Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Embracing Remote Adventures: Life in a Sprinter Van with Kathy and Peter Holcombe

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Embracing Remote Adventures: Life in a Sprinter Van with Kathy and Peter Holcombe · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overlain Journal podcast. I'm your host,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Matt Scott, and I'm here with Peter and Kathy Hull.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Come from Fama Go Go. They've been traveling for eleven.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Years, eleven years full time, eleven years.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: First well, a first vehicle that we traveled together. It
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: was a Honda Civic with a rubber Maid action packer
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: boulted under the rooms, okay, because we didn't have enough
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: room in it. Yeah, and we would go all over
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: the West rock climbing and do one month to three month.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: I think three months is probably our max trip on
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: that vehicle. Man, And yeah, we have fond memories and
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: we lost a lot of mufflers.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Along lost a lot of mufflers. But I guess what
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: you're what you're kind of now known for, are your
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: very accomplished travels in vans. Like you're like the van
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: life people. And I'm really excited because I'm van curious now.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So this is going to be a very selfish podcast
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: where Matt talks to the people that just drove the
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Pan American Highway in a win, a big revel and
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I'm stoked for this. So thanks for coming on. It's
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: been a while it's been a while in the making.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: We've been a longtime listener and we are so excited
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: to be here because you guys have gotten us down many,
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: many miles. If I ever get drowsies driving, I'm like,
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: I pop on one of your podcasts and it's like
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: an hour is instantly taking me down the road. So
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Well, we appreciate that somebody's listening, apparently, so we are.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: That's cool. So I guess for this, well, we'll kind
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: of focus on your adventures in the revel in the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: in the sprinter van. So you guys, I mean, because
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: you did Europe was your first kind of like big
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: trip in that. So where did you ship from?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: So we shipped from Baltimore, Okay to We'll be that, Yes,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: and we did that in twenty nineteen. We spent six
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: months exploring Europe. We went from the top of Norway
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: down to Italy and from the UK all the way
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: over to Croatia nineteen countries.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Croatia is supposed to be Greatatia is awesome.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: It was my favorite.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: It's like what people like, people are kind of afraid
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: of it for some reason, and it's like.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: Well, they shouldn't be Yeah, it's wonderful.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: So I think one of the interesting things with like
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the revel with the sprinter is they're kind of like
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the perfect size, Like it's the smallest package that you
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: can get that fits in a regular parking space, has
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: a shower, toilet, bed, air conditionane, like all of the
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: things that you would expect from like an r V.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: And it's cool that you guys went, you know, because
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of people don't really do Europe. They kind
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: of they kind of forget about it.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: It's like I have to I have to drag my
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: proverbial you know what through the sand as much as
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: possible to be an overlander. But yeah, Europe sounds great,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Like what what was your walk me through that trip?
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: Okay, so we shipped into the Bruise. We're also very
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: passionate whitewater kayakers.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like that's the that's the purpose of your
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: travels really, right, that's it. The whole family does it.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, our daughter's a world champion kayik.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you guys were just at the in Veil
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: for the what was the name of the.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Pro Mountain Games. My daughter was competing there and we
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: were just in Germany. We didn't take the rig over,
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: but we flew over to Germany for the World Championships
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: at kayaking, and that was really the emphasis of our
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: trip to Europe was the World Championships were going to
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: be in Spain, and so we knew we were going
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: to Spain and we wanted to enjoy Europe, and so
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: why not take our van over with us and spend
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: six months exploring all of Europe. And so we we
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: shipped into Subruges and then we went south to Spain.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: We had to get to the World Championships pretty quick.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Then after that played out, we went all over. So
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: we pretty much worked our way up to Norway, up
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: to Nordkop.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: And that's on my list.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a Norway in general. I could just spend
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: the whole summer in Norway. It's great and the paddling
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: there is amazing. And from there down into Germany we
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: got to go. We met up with our friends from
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: Winnebago at the Dussel Dwarf Caravan Saloon.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's supposed to be huge. It's massive, Like it's
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: all the cool stuff that we don't get. I mean,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: we get a lot of cool stuff now I should
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: stop saying that because like ten years ago, we didn't
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: get the cool stuff. Yeah, we get the cool stuff. Yeah,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Like how big is that show?
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: It was massive. We've been to the big shows in
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: the States, and it was like another two or three.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Levels and we just saw things that we'd never seen
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: before in the States, and so that was really exciting
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: to see different chassis and different bills.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: The year were you guys there those nineteen Yeah, you know,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: sprinters obviously, just they've they've become like more and more
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: and more popular. But twenty nineteen, like all the cool
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: stuff for sprinters was kind of in Europe.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. It was a lot of stuff hasn't
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: hadn't come out to the States yet. So yeah, we
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: saw things at that show that we never saw here.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: I mean like sprinter vans beds in them and more
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: pop top sprinters and stuff like that that are now
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: kind of becoming more common here. But it was neat
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: and just the caravans are the trailers, the Tobal trailers,
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: they make it so different over there.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's the space is different, you know.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you can have an fteen five thousand
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: poland a fifth wheel in the United States and it's
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: just not really that big of a deal, but you
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: would never'd be terrible in Europe. I sometimes have dreams
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: of taking the Earth Romer to Europe because I'd like
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to do Nord Cap and all that kind of stuff,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and I think, you know, Scandinavia would be okay. But
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: then I'm going to be like, oh, there's this little
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: place that makes cheese in France, and then I'm gonna like,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: you know, there's gonna be a headline that's like, you know,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: American man destroys two thousand year old arch with extreme
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: RV on the on the you know, some news headline.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: It could happen.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, we always joked in France that it was
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: the land of one lane roads with two way traffic,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: and so you just would kind of hold your breath
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: and hope everything got skinny enough to pass on this narrow,
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: tiny mountain road, and somehow it magically worked. But you know,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: even in the sprinter it was tight.
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: The tunnels in the Alps, there's a lot of curving tunnels.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: You can't see through them, you can't see if traffic's coming,
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: and they're really narrow, and I don't know how we
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: kept both of our mirrors on our spinner vand because
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: there was times when I was like, I'm sure it's
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: going to hit something.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: And the sprinters are I mean in perspective, they look narrow,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: but they're not really that narrow. I mean there's still
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: probably like the width of an F one fifty, right,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I think it might.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Be a little narrower. Just got enough one fifty, Okay,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: I feel like that. It's a touch the F one
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: fifty is a touch wider.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, okay, just a little bit. Yeah, yeah,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to give people like a little bit of
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: a So it's a little it's a little skinnier than
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: enough one fifty, but it.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Is because it tips in at the top. Oh you know,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: so if it was straight up and down on it
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: would probably be the same. But where your mirrors are
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: tips in.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: I guess the cool thing with the sprinter is like
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: there's kind of always a way to get where you
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: want to go with a sprinter, because if something can
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: be delivered somewhere, that's it. It gets delivered in a sprinter.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: Like they're made to get you into those places, to
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: deliver goods into alleys, into loading docks into tight cities. Yeah,
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: and you know they're made they're German or Europeans, so
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: they're they're kind of made with that stuff in mind. Yeah,
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: we need to do more sprinter stuff on this podcast.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, pretty amazing and there are parts everywhere
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: because they delivered things all around the world, and so yeah,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: it's a great platform.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I've been a little sprinter elitist in the past, Like
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I I on the back of the throw where I
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: have one less sprinter, which I mean.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: I want to put one of those of my daughter's truck.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you put one on yours to
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: have a sprinter. Yeah yeah, they're just like they're the
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: right size. You know, what I have right now is
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: like so big.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: Well, and it's great in certain situations, it's great.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: It's great for like North America. But you know, I
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: think really what we're talking about in this podcast is
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: we're gonna we're going to talk about the rebel and
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: sprinters and stuff, but we're really always bringing it back
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: to travel. So let's start with your pan am trip. Perfect. So,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: like I was like, well, where'd you start? But I'm like, well,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: you've been living in a car for eleven years, so
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: it's not like you're like starting.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: That's a really good question to start.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Didn't really start, you just kind of.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: When we calculate our mileage on the PanAm, we're like, well,
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: where did it start, because it's not like we left home,
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: and so we use our favorite place as Univista, Colorado.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, then we did start our driving north up
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: to Alaska from there, so.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: That's where we started our mind and when did you start?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: So it was on our anniversary thirtieth okay, twenty twenty three.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: I don't know which anniversary, maybe our twenty first or
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: first or second.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Anniversary, one of them, one of them, twenty.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: One of many.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we started there in Universta and then we
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: headed up to Alaska, and you know, we debated which
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: was going to be our northern mess point, Dumpster Dalton,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: where do we want to have our high point? And
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: so we couldn't decide, so we did them both.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Oh sweet. Yeah, So let's let's let's go back to
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: like the journey up north. Did you guys do the
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: alcan did you do?
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: So we'd already been to Alaska before, yeah, but we
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: hadn't driven the Cassier.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so I w there, so.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: We wanted to go that way. Yeah.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Hyder and Stewart are just like little gems.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: The Salmon Glacier, Yeah, super cool. We love that.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I had a window fly off of our camper at
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the Salmon and Glacier. Whoa wait, is the Salmon Glacier
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the one that you drive up to. No, there's one
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: that you drive on the way to Hyder and Stuart.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I was wetting my tire on
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the side of the road and I look up and
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: there was no window.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: Oh no.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: And it was like bug apocalypse full of mosquitoes. It
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: was like like I I don't even know where to
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: go with how many bugs there were, Like it was
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: absolutely insane. You've obviously been there, absolutely mental and and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: I'm like in the most comfortable thing in the world
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: on this trip. And then there's like, you know, Japanese
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: tourists bike packing the Cassiar Highway and I'm just like,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm like I'm bowing to them, like, oh
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: my god, like I need to I need to toughen
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: up here. It needed to be a tough boy. But
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: that whole area is just like it's.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: I mean, well, so we got up there and then
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: we were looking at the map and we didn't want
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: to just drive around to the Dempster, and so we
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: discovered the Canal Road.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the South Canal Road. Yeah yeah, that
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: was a sprinter.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: It was perfect.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: The South Road is supposed to be pretty good. It
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: was closed for a wildfire. We had intended to take that, okay,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: because what that's that shoots you out in the camp Highway?
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, so it was it was kind of
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: a short cut.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: I think it was one of our highlights.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: We might have liked it better than the two main ones.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: It was great.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: We could go back up there and spend another week
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: or two just poking around there.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: The struggle that I had is we went we did
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: our trip up there in twenty two and everything had
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: just opened, but it had two seasons of not being used.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And you know how like that, I mean, life is
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: just voracious up there for its its life cycle of
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple months and then it all freezes.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So like all of the little like road side pullouts
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: and stuff, they were all still like overgrown, like they
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: hadn't really been maintained in a couple of years, so
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: it was fascinating to try and find camping along the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: main road. And then we also left it just like
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the wrong time, like it hadn't been opened for two years,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and we were like, let's get up there. It was fun.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: It wasn't fun.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: I remember you talking about that. I've heard you on some.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Episodes Cannel Road. I'm bummed, like I want to do
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I want to do that trip again. You know it's
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: not there's like the North Cantel Road that goes to
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: where does that terminate?
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: It just ends at a river up there that ends
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: across the bridge out and yeah, north Cantle.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't take a sprinter or camper or anything on.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: You can go a little bit.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: I'd try it for a while and see how Yeah
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: I feel comfortab You can go like.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: One hundred miles in or something. Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's far enough to make it worth it.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you guys do that too?
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: We didn't go on the north side.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, interesting I so so then he did Campbell
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: and he ended up in like Dawson City.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We didn't actually go to Dawson until we were
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: done with the Dempster and Tuck. Yeah, that's then we
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: went across and kept going to the.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Top of the world and then yeah Bank or Fairbanks, Yeah,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that whole thing. And then didn't you guys have like
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: an axle problem in.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: So we had. We had a great trip up to Tuck.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, Tuck's great Eagle Plains. Yeah, reserve
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: a night and get drunk with truckers at Eagle planes
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: like that is that is like the one of the
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: best experiences. Well, I think.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: That went really smooth. It was really beautiful. We really
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: just loved the trip. Tuck was such a great climax
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: to the ending. And you're at the Arctic Ocean. Yeah,
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: we went swimming in the Arctic Ocean, and and we
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: had our nineteen year old lab with us, and so
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: we got to put his pause in the Arctic ocean.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: He's a forty nine state dog and had been Mexico
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: and Canada and all over, so he nineteen. Yeah, and
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: then we made it back down and across the Million
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: Dollar and over to Fairbanks. Yeah, Fairbanks, yea, And we
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: had to put him down there. He got really sick
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: down and so that was incredibly hard. That was one
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: of the worst days and weeks and then we we're like, well, okay,
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: you know we're here. We've got this mission. We want
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: to get up up to Prudo. And we started up
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: there and it was it was hard and it was smoky,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: and you had a lot of challenges. But we got
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: over the Brooks Range and it was beautiful. We had
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: a couple of really great camps, so we're starting to
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: feel better. We rolled into Prudo, into dead Horse, and
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: we stopped in town at the first kind of sign.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: There's a little sign there. It says like welcome to
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: dead Horse or something. I jumped out, took a couple
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: of pictures, filmed a little video, jump back in, fired
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: up the revel, put it in gear, and it went
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: just making this grinding sound. I'm like, oh no, oh no.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: We couldn't move. It didn't budge, it.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't go like it's just spinning and making this grinding sound.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: And so we jump out. Kathy jumps in the driver's seat.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: I jump underneath. I'm like, okay, put it in drive.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: I can see the drive cheft spinning. But I thought
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: for sure my diff was blown up. I was like,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: we lost everything in the diff or something. You know,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: it's just grinding in there.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: So we were five hundred miles from Fairbanks and there's
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: nothing in between.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Really yeah, that's like, uh, that's a bad spot. It
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: was a bad day losing the pop and then that
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: that's that's like, uh that sucks, man, it sucked. It
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: was that really sucks.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: So then we dug around. We're like on the side
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: of the road, kind of halfway off this road and
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: halfway on it. There's trucks going by and they're looking
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: at us, like, why are you guys parked there? And
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: we're like, well, we're just jumping out really quick. And
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: then some guys came over and they towed us back
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: into this little parking lot of an oil company that
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: was there. Yeah, a little muddy dirt lot. And I
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: called some friends and luckily I'm good friends with John
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: at Agile off Road. John's awesome, Yeah, and another guy, Paul,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: who's a Mercedes Bence Tech. And I got those two
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: guys and I told him kind of what's going on,
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: and they're like, yeah, it sounds like it could be
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: her diff and I was like, so then we got
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: on the phone and we started calling you know this
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: this is like an industrial complex.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's there. If it's a work camp.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: It's the oil producing and there's tons of resources.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: There, engineers, mechanics, shops, everything all for big industrial equipment
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: for especially not a Mercedes sprinter.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we started calling these shops and we're like,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: can you guys help us with this? You know, it's
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: it should be pretty easy from what you guys are
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: used to working on, and maybe we'll have to get
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: parts up here somehow, but can you help us? And
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: they're all just like laughed, and they're like, oh no,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: we don't work on those things.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: And they were like, why are you up here?
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like this is this isn't a tourism zone.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: You know, why are you guys even coming up here
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: in the first place. So we got a lot of that.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: Well then anyway, we started poking around and I was like,
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: I just want to see what's going on the diff
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: So I removed the dift cover, drained the oil, remove
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: the diff color. And actually some of the guys helped
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: us with that, because if you get a drop of
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: oil on the ground.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Up there, they take it really serious.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Femas like all over them or not not Fema EPA
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: and those people, and so these guys. Yeah, it's great,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: it's great. I'm totally fan of that. But these guys,
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: these oil guys came out and they brought us this
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: whole oil capture kit which was one an oil pan,
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: which was like the basic thing that I don't normally
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: travel with is carrying a big oil pan. But then
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: they gave us all these foam blankets that you put
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: down and then plastic bags for it all to go into,
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: and so we didn't get a single drop of oil
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: on the ground, which was great. But then I dropped
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: the I pulled the cover off and we started looking
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: at it and it was like, it looks perfect, Like
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: I don't see any metal. It looks awesome.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: It was kind of best case scenario.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because it gifts a challenge.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Like yeah, it's a big thing. So then I got
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: back to John and Paul and they're like, it must
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: be your axle. Yeah, And I was like, oh, is
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: that better or worse? And they're like, I think that's great.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: John was like that is the best thing. That's the
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: best news you take because you can change an axle
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: right there on the side of the road.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was like okay, So it was the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: axle shaft that snapped.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: The axle sheared, well, the wheelbarings I think went and
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: then it caused the whole thing to separate, and then
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: it stripped out the splines on the end of the axle,
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: and then it caused it to spin. Gotcha, and it
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: was just slipping when it was in drive, it was
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: like just spinning.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: I guess it's like there's no limited slip or whatever.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: So if you had John from Agile's AARB difflocker, you
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: could have moved.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: That's and we kicked ourselves for not having that.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: John was very quick to remind.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Us of that John that just cost you a six pack.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: So anyway, we did a little reason Well, it was
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Friday night and Mercedes, all the Mercedes dealers had closed
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: at that point, so we had to just sit there
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: on the side of the road over the weekend. Monday morning,
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: I got on the phone started calling all over the
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: US trying to find an axle. I found a few,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: but then luckily the guy in Anchorage, there's a Mercedes
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: been shopping Anchorage. He's like, yeah, we've got two of them.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: I was like, okay, I need one now. The next
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: turtle is can you put it on a flight to
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Dead Verse and he's like, I don't know, I've never
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: done that, but I'm willing to try. And I was like, awesome,
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: thank you so much because we are totally at your mercy.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: And this guy he did it. About an hour later,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: he gave me a call. He's like, yep, I dropped
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: it off at the airport. It's on it should be
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: on the flight tomorrow morning.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And that's the cool thing about Alaska's it's kind of
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: still like, I don't know a bit people.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Know to get stuff done.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, let's just do this.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: I admire Alaskans a lot.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, figure it out.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: And so the next morning we woke up with both
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: of us having COVID.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so we both now we're, you know, are
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: rip pop rip axle COVID.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Positive and we're sick, really sick.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: High fever, coffin, feeling terrible.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure that in the industrial camp they love that.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I think we got it from the industrial
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: camp because all those guys they fly in and work
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: two week shifts. And yeah, so we were the night,
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: well the weekend, while we were waiting to get the
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: Axle figured out we were eating at the little restaurants
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: and stuff there, the little yellow mess halls or the
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: Aurora I think it was Aurora Hotel. They have a
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: little buffet and stuff, and so I think we might
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: have picked it up there because we were pretty much
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: just the two of us before then, so I don't
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: know where we would have gotten it up. But anyway,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: next morning, get out of the van. I'm excited. I
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: know the axles waiting for me at the airport. I
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: go to take a short cut to the airport and
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: I find bear prints that are fresh, that are like
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: as big as my head. And then the guys, the
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: guys all along have been warning us, like, don't walk
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: around without a gun without bear spray, you know, people
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: don't do that here. And we're like, well, we don't
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: have a vehicle.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Are they And what type of bears are like in.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Brown bears and polar bears.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Oh those are fun, yeah.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which I would love to I love seeing bears,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: but I don't know that I love them when I'm
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: on foot, you know, and I don't have any any weight.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I don't want to go anywhere near polar bears. Yeah,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, i'd like to like look at them from
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: a distance from some binoculars. But man, those things are
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: yeah you're on the menu. You're on the menu, and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: you're not Yeah you're on the menu. That's how you
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: say it.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: So I saw the tracks and I was like, oh gosh,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: what else is going to happen? And so I turned
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: around and luckily I never saw the bear. But I
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: took the long way to the airport and got there
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: the axles waiting for me. I threw it in my backpack,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: hoofed it back, and light rain sprinkles started falling, and
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: I'm like, looked at the forecast and it looked like
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: it was going to get worse for the next couple
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: of days, like the snow. But I was like, we're
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: going to do this. We're going to change this axle
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: right here, right now. I've never done it.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: What side was it on?
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: On the passenger side?
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: So yeah, we jacked it up and I watched. You know,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: I had some help with John and Paul. They told
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: me the basics, and then I found a few YouTube videos.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Was this star? Did you have starlink at this point?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: We did there, we did when we went Starlink wasn't
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: like active up there, which was kind of cool to
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: be living in a world of edge Internet made.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: I was so grateful for starlink that day. And so yeah,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: it took us, I don't know, three quarters of the
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: day when we changed an axle on the side of
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: the road, learned how to do that.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: So is the axle on that is it like a
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: full floating rear axle where you have the bolts on
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the outside or does it have kind of a unit
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: bearing attached to it.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: It's all one big piece and there's four bolts on
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: the inside.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: You okay, so that's the wheel bearing too.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: Then yeah, you take off the brakes and all that,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: and then you undo these four bolts and this whole
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: thing with the bearings and the axle asseimbly slide out.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So you think it was the wheel bearing that gave
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: the ghost.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, the wheel bearing was was pretty torn up too.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So on the Vans, exhibition trucks whatever. People don't realize
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: like that they're they're vulnerable because they're always running with
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: like you know, at or near like the max weight.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've got a ten pound bag, you
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: put ten pounds of stuff in it, you've got three
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds of payload, you know, usually one thousand. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: That's like the dirty little secret on the earth Rummers
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: is that the wheel bearings love to oh do they
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: go cupoot? So you got to like replace some you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Earth Rumers taking care of it. But it's an interesting
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: it's usually like the the oil will go a little
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: bit low because people will service it, like the dealers
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: will service it. They put the oil in, but this
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: oil is like molasses and then it's splash lubricated at
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the end, so it's like it's it's at the fill point,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: you know, when you fill it, but then it takes
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: ten or fifteen minutes to drain out into the axle tube.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: So then it ends up low. Oh yeah, it's like
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: a big thing. So I checked that in like all
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: my trucks. Now that's smart. Yeah, yeah, I pay attention
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: to I see I see like the the cogs turning like,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: oh I should do that one. Yeah. So but you
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: you get it done. You get it done.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: We get it done, and then we get to start
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: the Pan American Like that was all that happened the
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: week that we were about to start our journey.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, approach to the Pan America.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: This is so so you consider, you're like, I mean
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: there's point of vis but then there's like the drive
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: south and then you start it. You get all the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: bad It sounds like you get all the bad stuff.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Well that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: just take care of all the bad stuff in one week. Yeah,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and then it was smooth sailing from there.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: We thought, Yeah, we were like, oh man, if this
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: is how the PanAm is going to be, I don't
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: know if we want to. I don't know if this
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: is our thing. But it got a lot better.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: What did you think of the start? Well, are you
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: like a positive person or are.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: You like a I'm definitely a positive person. Nice, and
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I think we can figure out anything, like, Okay, we
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: have opposing strengths and weaknesses and so we kind of
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: fill in the gaps. And so you know, we've been
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: through a lot of huge adventures together. Yeah, and our
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: almost thirty years of being together, and so you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: we can figure it out and we can do a
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: lot together. And this was just one of those things
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: you got to just dive in get it done. And
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: I always look at adversity as an opportunity to grow
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: if you look at it in that perspective. I was like,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: you know, we changed an axle on the side of
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: the road and the snow with a grizzly bear around us.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: You know, if we can get through that, we can
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: get through anything.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't that bad. Yeah, okay, Yeah, well, I
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: mean it.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Really did prove to give us the confidence that we
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: needed later in the trip, not only mechanically, but just
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: as far as looking at the places on the map
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: that maybe we were a little nervous to go through.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're like, well, the worst has already happened,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and the most remote place you can go Yeah.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: I mean we're like, you know, we'll figure it out.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: That's gonna be fine.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So then you start your drive south.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, And since we had already done all the anterior
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: roads in Alaska, we were like, let's take the ferry south.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Which is supposed to be I haven't done it, but
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: so good. I think that's like the money way of
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: doing It's so nice.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and we did a detour out to Kodiak Island.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, I remember watching you guys do that.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Which was phenomenal. We were there in September and the
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: bears were feeding on salmon and we just watched giant
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: bears feeding for a week.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: They're right there and they don't care about you. They're
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: fat and happy off salmon and it's just the funnest.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Thing to watch. On my trip, I didn't see a squirrel.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't see a raccoon. I didn't see a caribou.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't see a deer. I saw maybe the backside
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of a bear, or it could have just been a
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: dying bush. But I did have one moose, one solitary,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: scraggly looking moose, and the dempster come out, so I've
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: got it. The moose. The moose backed me up. The
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: one moose was my my sixty days of wildlife viewing.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: You got to see a moose in the north.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's good. The moose always show up.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: I guess we even saw muskoks while we were up there,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: and I didn't know they were there, but it was
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: pretty cool to see.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were all on holiday when I was there,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: so even early, didn't you. I mean I was there
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: like fourth of July. Oh yeah, Like I was in
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Whitehorse for like Canada Day, which I do not recommend ever,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: I yeah, go later. It's like the thing. But when
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: you're doing the PanAm you kind of have a you
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: have a bit of a weather window. Like the Europeans
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: kind of figured out where they they ship, like end
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: of April early May, they worked their way up to
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Alaska through Cannon. They're going to Halifax usually because I
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: think there's like a time you can spend in the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: US and networked their way through the US. They all
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: cross around Thanksgiving and Christmas in New Mexico and go down,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: which is kind of I guess what you guys, did
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: you crossed? Yeah it is.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: We crossed in January of twenty four down into Baja.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: And how did you feel about that timing?
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: I think we hit everything everything good. Yeah, we missed
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: the rainy season. It was hot, but it wasn't assi.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: When we were chatting like that was what you were
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: kind of always saying, is like, it's so hot.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: Central America is raging hot. Yeah, and I'm not a
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: fan of the heat. Really. I'm happy in Colorado.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Well, like when you're nomadic, you can just kind of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: go to the nice places.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: That's been always our thing. If it's too hot, we
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: go north if it's too cold.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: We like, we're here at the Big Thing in Three Forks, Montana,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: and it was ninety degrees yesterday and it was cooler
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: in Arizona where we're from. Great. I've been living in
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: a heat wave for the last several years, every trip
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: heat wave. It was like ninety eight degrees in tuck
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: tiup Tech when I was there. Wow, I'm not kidding.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I have like I have photos. That's amazing. That's kind
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: of sad. Yeah, it gets that hot. Yeah. I went
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: home and bought a Tesla and power batteries and decarbonized
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: my house.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Good.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: You know, mess up that planet with lithium mining instead.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: So talk to me about Mexico. So you guys went
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: down Baja or did you go down Yeah?
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: We went down Baja, and we'd been to Baja the
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: winter before, Yeah, and did a really great tour through there.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So did you kind of cruise through or we went.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Back to our favorite places?
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So my favorite part, what's your favorite part?
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my favorite part of Baja is kind of the
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: central section on the Sea of Cortes. Oh yeah, so
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: all along the coast, there's so many amazing dirt roads
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: to go down an explore to get to the coast a.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Verde and like, yeah, I mean, I like Loretto. Loretto
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: is like one of my favorite little towns in Baja.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: It is It's cool. We had a favorite taco shop there.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Mm hmmm.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean our goal is kind of eat tacos
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: and swim every day.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I can. I can appreciate that. I'm terrified
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: of water. But you know, tacos are great.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, tacos are great.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: If you can swim to tacos, that's even better.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: You know what, I do make exceptions for swimming pool bars.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: That should be a bumper sticker. Tacos are great.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: So then we spent about three weeks in Baja, and
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: then we took the trucker's ferry across to Mazet Lawn.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, And so the trucker's ferry is like eighteen
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: hour ferry. It's how they transport goods to and from
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: mainland to Baja. And you get to sleep in your vehicle,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: they feed you dinner and breakfast. Oh really, and then
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: you get off in Maseet Lane and keep trucking.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: See I didn't know that you can sleep in your
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: vehicle on there, because there's what's the other ferry that
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: goes from a pause, It goes to Topol of Bombo.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, something like that one.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's different. You have to have a cabin
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: on that one, but the trucker's ferry is a little
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: bit more.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I would trust the cabin. Yeah,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I'd rather have my own.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: It was nice cabin, so to speak. Only downside is
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: a lot of the trucks are refrigerated, so they leave
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: them idling. Oh, and so you do get a lot
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: of you can get a lot of diesel exhaust.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: It worked out good for us because where we ended
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: up being loaded onto the ferry, we were kind of
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: in the front, and they put those idling trucks. They
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: try to get them more towards the back.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Oh that's considerate.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't. We talked to other people and it
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: didn't always work out that way, but it was fine
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: for us, and we met a lot of really cool
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: other travelers that were some were just going to Central
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: America and then some were doing the whole pan Am
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: and people that we stay in touch with today.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, Yeah, the travel community is just so great.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: It is great.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: But that's an interesting little fact is that truck Bucker's
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: ferry you can stay in the car. So if you
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: do have a van or you know, camper truck or whatever,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: like that's kind of I mean eighteen hours. What time leave?
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Does it leave at night?
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it leaves at night. You have a you know,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: you get to see the sunset while you're out to
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: see a Cortes and then you know, you wake up
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: the next morning and have breakfast and then it's almost
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: time to go.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and you're kind of we're not the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: sound weird, but you're kind of you know, Sineloa has
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: some interesting spots that you kind of have to go through,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: you know, right, and you're you're you're past some.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Of that, right.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Mexico is great, but like there are like level four
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: do not travel warnings for the State Department in Sinaloa exactly.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you just want to stay on the
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: toll roads, get through those and then get to the
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: good stuff.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: So you get into mast Lawn. Did you guys spend
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: any time there?
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: We didn't.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it just kind of cruised.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, there were some travel warnings there, and yeah,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: we're just gonna.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: It's always changing in that area. It seems like, you know,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: you talk to like some travelers like, oh yeah, I
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: had a great time, and I'm like, well, what was
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: going on? Nothing like okay, Well you know, luck of
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: the draw, I guess. But so you guys then went
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: through Mexico, do you go kind of like towards the Yucatan.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Well, we went straight down south and found some beaches
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: to camp on, Okay, that was really good, and then
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: from there we cut back to the east and ended
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: up Janat Okay.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: Or Tequila actually want to do tequila.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I like tea.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: You love this place, you love this place.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: And that's where we discovered the Publo Magicos. And so
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: those are like the little tourist towns that you know,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Mexico has deemed culturally or you know, something is interesting
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: is there.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: I've heard about this? I mean like so, so they're
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: kind of a little more boutiqui artsy you they.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: Have something of interest, and they're like the tourist towns
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: that we found. Everyone that we went to it was
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: really special.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: What was your favorite one?
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, you know it's interesting. We were kind
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of by wana Wato and we had just pulled into
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: a soccer field for the night to camp. We found
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: it on Ioverlander, Yeah, and we pulled off for the
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: night and as we were sitting there eating our dinner,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: we were in our friend Georgia's van and it was dark,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: and pretty soon we see this truck coming down the
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: path towards us, snow lights on, and we're like, oh,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: that looks a little weird. And then we see that
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: there are people walking beside the truck coming down towards
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: our vans and we're like, oh no, this is really bad.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: And then we see that they're armed, and we're like, oh,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: what do we do? So we're you know, we turned
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: up the lights in the van so that they couldn't
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: see us, but you know, we'd had.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Them on kayaks on.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: We're debating what we're gonna do, and finally I was like, oh,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: my gosh, I'm just going to go talk to these
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: guys because they know we're in here. What are we
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: going to do? So I jump out of the van
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: and I go talk to them. And my Spanish is
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: like two year old Spanish. I have a very limited vocabulary,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: and so through I have.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Seven months old in the womb Spanish.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Oh well, yeah, yeah, it's tricky, especially when you.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: My Spanish hasn't been born yet.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: You're about to learn.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I'm about to learn.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: So I jump out, and through pantomime and Google Translate.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: We figured it, well, it's the police.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: It was the police. So as they get close to us,
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: they turn on the red and blue lights. Okay, that's
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: when I jump out of the van and I go
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: talk to them, and through pantomime and Google Translate, we
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: figure out that we're just in a really bad area
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: and they're like, you guys need to follow us. We'll
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: get you to safety. And we're like, huh, we didn't
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: know if that was better or worse, you know, because
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: you hear so many stories.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you left that review for the campsite on I Overlander.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, and so if you.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Can still do that on I Overlander because the new
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: app is so horrible.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: We were still on the old version.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I think they're like blocking people out of Ioverlander one.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we're locked out now though this was a
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: couple of years ago.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: So yeah. So anyway, we share our location with a
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: friend and we're like keep an eye on us. We're
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: following the police somewhere and they end up leading us
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: to this beautiful little town that is famous for their cheese,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: and we follow them. They bring us all the way
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: into this town. It turns out to be a Publo Magico,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: and they purk us right in front of the police
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: station and they're like, you guys will be fine here.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: That was a bad area. We've got your back here.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: So we sleep in the middle of this town. There's
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: families out walk in the streets. It's beautiful. We have
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: a great night sleep. We wake up the next morning
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: and the police are outside watching our YouTube channel and
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: they're laughing and they're like, oh my gosh, you guys
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: have come all the way from Alaska.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's just this really great experience that led
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: us to this amazing little town that we would have
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: never been to any other way. Yeah, And I think
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: that's probably my favorite.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: So sometimes when a blacked out armed convoy comes to you,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: it can be a good thing.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: It turned out to be a good thing.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: It worked out. It always works out.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: They brought the cavalry to come get you, oh man.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: So so then you guys kind of work your way
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: towards belize, right, Yeah, And it gets like hot and
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: sticky in Belize.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, down through the Yucatan cross into Belize, and Belize
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: was beautiful. It's everything that you think of as Belize.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Which is in the Barrier Rea.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: It was amazing, but like one hundred degrees at night
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: kind of it doesn't really cool down as of humidity.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: It's just thickne And we had our air conditioner, which
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: is good because.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: You have like some upgraded batteries and you're we do.
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: We put in the Rome RIGG system, which is an
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: upgrade for the Revel vans that gives us three more batteries,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: so we end up with six hundred and fifty amp.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Hours okay at twelve volts.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Twelve volts okay, so we can run our AC eight eight,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: nine hours maybe ten.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Do you have like the regular like the what's the acy.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: Because of the yeah, the Coleman mock.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you like that one.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: It's a little noisy, yeah, because.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Dometic makes these like twelve, twenty four and forty eight
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: volt units. Now that like I've been in vans, I'm
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: like I can barely hear that.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we've been totally happy with it. But
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: that's the thing. I think if we if we just
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: switch out our AC we'd go for twelve volt. Yeah,
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: look for one that's a little quieter, a.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Little tremor on the roof, a little quieter.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: We could fit more.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Kayaks if it was Yeah, you could have you could
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: have nine instead of eight.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: I mean that's a plus.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: You're camped kind of near me and I'm like, oh, yeah,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: there's there's there's eighteen feet of kayak on top of
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: that tall car.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: I never have that problem finding ourselves in a parking lot.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: So so let's kind of like fast forward through Central America.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: So how was you know there's like the C four
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: block Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Yeah, Honduras is
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: always the one that kind of gets people nervous. I
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: guess right, Yeah, what was that border crosses the l
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Almatillo border crossing.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: Or I don't remember, but we crossed where there was
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: just a tiny, like k little stretch and so we
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: did all of Honduras in a day. So we did
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: the two border crossings in a day and just kind
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: of blasted through it.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what all the other travelers were coming
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: northbound were kind of recommending, and so yeah, we we
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: I think we're in Hunds for four or five hours.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: And so it took you that it was that quick.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fast.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: It's it's a little of shane because there's so much
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: in Honduras, like there's copon, there's all these ruins. It's
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: just it's not super safe unfortunately.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful, but it was. It was one
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: of the poorest places that we went through, and we
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: found that the poor places weren't always the unsafe places. Yeah,
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: you did see a lot of people who were kind
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: of struggling and you know, in bad conditions.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, do you feel that like the Rebel,
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, the problem is you guys have these big
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: orange kayaks in the roof, so like here, I'm like, oh,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the Sprayer is a little more inconspicuous.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's a question we get all the time,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: and it was something we were really worried about as
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: we were going in. And you know, we traveled back
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: roads through a big majority of our trip, and when
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: we come into a town, you know, everybody in town
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: knows each other, so anybody coming from out of town
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: sticks out like a sore thumb. Yeah, and so you
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: may as well embrace it and bring what you want.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: I don't think it really makes that much difference, because
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: you know, in some places we were a foot and
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: a half taller than everybody else in the village, and
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: you know, I have lighter hair and Peter has light eyes,
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: and so everything about us screamed foreigner. And so I
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: don't really think it's something to worry about. You are
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: conspicuous when you're traveling.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: So my pinkish Swedish skin is gonna give me away.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, you should go to get some plastic surgery and.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Some spray painting. And yeah, I think that that's considered
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: a bad thing. I think, yeah, it's not worth it.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: And we found it wasn't a problem at all. In fact,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: it allowed us to meet people they wanted to call
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: them the like, where are you guys from there?
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah? What is this? What is this thing? Yeah?
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: So it gave us opportunities that I don't think we
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: would have had if we blend it in.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: And it gives us an opportunity to just be a
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: good human and a good guest and a good visitor,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: and to make friends wherever we go and just talk
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: to people.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then so you get to Panama and then
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: do you guys row row or did you do a container.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: We're too tall for a container.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm thinking the flat rack stuff.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: So you guys you do the row row and if
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: I remember, there's no problems, and you had no problems
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: the way back either problem. Oh there's a big problem.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So a road ship had sunk about a six
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: months or a year before because of a lithium battery file.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is a big thing.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so the shipping companies after that just said
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: no lithium period, we're not taking it.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And you have to ship them separately.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so you can choose to ship it in
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: a container, which can cause like a month or more
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: delay because you're coordinating row and container and you can't
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: fly with them. You can't ship them. Really, it's super expensive.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: And so we called around and we ended up putting
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: them on a sailboat with us. We sailed through the
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: San Blast Islands.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: We probably it was the name of the sailboat.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: Oh gosh, it used.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: To be the stall Rot and then that sunk and
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: now there's the stall Rock.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: So this was through an agency called Blue Sailing. Yeah,
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: and they had maybe a dozen different sailboats.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, yeah, so you went from Cologne to
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Turbo or Cartana hanah yeah cool, and you just took
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: your batteries with you.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: We did, We did, and fifty pounds of batteries with us.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We got ahold of the sailing company and we said, hey,
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: we've got kind of a weird request. Can two of
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: us go across on the sailboat and can we bring
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: some batteries with us? And they're like, oh, what batteries?
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: So we told them and then they're like, well, we
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: have to talk to the captain. So then a day
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: later they got a message back from the captain and
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: he's like sure, And we're like, are they're the extra
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: charges or anything like no, no, just bringing on his
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: cargo as luggage.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: And when we got on board, they stuffed them under
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: one of the dinettes. It kind of does like an
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: RV does, and the cushion pops up and there's a
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: little hole in there and they just stacked them all
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: in there and and they were great.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: And I should note that since then batteries are easier
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: to travel with. So when we came home from this trip.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: We didn't have to worry about it. We could leave
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: them in the van. We were just at the pinnacle
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: of panic.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because that ship went down with all the Porsche's
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: and Bentley's and exactly Tykons. Yeah, yeah, she expect Yeah,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I heard Europe. You can do row ro from us
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: to Europe now, because I mean, some of these vehicles,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: like the batteries are so integrated, like I couldn't imagine
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: taking them out of my camper, Like it would be
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: like such a pain.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: It was a pain for us, and ours are fairly accessible.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so you get into Colombia. Colombia is like
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: one of these places that I just don't really know
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: much about.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: It's pretty neat.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: Like everybody evil says that that's like the highlight, like
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: they kind of expect Patagonia to be great. Yeah, you know,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: it's kind of great. But then Colombia is the one
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: that always like impresses people.
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: It's beautiful and it's such a contrast to Central America
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: where we'd been, and the culture there is amazing, the
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: food's amazing, the mountains are phenomenal.
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: It was great. It was great to get up into
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: the mountains because we've been in central now for four
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: four and a half months and I've been so hot
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: and finally you get up in the mountains and Columbia
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: and it cools off. We were like, wow, this is nice.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: It's pretty diverse, right, Like you can get pretty high,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Like the cities are really high there. So like, what
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: was your route through Columbia.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: Well, we worked our way from Cartagena down to Medine
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: and then so we kind of stayed in the central h.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like that corridor.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we bopped around and then I don't know we
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: were We just kind of we do a lot of
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: following our nose. We usually don't have a hardcore schedule
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: or a path.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: That's nice, I mean, that's the way to do it
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: if you can't.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So we were on a bit of a time
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: crunch because we were meeting our daughter in Ecuador, and
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: so we had kind of a limited window.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Didn't you guys go and paddle in Ecuador to talk
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: about that? What was going on?
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: So Ecuador is a hot spot for kayaking, whitewater kayaking,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: and we knew that. We had a bunch of friends
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: who've been now they're paddling so we're driving through, We're like, yeah,
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: we're going to spend some time.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: It has to be like a crazy, like super underrated country.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were blown away across the board. We thought
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: Ecuador was great.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: I think it might have been Kathy's favorite.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: It was my favorite. And we went out to the
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Galapagos Islands. Oh, I remember that, and that was just
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's probably the favorite thing I've ever done
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: in my life. You know. We swam with a humpback whale,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: we swam with sea lions and penguins, and.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: The glos are just so remote, right, like, how long
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: does it take to get there?
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: So we flew we flew to the islands, you know,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: a few hours to get there. And then we spent
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: five days on a small ship that had about twenty
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: people on it, and so we were on the Western
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: Islands and so it was swimming every day and touring
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: on the islands and just really small groups and really
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: taking in the wildlife. And the neat thing about the
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: Galapagos is they've been so protected for so long that
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: it's the only place on Earth where animals aren't afraid
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: of people. So you can get really close to them
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: and they don't react at all.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't have like centuries of the programming that
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: this person's going to kill me exactly.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: And so it was just this magical experience and our
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: daughter Abby was there with us and cool, it was amazing.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: And then kayaking after that, So Ecuador, then you cross
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: into Peru. Yes, yeah, I've heard northern Peru is a
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: little interesting, it's wild. It was great. Yeah, it was great.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: I thought so, yeah, because I guess there's like there's
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: like the desert route that's kind of closer to the coast,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: and then there's like the mountain route that some people
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: will take.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: So I guess one thing we should mention this whole
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: trip from from Mexico border to the US down. We
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: were with our friend George, and his name is Jorge
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: the Magnifico when you're south of the border, and so
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: Jorge had done the whole PanAm on his motorcycle in
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, right, and so he's.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Kind of like, this is guys in the other sprinter.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's in another revel just like ours, and so
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: he the funny part is that he's like, Okay, I'm
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: gonna go to Baja for sure. And then maybe I'll
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: go to mainland Mexico. And then every time we get
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: to a new country, he's like, Okay, I'll go to Belize, Okay,
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: I'll go to Costa Rica Okay. And then we got
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: to Columbia or Panama and he's like, like, Georgia, are
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: you going back north? Are you gonna ship across? I
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: guess I'll ship across.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Accidentally did the entire Pan American Highway.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: That's exactly how it went.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: Ye had commitment issues at first, but then after we
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: got to Columbia, we kept going south.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, And it's nice to have somebody
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: to travel with too, Like there's a little it's not
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: necessarily always like a safety thing as much a it's
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: just like nice to have some It's just, yeah.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: It's nice to have somebody else to talk to.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Georgia done it before, and so we did
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: take the mountain route through Peru. For me, Peru was
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: the hardest because I broke my foot the second or
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: third day that we were there, and yeah, it was
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: a struggle to find medical care, even to just find
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: an X ray machine, and the doctors didn't diagnose it
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: as broken. They were like, fine, walk it off, you'll
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: be okay.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: And then there's the language barrier with your second grade
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Spanish exactly.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, medical terms weren't really in my vocabulary. So you know,
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: I saw most of Peru from the van because I did.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: It took us three weeks to find crutches, so it
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: was that was that was different to a.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: Lot of pharmacies looking for a walking boot or even
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: an ankle.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: How do you use the old axle shaft?
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: He came back but cast material, and I was like,
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: you cannot put that on my foot.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: I was like, I'll just cast it. What else can
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: we do?
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Oh? Man, Peru seems tough, Like I. I've talked to
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: quite a few people about overlanding in my days and
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: they all say, like, Peru is the one that, like
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: the random bad things like had had a pretty high
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: potential of happening.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: But I loved Peru. I think if you asked George,
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: I don't know that Peru was in his top five
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: even But I loved how wild it was. I love
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: the driving through the mountains. We did the three in
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: and three south route Highway three and it took you
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: through places that you just couldn't believe this is the
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: way you would cross the country through these canyons and
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: crazy cliff side you know roads and weird little tunnels,
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: and I was just enamored by it. And then when
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: you got to the Cordy aer Blanca and you see
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: those huge mountains, Yeah, it's big.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: It's awesome, but sounds like a sucky place to have
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: a broken foot.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: It was not the place to break your foot. Yeah, yeah,
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: US is much preferable if you're going to break something.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: Did you guys?
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: Did you guys do like the like the medical insurance thing.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: It was twelve dollars to see the doctor and get
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: an X ray, So it was all good as far
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: as that was.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, once you found it.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: Right yea. You know they didn't actually catch that it
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: was fractured, so I mean maybe you get what you
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: pay for, but yeah, I mean and I ended up
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: having an MRI later on in Ecuador or Argentina, and
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: that it was a hundred bucks.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: One hundred bucks, right MRI.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know it's affordable. Medical care is affordable
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: if you can find it there.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it took us like three days, and you know,
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: we had it scheduled and she walked right in and
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: she got the results right. It was easy.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: So so into Bolivia.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Bolivia was a big adventure.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Bolivia can be like a little unstable sometimes like
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: it's great.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there were fuel shortages that we heard about
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: when we were in Peru, and so it was really
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: important for us to minimize the miles that we traveled
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: through Bolivia. So we didn't want to take those resources
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: away from the locals that need them, and so wed.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Of have kind of the two price system for gas, right.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly, there's a local price and that was like two
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: dollars a gallon, and then there's the tourist price that
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: was about eight dollars a gallon. Wow, And so but
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: they didn't always there was a lot of paperwork involved
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: in selling to tourists, and so some gas stations were like,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: we're just not going to deal with it. Some gas
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: stations were like, bring us a gas can and we'll
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: fill it up and give you the two dollars price.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: And so there was just a lot of ambiguity about
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: how it all worked.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: And you have like the auxiliary fuel tank, right.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: We do we crossed from Peru totally un full both tanks.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Is that the Agile one.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got the Agile twenty eight gallon rear tank,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: and Jorge has the forty gallon, which is just one
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: main like.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: S and B makes that or something. Titan I think
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: makes one too.
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he got it from Agile as well.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, and you just have the rear but the stock.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that gives us like four or five more gallons
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: than Jorge had with the forty. Okay, but actually when
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: we put ours in, the big forty wasn't out yet,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: so we just went with that and it's it's worked great.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: What's your range like with the stock tank and that
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: twenty eight gallon Agile thing.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: Five hundred five point fifty somewhere in there.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: That's pretty good. Yeah, I feel like anything over five
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: hundred and you're just like probably carrying more weight than
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: you need to.
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. It. It's one of those things. We bought
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: it and I don't know that we've used it as
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: like we thought we'd need it in Baja, we turned
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: out the gas stations weren't that far apart, but Olivia
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: is the place where that that.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Came at Handy do you think you know we were
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: kind of talking maybe you're going to do another another
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: sprint or another another build, Like would you do the
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: forty and the twenty eight.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: For a trip like that? I probably would consider that.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And did you have any problems with the
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: with the diesel? No, not really, some people do, Yeah,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: I mean didn't. Would read your buddy's truck breakdown?
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So Jorge had a problem in Peru. We were
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: in the like you.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Said, I remember seeing that on the back of a
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: like a tray back truck and I was I was
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: like scared by proxy.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: Well, it got towed twice and once in Peru, once
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: in Argentina, and we were in this, like you said,
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: a really remote place and these mountain passes that just
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: go up forever and then down forever, and it just
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: it just started like seeming like it was running out
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: of gas. It was kind of sputtering and carrying on.
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: So we he actually stopped in the It was in
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: the middle of the road and we couldn't get off
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: the side of the road, so we had to winch
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: it off the side of the road, which came in
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: handy to have our winches. Yeah, and then we got
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: it there and we looked at it for a minute.
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: I was like, it's got to be your fuel filters clogged.
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: So we carried extra fuel filters and so we let
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: it cool down and we replaced a fuel filter. It
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: fired right up. We drove about two or three miles
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: and then it did it again. Oh no, and we
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: were like, ah, what is this? So then I don't know.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: We called our resources, you know, our different friends that
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: thought maybe we'll have some ideas, and nobody really knew.
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: So we spent the night literally in the road. We
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: moved a bunch of sticks and rocks, and that's what
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: they do instead of having safety cones vehicles that break down.
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: So we did all that like the locals do. We
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: spent the night in the street, just kind of hoping
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: we weren't going to get clobbered. But it was on
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: a remote mountain pass so there wasn't really much traffic.
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: And then the next morning it fired up just like normal.
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: We're like, go, George, go, We're just trying to get
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: at least to the top of the mountain.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: Then you can get down.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And he got maybe two or three more miles
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: and then it's out again on.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Him, and what was it?
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Well, we don't know. We thought it was dirty fuel
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: at first that you know, he got some water in
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: his fuel or something, and he got on a tow truck.
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: They towed it into the nearest big city, which was
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: like a three four hour tow truck ride. Mercedes beIN's
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: shop was there, which is what's great about Mercedes is
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: they do have shops services all over the world.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: They have a lot of shared componentry. Like, yeah, you
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: know the Fords in Europe and the Fords in South
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: America and the Fords in America, they're different. They're all different.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not an F one fifty that you'd get.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: So they worked on it there and they couldn't explain it.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: But it started running great, and so I was a
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: little hesitant to be like, Okay, we're going to head
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: back out on the three Inn and but we did
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: and it ran great until we got to Argentina and
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: it had a similar issue. And then it turned out
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: he did have some taminants in his gas tank that
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: were temporarily clogging the intake on the fuel pump. Oh,
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: so they actually had to drop the tank. They looked
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: in there and they found some junk in there. And
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: so you know, I've heard I have had.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: I've done a few of the like aftermarket roto molded
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: fuel tanks, and the thing that I've learned is there'll
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: be some uh leftovers leftover plastic when when they cut
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: the hole or something, and that can be an issue.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: So I did.
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: I didn't see it, but that's what the mechanics told
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: George that they found some stuff in there, and I
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: think I think that kind of explains it. It was
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: somehow it would get sucked up onto the intake and
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: it would stay there and then we turn it off
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: for a while and gravity would pull it down and
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: then it would run for a little bit and then
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: it would get sucked back.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Well that's something to learn.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a bizarre thing.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Blow that air tank out with it, yeah, before you
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: put it on. Yeah.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: We didn't have any problemroblems other than our axle. Yeah,
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: that was the only mechanical problem we had.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: So no problem with the high sulfur diesel on that
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff.
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: It just it didn't run as good in times. There
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: were some countries. Let me think it might have been
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: in Peru. We got Peru's supposed to be really high.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was Bolivia.
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: We got a tank that was it just didn't seem right.
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: It was like we didn't have the power we're used to.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: And then we were getting some fumes and you know,
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: more exhaust out the.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Back from Yeah, and just a little backstory in this.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: So US cars run on ultra low sulfur diesel. It's
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: like five parts per million of sulfur or lower, and
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: some countries don't really have much of a regulation or
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: a fuel quality. Like it's not that the diesel's bad,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: but it's just different, and just with the emission systems
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: that can really kind of screw them up. So but
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: so you make it all the way down EASHWAYA no
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: real issues other than you know, you know, we.
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: Had one valve stem that it had Bolivian dust in
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: it and it was leaking a little bit from airing
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: up and down and so I had to clean that out.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: And that's pretty minor. Yeah, pretty minor. I mean the
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: dank sprinter van, you know, it got us there.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: It was great. So man, well I look forward to,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: uh to seeing what you guys do next. You haven't
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: what's the next? Is there next big thing? We're at
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: the big thing. So we're at the big what's your
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: next big thing?
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: Well, man, there's always a lot of next big things
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: for us, so we're kind of trying to decide which one.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: Peter and I have some different opinions about what we
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: want to do next.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: So you know, what do you want to do.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: I want to go to Africa.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: You should do it. You should listen to her, thank you.
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: I want to go to the stands, So yeah, I
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: want to go to Mongolia.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: But Africa has.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: Grafts, right, and lions and elephants.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Elephants tigers are scary.
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: Well either would be really cool, they would boy, Yeah,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: but Africa, man, you know, it has my heart.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: We're kind of excited just to be back in the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: US and go to school, take a little time off
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: after being gone for two years. It feels it feels
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: good to be able to walk into a store and
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: know what people are saying and read its. Life is easy,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: read labels and signs, and it is nice to be back.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: But yeah, we'll start playing that next big trip before
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: too long.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Well, I can't wait to have you guys on after
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: there after your next big, next big thing. We'd love
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: to Well, it's great to have you guys on. It's
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: been it's been too long. So where can people where
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: can people follow along? What's your what's your Instagram handle?
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: Instagram is Peter Peter Holcom. That's just my name p
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: E T E R H O L C O M
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: b E. And we go by the handle of Fama
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: go go okay. So on YouTube famig f read fa
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: f A m A g O g oh and it
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: came from the family on the go go okay.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were taking our daughter to go do all
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: these fun things and well, cool, she's doing her own thing.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Doing her own things. She's i'd say, flown the nest,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: but she's flown the van.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she's traveling internationally, paddling all over the world and
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: living her best life.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: So we'll go abby. So well cool, guys. Well, we
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: appreciate your time and thanks for tuning in and we'll
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: catch you next time.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: Thank you. It's great to be here.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: It's really good.