• 33:25
  I got everything removed and I was driving around all on the right side,
• 33:28
  but there's still a steering rack there.
• 33:30
  I basically just cut the pulley.
• 33:32
  Took all the dash stuff out and put the steering wheel just
• 33:35
  onto the stock steering rack.
• 33:36
  But I had a bare steering rack just sticking out there.
• 33:39
  So that wasn't very inviting to any friends I might meet
• 33:43
  who want to travel with me.
• 33:44
  So I got that just cut out with like a grinder.
• 33:46
  I just paid some guy like 10 bucks and bearing Kia probably two days
• 33:50
  before I ended up getting robbed.
• 33:51
  Yeah.
• 33:51
  After I got robbed, I was just laying there like tied up, probably had
• 33:55
  a few broken ribs, pretty beat up.
• 33:58
  And they told me.
• 33:59
  In Spanish, which my Spanish is like getting better, but it wasn't the best.
• 34:04
  They told me that a bunch of people in the jungle.
• 34:06
  And then if I move within an hour, they're going to kill me.
• 34:08
  They're going to come and kill me.
• 34:09
  I have to stay there for an hour.
• 34:10
  So I got to lay there like bloody snot and broken ribs tied up for an hour.
• 34:15
  And just, uh, who knows how much time it was, but to me, it seemed like forever.
• 34:20
  So did anybody come to your rescue?
• 34:21
  How did you get untied?
• 34:23
  I basically had to.
• 34:24
  inchworm across the sand.
• 34:26
  I was probably maybe 20 yards could have been 20, 000 miles from Flacco.
• 34:30
  Very painfully on some really beat up ribs.
• 34:34
  It was excruciating pain.
• 34:36
  I had to really convince myself to do that.
• 34:38
  You know, a lot happens when you think you're going to die.
• 34:41
  And I just remember that whole process, like I kept thinking about
• 34:44
  my mom and I realized when I was laying there, Oh, wait, I'm alive.
• 34:48
  Like I can go see her all the people, all the things that flashed in my head
• 34:51
  that I said goodbye to when I heard the cocking of that gun in the back
• 34:54
  of my head, I get that again, if I just figure out how to get to my van.
• 34:59
  And, uh, and so that was the motivating factor to very painfully slide
• 35:03
  across my broken ribs to Flacco.
• 35:07
  Very awkwardly, like, kind of backed myself up along the van, and I
• 35:10
  knew I had kind of like a hunting knife in one of the door pockets.
• 35:14
  My hands were still free, it was just my legs and arms that were tied up.
• 35:18
  So I was able to get that, and cut me free enough to eventually
• 35:22
  get out, and found a spare key.
• 35:24
  Didn't have time to really do triage, like all the drawers and everything
• 35:28
  and clothes were all thrown out of it, I just threw everything in.
• 35:31
  And started it up and drove out of there.
• 35:33
  So where did you head to next?
• 35:34
  The local hospital or the next country in line?
• 35:38
  It's almost hard to like, remember where I was at.
• 35:41
  There was a hostel that I stayed in in Cartagena, Columbia before.
• 35:45
  So I limped into there.
• 35:46
  I didn't have any money.
• 35:48
  So I begged them to let me stay until I could find like a friend.
• 35:52
  Cause I had a friend coming down there to meet me.
• 35:54
  And I was like, okay, I know he's going to be here.
• 35:55
  If I can just get ahold of him, they can pay this bill at this hostel.
• 35:59
  Don't need to get into all the logistics of it, but I didn't really have a plan.
• 36:04
  I had a lot of cash in the van.
• 36:06
  I had a lot of assets in the van that got stolen and I got a lot of
• 36:09
  my like psyche stolen, you know?
• 36:11
  So I was just hovering and eventually I met up with my friends.
• 36:16
  You know, and I wanted him to still have a good time.
• 36:17
  So I just drove to Medellin and we hung out there for a while.
• 36:20
  And then, but eventually he left and then I was just by myself and like,
• 36:24
  I had to figure out what to do, but eventually I decided to just keep going
• 36:28
  and I made it to the border of Ecuador, but I was like, really out of money
• 36:33
  at that point and I knew I probably couldn't make it to my goal of Patagonia.
• 36:37
  I had some credit cards, luckily they didn't find my passport.
• 36:40
  So I ended up getting ahold of my parents and telling them what happened.
• 36:44
  And of course that's got to be hard for parents.
• 36:47
  And, uh, and I knew I need to go make some more money.
• 36:49
  So they offered to like fly me back.
• 36:51
  So what I ended up doing was actually flew back to California
• 36:55
  for a little bit to make some money.
• 36:57
  I left Flacco in Ecuador and then came back to continue the journey.
• 37:00
  That's what ended up happening.
• 37:02
  But I remember when they bought me that plane ticket, I was
• 37:04
  sitting in, not quite Ecuador yet.
• 37:07
  And I was sitting in this mountain town and I was going
• 37:09
  through so much introspection.
• 37:10
  Like I just got this renewal on life.
• 37:13
  And I thought about just like throwing the ticket away and just living in that town.
• 37:18
  I met some people there that were cool.
• 37:19
  I was like, I'm just going to work in these coffee fields right here.
• 37:22
  I'm good right now.
• 37:23
  Like I almost died.
• 37:23
  Like maybe I can just go out that way.
• 37:25
  But I did hop on that plane.
• 37:27
  It was a close, close moment.
• 37:29
  Did end up coming back to California.
• 37:30
  I didn't really know if I was gonna come back to finish the trip because I
• 37:33
  was just so rattled and I didn't really know what to make of life and death
• 37:38
  or anything anymore at that point.
• 37:39
  But I eventually decided, like, I can't let that be the story of my
• 37:43
  trip because then the FARC wins.
• 37:45
  Then cocaine wins.
• 37:47
  Then it's a sad story.
• 37:49
  So eventually I went back down to start the trip again.
• 37:52
  So did you do any racing in between and your time back in California?
• 37:55
  Or did you say, nah, I'm still not ready to go back yet.
• 37:58
  I don't think I did any racing.
• 38:00
  Luckily work at Porsche experience center, Los Angeles.
• 38:03
  I was able to continue on working there.
• 38:05
  Thank goodness.
• 38:06
  So that's, I guess, I mean, I was on a track every day.
• 38:09
  I can't avoid it, right?
• 38:10
  That's kind of my thing.
• 38:12
  And I think there was some other stuff that I can't really remember.
• 38:14
  It was really a weird state of mind after that happened.
• 38:18
  It's like I was just floating and appreciative to be breathing and not
• 38:22
  really putting much plan into my actions.
• 38:24
  Right.
• 38:25
  It was just, Then you take a break from this grand adventure and then you
• 38:29
  hop on a plane and return to Ecuador.
• 38:31
  Is Flacco there waiting for you or did you find another Flacco?
• 38:36
  That was a big question at that point.
• 38:38
  When I left Flacco there, the situation was I could leave
• 38:42
  Flacco in this parking lot.
• 38:43
  And I had to wait for my plane ticket out of there, but the only money I had left,
• 38:47
  only cash I could scrounge up, the only place I could stay because they wouldn't
• 38:51
  let me stay in the van was in a brothel.
• 38:52
  So the last days before I flew back, I was sleeping in a brothel
• 38:55
  because that's all I could afford.
• 38:57
  And I would basically just sit in my room, eat tortillas because it's
• 39:00
  all I could eat with a little bit of the tajin sauce and some bananas.
• 39:03
  And then I'd walk around town and like talk to people.
• 39:06
  I was kind of in a weird fugue state, but that's where I left it from.
• 39:10
  So I had like no money.
• 39:11
  I couldn't set up anything properly.
• 39:12
  So I really didn't know Flacco was going to be there.
• 39:14
  But yeah, then I landed in Ecuador and this town is such
• 39:17
  a small mountain border town.
• 39:18
  It's like hard to get to, but I ended up figuring out how to get some
• 39:20
  buses from the capital of Ecuador and Quito to this tiny mountain town.
• 39:24
  And Flacco had moved somehow from a different part of the parking lot.
• 39:29
  But it was still there.
• 39:30
  And I think it had been like for like six, maybe eight months.
• 39:33
  So just sitting there, it took me like an hour and I got it started.
• 39:36
  The love hate relationship with Flacco continues.
• 39:39
  Did you find, especially with your time by yourself, did you find yourself, you know,
• 39:43
  like you said, it's like you're Wilson.
• 39:45
  Did you find yourself like talking to Flacco and, you
• 39:47
  know, coaching him along, maybe?
• 39:50
  You know, the sound of the diesel was giving you motivation or something
• 39:53
  like, especially as you restarted this journey so many months later,
• 39:57
  what was, what was that like?
• 39:59
  Flaco is completely my Wilson.
• 40:00
  I talk to him constantly.
• 40:02
  I mean, I really talk to myself, but I mean, that's why I think
• 40:06
  I like love older cars so much.
• 40:08
  And that's like my style that I started to develop when I left for the trip.
• 40:11
  I think I liked newer cars, like, you know, all the exotic cars,
• 40:14
  but old cars have character.
• 40:16
  Flaco had a personality.
• 40:17
  He liked warm weather.
• 40:19
  He didn't like cold weather, you know, like a person.
• 40:21
  He liked to be driven a certain way.
• 40:23
  He would protest when I would drive him a little too hard for too long,
• 40:27
  just little things that would build up.
• 40:29
  And yeah, sometimes he would just give me hell.
• 40:32
  But when I started him back up, Like, it was very emotional.
• 40:36
  Like, after the whole thing, after the robbery, I was almost like a zombie.
• 40:38
  I was, like, emotionless.
• 40:39
  But starting Flacco back up, and knowing that I could finish my journey, like,
• 40:43
  I was almost completely breaking down when he, when I first drove him away.
• 40:47
  That was a pretty magical moment.
• 40:49
  But then he quickly, uh, got on my dark side right after.
• 40:52
  Uh oh!
• 40:54
  Yes.
• 40:55
  So what broke?
• 40:57
  Yeah.
• 40:58
  Everything started breaking out for that.
• 40:59
  I don't think it was good for him to sit.
• 41:00
  And yeah, that was at like 4, 000 meters where he was parked.
• 41:03
  So roughly 12, 000 feet elevation.
• 41:07
  I made it all the way to keto.
• 41:08
  Barely, barely, barely, barely kept breaking down.
• 41:11
  It was like, had no power.
• 41:13
  It was.
• 41:13
  Overheating a little bit.
• 41:15
  So I found a really cool garage in Quito that kind of took me in and
• 41:19
  helped me rebuild Flacco on the cheap.
• 41:22
  He let me do a lot of my own work and I just kind of paid like garage space.
• 41:25
  And he ended up being race car driver in, in Ecuador.
• 41:28
  He raced like old, I think Volkswagen, like Corrados, but maybe something
• 41:32
  different that's even more unique, but some really cool older cars.
• 41:35
  That was a cool experience hanging out with him and getting to know like a.
• 41:39
  A cool genuine car guy in Ecuador.
• 41:41
  But yeah, I had to source some fuel injectors.
• 41:44
  I had some problems with the fuel rail coming off.
• 41:47
  Everything was rusty, so I was breaking stuff.
• 41:49
  Got to know Quito, Ecuador really well.
• 41:52
  Had to stay there for like six weeks, roughly.
• 41:54
  You fire up Flacco, you get them all fixed up.
• 41:57
  You're headed out of Ecuador and next on your list of countries, right?
• 42:00
  We did Columbia, we did Ecuador, now it's Peru and then Bolivia.
• 42:03
  So what happens in Peru?
• 42:05
  I spent quite a bit time in Ecuador.
• 42:07
  What I was starting to learn is that like traveling slow is like
• 42:10
  my style and what I like to do.
• 42:11
  So it's actually spending a lot longer time in just a few towns
• 42:14
  and then moving in big chunks, something American travelers,
• 42:18
  it takes time for them to learn.
• 42:19
  We like to just like go see and do all these things.
• 42:22
  The Ecuador is beautiful, cool car thing about Ecuador
• 42:25
  and their fuel is subsidized.
• 42:27
  So a gallon of diesel was 1.
• 42:30
  Oh, a whole gallon.
• 42:32
  Not today.
• 42:33
  It's like six bucks a gallon here on the East coast.
• 42:35
  Yeah, I know, but it probably still there.
• 42:37
  Maybe it's like a dollar 25.
• 42:39
  They had a big protest when they wanted to raise the price of gas down there.
• 42:42
  Not, not too long ago.
• 42:43
  So yeah, I was happy in Ecuador, just filling up my tanks of fuel, made
• 42:48
  a run into the Amazon in Ecuador.
• 42:50
  And that was beautiful.
• 42:51
  I'll never forget.
• 42:52
  I mean, I think this needs to be in a driving magazine is the most crazy thing
• 42:56
  I've seen from out of a windshield of a car, but I was driving in the Amazon
• 43:01
  jungle, and I could see from Amazon jungle, a huge volcano covered in snow.
• 43:06
  It made me feel like I was on a different planet.
• 43:08
  Like, how can I be seeing snow?
• 43:09
  I'm drenched in sweat right now.
• 43:11
  And I'm just looking at the snow covered mountain.
• 43:13
  It was beautiful to see.
• 43:15
  Like the jungle start to rise up into this mountain where there's, there's
• 43:19
  snow, but after I enjoyed Ecuador a lot, filled up all my spare jerrycans with
• 43:24
  1 gallon diesel, I went into Peru and that's where the driving personalities
• 43:29
  really started to come alive.
• 43:30
  The Ecuadorian people are pretty calm and a little like to themselves.
• 43:34
  In their cities, they had some aggressive driving, but that kind
• 43:37
  of showed in the public, like street driving style, they would just be, they
• 43:41
  would kind of let you give you room.
• 43:43
  They weren't too crazy.
• 43:45
  It was nice.
• 43:46
  They were just overall a nice experience.
• 43:48
  And then I get into Peru, and it was the exact opposite.
• 43:51
  Anyone who complains about, like, LA traffic over here, they need to go
• 43:55
  take a journey and drive through Peru.
• 43:57
  There are people who are very, like, a bit more brash, and they aren't
• 44:01
  afraid to kind of say their opinion, and they kind of walk their own line.
• 44:05
  You should appreciate all the rules that we have to follow in the United States.
• 44:08
  There are a beautiful thing.
• 44:10
  I used to hate them, but in Peru, they don't follow any of the rules.
• 44:14
  Driving down a freeway, they don't stay in the lane.
• 44:16
  If there's traffic, they will take up every inch of the space,
• 44:19
  cross the whole shoulder, and then fight for every inch of space.
• 44:23
  If you leave a gap, I'm talking like three feet, someone else is going to nose in.
• 44:27
  So you have to be on it.
• 44:28
  Just gas break, gas break, gas break.
• 44:31
  Not too different than a Miata Cup race then.
• 44:33
  Yeah, exactly.
• 44:34
  Yeah, more stressful.
• 44:36
  That was the most stressful driving I had to do.
• 44:37
  Driving through Lima, Peru.
• 44:39
  You have to pay so much attention and fight for every single inch.
• 44:42
  That's part of their style.
• 44:44
  They would come into an intersection like full speed.
• 44:47
  Like they're going to run right through it and then slam on the brakes
• 44:49
  to try to scare you to slow down.
• 44:51
  So then they could jump in front of you.
• 44:53
  So stressful, stressful driving the whole time.
• 44:58
  How good were the brakes on Flacco?
• 45:00
  Not, not so great, right?
• 45:01
  Yeah.
• 45:02
  I was afraid.
• 45:02
  Cause if you look on YouTube, you can look up high ACE nose wheelies.
• 45:06
  Where people put good brakes on them and it'll break and
• 45:09
  it'll do like a nose wheelie.
• 45:10
  So, Facka's brakes are pretty good, but like, I felt like
• 45:13
  you're on top of that thing.
• 45:14
  So I was a little worried about, I'm too hard.
• 45:16
  It felt like you were going to go through the windshield.
• 45:18
  That was pretty interesting to see.
• 45:19
  And it just kind of showed through the people too.
• 45:21
  Like I love the proving people when I was outside of a car,
• 45:24
  cause they were just like.
• 45:25
  Almost more like your east coasters, like the mass holes, right?
• 45:28
  Like that's them in Peru.
• 45:30
  And then Ecuador is more like New Mexico or California, just
• 45:34
  like calm, like more rural, just like, yeah, go right ahead, buddy.
• 45:38
  Just so did the car culture also shift as you got into Peru?
• 45:41
  Did you see anything different?
• 45:43
  You started to see, I believe, I think it was in Peru or Bolivia,
• 45:46
  some French cars for the first time.
• 45:48
  So some Renaults.
• 45:49
  Some Peugeots, so that was cool, not really too different
• 45:53
  between Ecuador and Peru.
• 45:54
  Later on, it starts to get a lot different with the car cultures
• 45:57
  with like the, just the different type of cars that they drive.
• 46:00
  But a lot of like heavily modified Nissan Sentras, like the most basic car and
• 46:06
  they're going to put it like a sticker and a huge muffler that they just found
• 46:09
  off of anything to make it louder.
• 46:11
  They'll modify anything like a Toyota Previa, they'll modify, they'll
• 46:15
  modify whatever they can do just because they like cars down there.
• 46:18
  And I think Peru definitely had more modifications.
• 46:21
  Like every taxi driver had their own little thing to their car, you know?
• 46:25
  Like, I think I remember seeing one little Nissan thing.
• 46:28
  I think they called something else down there, like a Tsuru with like the
• 46:31
  tailpipes going out the side of the car.
• 46:33
  You know, why not?
• 46:35
  Side exit, let's go.
• 46:36
  Yeah, side exit.
• 46:37
  Yeah, that's the, that's the jargon term I was looking for.
• 46:39
  Just stuff like that.
• 46:40
  Like cars, we would be ashamed to be driving here.
• 46:44
  They flaunt it.
• 46:45
  And make it cool and modify it in their own way.
• 46:48
  So Peru, then you find yourself finally in Bolivia.
• 46:52
  Yeah.
• 46:52
  So Bolivia, those were probably the craziest truck drivers.
• 46:55
  It's the poorest country of all the ones in South America.
• 46:59
  One of the most beautiful as well.
• 47:00
  Now along this journey, I've met a couple other friends that I was traveling with.
• 47:04
  I met a snowboarder from Northern California that was kind of in and
• 47:07
  out of the van with me from Peru.
• 47:09
  into Bolivia, and I really loved Bolivia.
• 47:12
  It was like genuine, you know.
• 47:13
  A lot of the other places, like, Americans don't travel to Peru
• 47:17
  so much, but they have a lot of, like, touristic areas, you know.
• 47:20
  And I was starting to learn that I really liked, like, the genuine little
• 47:22
  towns and those genuine experiences where, you know, kind of look at
• 47:25
  me differently because they don't see many white people or Americans.
• 47:28
  So Bolivia was a lot more of that.
• 47:30
  I didn't feel like they were trying to sell stuff to me because
• 47:33
  they're just not used to tourists.
• 47:34
  While you were in Peru before you left, did you make it a point to go up into
• 47:38
  like Machu Picchu or anything like that?
• 47:40
  Or some of those more historic areas?
• 47:42
  Part of me discovering myself because it was such a dream of mine to go to
• 47:46
  Machu Picchu, but from what I've learned on my travels and some of those similar
• 47:50
  places, the big pyramid in Mexico, Chichen Itza, I think, places like that,
• 47:55
  I never really enjoyed it that much.
• 47:57
  I drove right by Machu Picchu and didn't go.
• 48:00
  And I did it as like an overt decision.
• 48:01
  Like, you know what, I don't need to see that.
• 48:03
  I understand what it is.
• 48:05
  I'm going to get frustrated by it.
• 48:06
  I would rather spend the time and the money that I have in these smaller towns
• 48:11
  and just places that I end up finding.
• 48:13
  So yeah, I skipped that.
• 48:14
  Flaco did break down in a city called Arequipa, Peru.
• 48:18
  Lost a water pump.
• 48:19
  Luckily caught it before it got too bad.
• 48:21
  And yeah, locating parts down there is just so hilarious.
• 48:25
  They have a million different shops and every shop, it's very specific.
• 48:29
  You'll have a shop for bolts that are metric and then a different
• 48:33
  shop with their own hours and their own different employees for
• 48:36
  bolts that are English or American.
• 48:38
  There's a place just for water pumps.
• 48:41
  I remember the word was Bombas and there's a place just for everything else,
• 48:45
  but they all had their different hours.
• 48:46
  It's basically like almost like a swap meet style that you go into
• 48:50
  there and just trying to locate.
• 48:51
  A water pump for the highest was a little challenging with my still, uh,
• 48:56
  kind of limited Spanish that doesn't know car jargon at all in Spanish.
• 49:00
  Yeah.
• 49:00
  I was going to say, you're not going to walk into the local auto zone or advanced
• 49:03
  or Toyota dealership and find the parts.
• 49:06
  It's all bargaining and bartering.
• 49:08
  That's right.
• 49:08
  Yeah.
• 49:09
  And a lot of people looking at me like, what is this guy doing here?
• 49:14
  Like it was a lot of blue collar Peruvians and I don't think they expected
• 49:18
  to see this kind of goofy white guy walking through asking for a bomba.
• 49:22
  Well, I think you mentioned earlier about doing your research.
• 49:24
  At least you did the research on the vehicle because like you said, you
• 49:27
  had a vehicle that was super common.
• 49:29
  So you didn't drive in there with a Renault and people go,
• 49:32
  Oh, we don't have parts for that.
• 49:34
  You know, the commonplace cars in there.
• 49:36
  Volkswagen beetles and your truck and things like that,
• 49:39
  where parts are plentiful.
• 49:41
  I mean, you made the right move there.
• 49:42
  That's for sure.
• 49:43
  Cause otherwise you blow a water pump on something else.
• 49:45
  Good luck.
• 49:46
  I guess I should pat myself on the back for that amount of
• 49:48
  research because it did work out.
• 49:51
  Like I could always find parts.
• 49:52
  It's just, things just take a lot longer down there.
• 49:56
  And that taught me it was good.
• 49:57
  You just relax.
• 49:58
  If you don't have the right bolt or the right gasket.
• 50:02
  I think that was a problem there.
• 50:03
  I didn't have the right gasket.
• 50:04
  I had to wait a week for the gasket to come in because the guy who has a gasket
• 50:08
  shop was on vacation and I was only gasket shop in town, things like that,
• 50:13
  you know, so, uh, you just learned to really go with the flow, but yeah, it
• 50:17
  was good that I had Flacco and a Toyota and a car that was down there a lot.
• 50:20
  So now we're in Bolivia and things get interesting, right?
• 50:24
  They get interesting again, but in kind of a better, more
• 50:27
  lighthearted way, at least this time.
• 50:29
  One interesting thing about Bolivia too, is their gas is subsidized, but only for
• 50:34
  locals because they had too many people coming from Brazil and Peru buying their
• 50:39
  cheap gas and then driving back over.
• 50:41
  So for me, there's only like a few gas stations in the whole country that they
• 50:45
  can legally sell gas to tourists for.
• 50:48
  So that was a whole interesting deal.
• 50:50
  What I ended up doing was just trying to make friends with a local,
• 50:52
  paying them a little off the top and having them pretend like it was
• 50:55
  their car, and filling up that way.
• 50:57
  So that was cool, got to meet a bunch of cool local people, but also had
• 51:00
  some times where I was just out of gas.
• 51:02
  My go to move, there's a few times it happened, I would just go into a bar,
• 51:05
  find someone who was, you know, Kind of lubed up and asked them if they
• 51:08
  want to make a little extra money by helping me out and getting me some gas.
• 51:11
  We'd go fill up my jerry cans, fill up the gas, put it in my
• 51:14
  car, and then away we'd go.
• 51:15
  As I mentioned earlier, I had a friend I came with from Peru.
• 51:19
  I fell in love with the city called Sucre, Bolivia.
• 51:22
  Stayed there for a while and, um, met a lot of friends.
• 51:25
  A big thing that I knew I really wanted to do since the very beginning daydreamings
• 51:29
  of this trip when I was just like a 14, 15 years old when it was just like
• 51:33
  a thing I would do instead of studying biology was go to the Salt Flats.
• 51:38
  A uni.
• 51:39
  That's the name of the place.
• 51:40
  It's the biggest salt flats in the world.
• 51:42
  Really beautiful.
• 51:43
  It looks like it's just desolate.
• 51:45
  It looks like you're on a different planet.
• 51:47
  And sometimes when it rains it gets that crazy mirrored effect.
• 51:50
  Like, and it's just, just beautiful.
• 51:52
  So I knew I wanted to do that trip, but I kind of wanted some people to do it with.
• 51:57
  I had a lot of solitude earlier.
• 51:59
  Now it's starting to flip to go back to more of a social travel.
• 52:03
  I ended up assembling a crew of 10 people.
• 52:05
  I met another Australian with a Range Rover, who was
• 52:08
  kind of doing the same thing.
• 52:09
  And we geared up and we go to camp out in these salt flats.
• 52:13
  And it was a dry season, so we weren't going to get any of the rain.
• 52:16
  It's a lot of people who aren't used to like camping so much.
• 52:19
  I think we had two German girls, two French girls, one that is now still
• 52:24
  currently my girlfriend and lives with me, and two Americans, three Australians.
• 52:29
  So it was quite the eclectic group.
• 52:31
  We were a good crew and we go out there and you basically can island hop.
• 52:35
  There used to be these islands there and you like camp on the islands.
• 52:38
  And we're not with the tour guides, which is great and beautiful.
• 52:41
  Cause that's what I wanted.
• 52:42
  So I'm leading these group of cars and it's like on the second or third
• 52:46
  day, we're kind of cruising along an Island that we wanted to go camp back.
• 52:51
  Cause it looked like a butt.
• 52:52
  So we wanted to see if it really was a butt.
• 52:54
  And so we drove over there and it wasn't a butt.
• 52:57
  It was an Island.
• 52:58
  Basically I was driving the road.
• 53:00
  The ground just falls out from underneath my car and comes to a pretty abrupt stop.
• 53:04
  We get out.
• 53:05
  My van is just completely stuck.
• 53:07
  Like in the mud, basically the crust of salt fell through and broke.
• 53:11
  And it's something I knew happened like in the wet season.
• 53:13
  They said, never drive close to the islands because this can happen.
• 53:17
  Like the water will seep through and the crust will fall.
• 53:19
  And you'll go into like this mucky, mucky mud.
• 53:21
  And so the Australian loved it.
• 53:24
  He was like, ha ha, your little Toyota can't make it out of there now.
• 53:27
  Let me hook up my winch to you and pull you out.
• 53:29
  He was loving that I was stuck as a good friend would.
• 53:32
  And as soon as he tried to pull out, he cracked through with the winch.
• 53:36
  So now we had both cars stuck and the Range Rover is much
• 53:39
  heavier than the Toyota.
• 53:41
  Oh yeah.
• 53:41
  It started sinking fast.
• 53:42
  And like once it was in the mud, it was going further and deeper in.
• 53:46
  So we were stuck.
• 53:47
  We were 20 miles away from the nearest post where we knew we
• 53:50
  could probably find people, but we were 20 miles away from anybody.
• 53:54
  Stuck, stuck.
• 53:55
  We tried some pretty ingenuitive things.
• 53:56
  Like we buried a huge boulder.
• 53:58
  We dug into the sand.
• 53:59
  Salt bed and like into the mud and buried a huge boulder and
• 54:02
  try to winch to that boulder.
• 54:03
  We named it Rocky.
• 54:04
  He ended up being like another Wilson of that stuff experience.
• 54:08
  He was a table after that.
• 54:10
  He was, you know, a chair.
• 54:12
  But yeah, Rocky couldn't pull us out.
• 54:14
  The Australian guy was super prepared and he had like, what are those jacks called?
• 54:19
  Like they're, you kind of ratchet them up and they go up on.
• 54:21
  Oh yeah, he had one of those, but everything would just sink
• 54:24
  through and it was getting worse.
• 54:26
  Like once he broke the crust, the mud was kind of like spreading.
• 54:28
  So yeah, we were stuck there and I was kind of like, great.
• 54:31
  This is an adventure.
• 54:32
  We got to figure this out.
• 54:32
  And the Australian guy was loving it, but everyone else was like
• 54:35
  freaking out this crew of people.
• 54:37
  Like they don't know how we're going to get out of there.
• 54:39
  We're trying to come up with some plans, but.
• 54:42
  Overall, it was a good, fun experience.
• 54:44
  The Australian guy actually had a satellite phone that he could
• 54:47
  send text messages to, but we're still in a very remote area and
• 54:51
  we only have American numbers.
• 54:53
  So how are they going to be able to contact this little dusty town called
• 54:57
  the Uni to send the right people to come and get us without them sending like the
• 55:01
  military or somebody we didn't want there.
• 55:03
  So, I think it was after day three or four.
• 55:06
  Of camping there and trying to figure different stuff out.
• 55:08
  Finally, the Californian that I've been traveling with, his
• 55:11
  brother spoke pretty good Spanish.
• 55:13
  He was also an avid traveler, figured out to hire like, I don't know what they
• 55:17
  did, but just some guys to come out in their trucks and dig us out of there.
• 55:20
  What we essentially had to do is build another road underneath the car.
• 55:24
  So we would dig, they had a bunch of jacks, we'd lift up the car a little
• 55:28
  bit and then put rocks underneath it.
• 55:30
  And then put it down, then lift up the other side, put rocks underneath it.
• 55:33
  And we just kept doing that and the rocks would sink, but eventually that
• 55:36
  would settle until we built the road out of all the rocks on butt Island.
• 55:40
  Um, so that took, uh, that took like a good day's work.
• 55:44
  I think we finished in the middle of the night.
• 55:46
  Just in time when we started to run out of, you know, some essentials, uh,
• 55:49
  we still had a decent amount of water.
• 55:51
  We're out of beer at that point and almost out of pasta.
• 55:54
  So, so did you use the Land Rover still to pull the Toyota or do you
• 55:58
  have to do the work for both cars?
• 55:59
  Actually, we use one of their trucks and a Land Rover to pull me out.
• 56:03
  But Flacco got out pretty easily once they were like, they knew where the solid
• 56:07
  ground was, the locals, they were like kicking it and they knew where they could
• 56:10
  kind of set up from and anchor down.
• 56:12
  Yeah, that was a pretty wild experience, you know, just kind of
• 56:14
  being stranded 20 miles from people.
• 56:16
  We were considering a lot of things like, all right, do we send someone out
• 56:20
  to go walk to that place where we think there's people in a really brutal climate?
• 56:25
  Like with a bunch of water, do we send them to go tell them that we're stuck?
• 56:28
  We consider that we were pretty close to doing that, but the weather
• 56:31
  there was extremely harsh because the salt is like a mirror for the
• 56:35
  sun, but it was also extremely cold.
• 56:36
  It'd get down to freezing at night and very windy.
• 56:39
  So there's all the extremes of temperature and climate.
• 56:42
  There's a road probably like a mile away, cars would drive maybe
• 56:46
  twice a day on, that we learned after like day two or three.
• 56:49
  And one day I don't think they drove at all, so we built a sign like
• 56:52
  with cardboard and a sharpie out of Spanish like, please help us.
• 56:55
  I was on duty at the sign when a car came and they stopped and talked to us.
• 57:00
  Problem was, they didn't speak Spanish, they spoke Incan.
• 57:04
  And they were terrified of us.
• 57:06
  I don't speak any Incan.
• 57:09
  That was like the month two of knowing that the Incans had their own language
• 57:13
  and people still spoke it down there.
• 57:15
  So yeah, they drove off scared and just drove away from us.
• 57:19
  I thought we were going to like rob them or we were like
• 57:21
  some cannibals or something.
• 57:23
  Um, didn't help us, but it was just interesting to consider all those.
• 57:27
  So after you pull Flacco out of the muck and the mire, did he fire right back
• 57:31
  up and continue the journey or did you have to fix it before you kept going?
• 57:35
  No, he was fine.
• 57:36
  Like we dug a hole, I think, from the exhaust.
• 57:38
  We were actually able to run it and like turn on the heater and stuff and use it.
• 57:43
  It was just the bed was really crooked and like the kitchen, you
• 57:46
  know, you had to build something for the stove to make sure it was flat.
• 57:49
  It ran fine.
• 57:50
  I drove it out of there.
• 57:52
  We just had to get a very extensive like bath because it's covered
• 57:55
  in like salt, essentially, and he's already a rust bucket.
• 57:59
  So we tried to wash it as best I could.
• 58:02
  I remember the guy like power washing it like chunks of rust
• 58:04
  were just flying everywhere.
• 58:05
  I don't know.
• 58:06
  Yeah, I don't know if this is doing any good or bad.
• 58:09
  Like this power wash is a little too aggressive, but uh.
• 58:11
  So Bolivia is not where the journey ends.
• 58:14
  So where did you go from there?
• 58:15
  I think some of that crew was mad at me, so we parted ways with some of
• 58:19
  them because I got everyone stuck.
• 58:21
  Then I narrowed down to a group of five of us and we went into Chile or Chile.
• 58:26
  Things really changed there quickly.
• 58:27
  It's a much more advanced country.
• 58:30
  I kind of needed that at that point after slugging it for a while like a
• 58:34
  good like six months up to that point of not living with nice things at all.
• 58:39
  Chile was really cool.
• 58:40
  You know they had really interesting things as you're going through the Andes.
• 58:43
  They had roads that actually had more grip in the corners.
• 58:47
  So it'd be safer.
• 58:48
  So it was like a softer compound of asphalt and it was a different color.
• 58:52
  So it'd be like safer and you could go through the corners a little bit quicker.
• 58:55
  So that was pretty cool.
• 58:56
  But there's a lot of things in Chile that are much more advanced and like more
• 58:59
  advanced in a lot of ways and things that we have here, like free wifi everywhere.
• 59:03
  The roads were way better than the roads in California.
• 59:06
  And just did a lot of surfing, hanging out the cars there started to get nicer.
• 59:11
  You started to see newer cars.
• 59:13
  I didn't get to see it, but they had a really cool racing series
• 59:15
  where they race a bunch of Fiat's.
• 59:17
  You can find it by reverse mapping it through Wikipedia.
• 59:21
  I remember seeing these videos of them racing them, like in a
• 59:23
  Hawaiian shirt and just like a neck roll helmet with no visor.
• 59:27
  And they're racing these guys.
• 59:28
  Through dirt and asphalt and like a mixed like road course
• 59:32
  right on the coast of the ocean.
• 59:33
  There's definitely a very alive and well like car culture there.
• 59:37
  I just didn't get to explore as much.
• 59:39
  But then from Chile, I went into Argentina for kind of the last leg of my trip.
• 59:43
  Flaco and me, our honeymoon phase is long gone.
• 59:47
  He had one more cross the Andes in him.
• 59:49
  I mean, in Bolivia was up to 16, 000 feet.
• 59:52
  It started its life with 91 horsepower, 6, 000 feet elevation.
• 59:56
  I don't know.
• 59:56
  It felt like it had four horsepower.
• 1:00:00
  Yeah.
• 1:00:00
  Uh, cross the Andes again from Chile to Argentina and Argentina almost felt
• 1:00:05
  like Europe, you know, there's a lot of Italian and German expats in Argentina.
• 1:00:10
  Yes, there is.
• 1:00:11
  Yes, there is.
• 1:00:11
  Yeah.
• 1:00:12
  And everything's like really nice and new except for one key thing.
• 1:00:16
  And that is their cars.
• 1:00:17
  They have a heavy tax on new cars.
• 1:00:19
  So they have the coolest, oldest cars there.
• 1:00:22
  All the cars are like stuck in like the seventies and eighties
• 1:00:25
  and they just keep them alive.
• 1:00:27
  I loved just being on the streets and seeing cars.
• 1:00:29
  I don't even know what they were driving by, like a bunch of really old French
• 1:00:33
  cars, bunch of old Fiat's, but just had so much more character and style.
• 1:00:37
  I think that's when I like cemented in, like, I think I just
• 1:00:40
  like older cars now, you know?
• 1:00:42
  So did you make it to your goal of getting to Patagonia?
• 1:00:46
  Yeah, I did.
• 1:00:47
  Despite Flacco trying to make that not happen.
• 1:00:50
  I was getting flat tires.
• 1:00:51
  It was starting to overheat a lot for mysterious reasons.
• 1:00:54
  It was just the rust issues.
• 1:00:56
  Like I couldn't even close one door.
• 1:00:58
  Hardly things were just falling apart after the salt flats on poor Flacco.
• 1:01:02
  You know, I hung on Argentina for a while.
• 1:01:04
  Drank cheap wine, ate cheap steak, and then I parted ways with everyone
• 1:01:09
  that I knew because I kind of wanted to do this end journey on my own.
• 1:01:11
  Really the mountain that I was going for in Patagonia is called Mount Fitz Roy.
• 1:01:15
  I eventually made it there and that was a really cool feeling
• 1:01:20
  to make it and finish it.
• 1:01:21
  The whole reason why Trip started was because I was in a science
• 1:01:25
  class when I was probably 14 years old, wasn't paying attention to
• 1:01:28
  some documentary that was put on.
• 1:01:30
  And they showed a clip of what I would later learn to be Mount Fitz Roy.
• 1:01:34
  And there was a road leading up to it.
• 1:01:35
  And the road looks so like nice.
• 1:01:37
  Like it looked like a really cool road, but this mountain just like grabbed at me.
• 1:01:41
  And I was like, wow, where's that?
• 1:01:42
  And they started talking about Patagonia.
• 1:01:44
  Then I opened up my science book and I found where Patagonia was.
• 1:01:47
  And I saw it was all collected by land.
• 1:01:49
  And So my first thought happened from Mount Fitz Roy.
• 1:01:52
  Ever since that moment, I started kind of daydreaming about the ability to drive all
• 1:01:58
  the way down there with some adventure.
• 1:01:59
  I never really gave it any weight to, cause I was pursuing racing until
• 1:02:04
  my breakup with racing happened.
• 1:02:06
  It was a pretty powerful moment to be seeing my van at the side of
• 1:02:09
  that road from the same image that like it looked exactly the same as
• 1:02:13
  the documentary that we watched.
• 1:02:14
  It was pretty powerful too because I felt like I was free
• 1:02:17
  from this big journey that I did.
• 1:02:19
  You know, I had to go back to Ecuador after I got robbed because
• 1:02:23
  I couldn't go the rest of my life wondering what if I finished.
• 1:02:26
  Now the story was done and I was free from that burden of what if I saw my mountain.
• 1:02:31
  Great, great feeling.
• 1:02:32
  Flaca was done.
• 1:02:34
  I was done at that point and then I made my way back home.
• 1:02:37
  Did you do like Richard Hammond, bring it home with you and now it's
• 1:02:40
  a prized possession or anything?
• 1:02:42
  Sold the van.
• 1:02:43
  So you sold the van at the end of it all, huh?
• 1:02:45
  I love Flacco and great great car and like I owe him so much my perspective
• 1:02:50
  that I have now like I was forever changed from that trip, you know, and
• 1:02:54
  I have all the love for him, but I was ready to part ways, you know, it was like
• 1:02:59
  it wasn't gonna be worth the trouble.
• 1:03:01
  It was like it was a miracle it made it down there.
• 1:03:03
  But yeah, I ended up selling it to some rock climbers down
• 1:03:06
  there, a couple of Americans.
• 1:03:08
  That's kind of the only way you can do it, is sell it to other people
• 1:03:12
  who are from America down there.
• 1:03:13
  Yeah, I sold it to some like ranch and had a horseback out of
• 1:03:17
  there where I sold it to them.
• 1:03:18
  And that was it.
• 1:03:19
  And I was pretty ready to come home after that.
• 1:03:21
  So obviously, You think about it often.
• 1:03:24
  It's changed your whole life and your whole latitude.
• 1:03:27
  It's redefined who you are as a person, especially, you know, you know, now is
• 1:03:31
  let's call it a more mature adult, right?
• 1:03:33
  Then when you started the whole trip, barely, but you found yourself
• 1:03:37
  back in racing again, did it change the way you look at racing?
• 1:03:40
  Did it change cars for you?
• 1:03:42
  I mean, how did it change that side of you now that you find
• 1:03:45
  yourself back in that world again?
• 1:03:47
  It kind of showed me how to re engage.
• 1:03:50
  Racing in a different way, how to have a different relationship with it.
• 1:03:54
  And it showed me even when I try, I can't run from cars and racing.
• 1:03:58
  I, there's a genuine love and passion for the sport, the activity for cars.
• 1:04:03
  And I can't run from it.
• 1:04:04
  The problems that caused me to leave racing aren't things
• 1:04:07
  that I should just bury away.
• 1:04:09
  They're things that I should try to maybe address and help kind of change and
• 1:04:13
  mold my own path in this racing world.
• 1:04:16
  I think it just gave me.
• 1:04:17
  A good, fresh perspective.
• 1:04:19
  That's it.
• 1:04:20
  Yeah.
• 1:04:20
  So if you had to do it all over again, knowing what you know now, would you
• 1:04:24
  do it and what would you do different?
• 1:04:26
  Oh yeah.
• 1:04:27
  Of course I would do it with all the cracked ribs and robberies and all of it.
• 1:04:33
  Absolutely.
• 1:04:33
  But the knowledge I have now, I probably wouldn't take that beat up of a car.
• 1:04:39
  Flacco gave me a little too many adventures.
• 1:04:41
  And I would just travel a lot slower, not try to like bounce around so much because
• 1:04:46
  I really enjoyed the time to think.
• 1:04:48
  If I would do it again, I think I would fly to a country, just buy one
• 1:04:52
  of their cars there, and just travel around that one country in their car.
• 1:04:55
  Because crossing the borders was such a crazy, crazy headache.
• 1:04:59
  So if that's the case, what would you buy now, knowing what's available down there?
• 1:05:03
  I think I would fly in and see what everyone else is driving.
• 1:05:06
  I would drive with the taxis we're driving.
• 1:05:07
  So you got to get a Toyota Hilux.
• 1:05:09
  I mean, come on.
• 1:05:09
  Yeah, but those are a hot commodity down there.
• 1:05:13
  I'd rather be like in a tiny, small car and like look hilarious.
• 1:05:17
  I don't know.
• 1:05:17
  I think I'd get an old taxi car or an old ambulance, you know?
• 1:05:21
  Or just see what just kind of catches my eye and looks cool.
• 1:05:24
  It's a lot easier to buy a car in the same country and then sell it.
• 1:05:27
  And because I learned I like to travel slow, like I could spend six
• 1:05:30
  months in just Peru or even longer.
• 1:05:32
  So yeah, I think that's what I would change.
• 1:05:34
  But do you think you'll go back?
• 1:05:36
  Absolutely.
• 1:05:36
  Certain countries I'm more eager to go back than others.
• 1:05:39
  But absolutely love to go back.
• 1:05:41
  I kind of want to make some plans.
• 1:05:43
  If I can find some more remote work, I want to move to La Paz, Bolivia
• 1:05:47
  for like a few months because it's one of the craziest cities ever.
• 1:05:50
  It's like Disneyland.
• 1:05:51
  They go around on gondolas.
• 1:05:53
  So like the things that you go on, like in a ski lift, that's their taxis.
• 1:05:57
  Cause it's like sitting in this bowl.
• 1:05:58
  So they just have gondolas taking people everywhere.
• 1:06:01
  It's just such a bizarre, weird, cool city.
• 1:06:03
  I would like to sit there for a few months and see where my mind goes.
• 1:06:07
  And I know they have some cool racing in Bolivia as well.
• 1:06:10
  So it'd be cool to check that out.
• 1:06:11
  Towards the end of my trip, when I started to learn what I liked about that journey,
• 1:06:15
  I got to spend six months about just.
• 1:06:17
  kind of thinking, especially on the back of almost dying,
• 1:06:20
  thinking I was going to die.
• 1:06:21
  And that was a beautiful thing.
• 1:06:23
  So I do it again, do it slower.
• 1:06:24
  Don't care about where I go, how I get there.
• 1:06:27
  Spend some really good quality time with myself and some cool other cultures.
• 1:06:32
  I think there's some important valuable points there.
• 1:06:34
  It's been said probably a million times if it's been said once, right?
• 1:06:38
  It's not about the destination.
• 1:06:40
  It's all about the journey, but I think you brought something else up.
• 1:06:43
  That's very important that I've said before, even on this show, which
• 1:06:46
  is driving that love of driving.
• 1:06:50
  Getting behind the wheel, not really knowing where you're going.
• 1:06:53
  We just get caught up on the rat race and we just kind of check the next box.
• 1:06:57
  You're not having to be beholden to your phone or people or
• 1:07:01
  email and all this stuff.
• 1:07:02
  And the day to day grind, just getting behind the wheel and going somewhere.
• 1:07:05
  There's just something about that.
• 1:07:07
  That's undescribable.
• 1:07:08
  You know, a lot of people talk about, well, I can't stand to drive.
• 1:07:10
  I can't wait for autonomous driving vehicles and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:07:14
  And I say to myself, You're missing out.
• 1:07:16
  You're missing the bigger picture.
• 1:07:18
  Those epic road trips are what it's really all about.
• 1:07:21
  I mean, you don't get the same experience on a plane, right?
• 1:07:23
  You take off, you float, you come back down.
• 1:07:26
  It's not the same thing.
• 1:07:27
  Yeah.
• 1:07:27
  Suddenly in a different place.
• 1:07:28
  But to your point, this is pretty extreme.
• 1:07:31
  It's.
• 1:07:32
  Absolutely epic, but so many life lessons learned so many things that
• 1:07:37
  you'll look back on forever and you can pass that on to other people.
• 1:07:40
  So I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing this story with us.
• 1:07:44
  And I really hope that we can get together again and talk more about
• 1:07:49
  your love of driving and how that's changed your framework and how it's
• 1:07:53
  changed your mentality and how it's Helping you change the world of racing.
• 1:07:57
  Cause I think you have some thoughts on that.
• 1:07:59
  So I don't want to give away too many things, but I think this is super cool.
• 1:08:03
  Yes.
• 1:08:03
  Yes.
• 1:08:03
  Thank you for having me on and yeah, let's, uh, get a little bit of my, uh,
• 1:08:07
  adventure perspective into today's racing.
• 1:08:10
  I think we could do some cool stuff.
• 1:08:12
  Talk about some cool things, put all my six months of
• 1:08:15
  introspective thought into work.
• 1:08:17
  And, uh, yeah, just want to touch on one last point, like what you
• 1:08:19
  said about cars and with the road trips, it is complete freedom.
• 1:08:24
  I really fell in love with just cars in general and their ability
• 1:08:29
  to kind of just transport you to places you would never even dream of.
• 1:08:32
  You didn't even know existed.
• 1:08:34
  And those are the parts of my trip that I valued the most was, you know, if I flew
• 1:08:37
  there, I'd have to take these buses and they would, they only go on certain roads.
• 1:08:41
  I had families take me in, you know, like from a little farming village, I met all
• 1:08:45
  these people and saw these cool places because the freedom that the car had.
• 1:08:49
  Can give you like I always say, cars are not appliances.
• 1:08:53
  They are tools to be used for all sorts of different things,
• 1:08:56
  including adventures like this.
• 1:08:58
  So listeners, if you want to learn more about Joey and his adventures, you can
• 1:09:04
  hit him up on social media on Instagram at Joey Jordan IV, that's Joey Jordan,
• 1:09:09
  the fourth, or if you're in the LA area, stop by and request him as your coach
• 1:09:14
  at the Porsche experience center in LA.
• 1:09:16
  So Joey, again, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.
• 1:09:19
  It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:09:21
  Thank you so much, Eric.
• 1:09:22
  I look forward to talking to all you guys soon.
• 1:09:29
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:09:31
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:09:35
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:09:35
  org.
• 1:09:36
  You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 1:09:39
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You
• 1:09:43
  can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email gtmotorsports.
• 1:09:51
  org.
• 1:09:51
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:09:53
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:09:56
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix.
• 1:09:58
  And we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization.
• 1:10:04
  And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes
• 1:10:07
  like this one at no charge.
• 1:10:09
  As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for
• 1:10:13
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• 1:10:32
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• 1:10:33
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• 1:10:37
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• 1:10:41
  none of this would be possible.