Journey Overview

The south and north American Continents - solo - the formation of this plan took place over a few years, in which time I moved to Australia from the UK, started enduro riding, did several moto trips and saved a lot of cash whilst working.

South and Central America

I was to start south and ride north - against the grain I found out along the way, but I wanted the hard and unknown first. Could I speak Spanish when I started? Had I been to South America before? Did I have any friends I could count on when I arrived? Did I know any others that had done the trip before me? No on all counts there..

So, I picked Chile because it was very much south and research told me that Chile is the easiest place to buy and register a vehicle as a foreigner.

Having started in Santiago, I went south to ride (the spectacular) Carraterra Austral to Villa O'Higgins, doubled back and crossed the nearest border to Argentina and rode as far south as Puerto Natales back in Chile. From there, having taken the (very dull) Navimag back to Punta Arenas, I spend the next several months crisscrossing the high passes along the spine of the Andes through Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. From the northern tip of the South American continent I took the German Stahlratte to Panama and rode up through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, from where I entered the state of Quintanaroo in the southeast corner of Mexico.

South America

Central America

That first stint took me 14 months. Id taken my time and zig zagged about, mostly stayed off the Panam and took the 'roads less travelled'. I spent 1 - 2 months in each country I rode through. People do it quicker of course, but that wasn't my objective. I rode on average 250km/day in the South American countries and once I hit Central, the distances decreased due to the fact that these countries are packed full of places that I wanted to experience without having such great distances as South America. I had a nice break here, I felt I both needed and deserved it because although I loved it, South America was physically quite tough.

At the end of the first phase stage of my journey, I had ridden 38.700km over 11 countries.

North America

The second part of my journey was shorter, just 6 months to ride from the south of Mexico (Cancun - where I had stored the bike for a year in a lock up garage 'multibodega' with a friend) to Canada. This involved spending some time in the awesome desert state of Utah, picking up the (sometimes quite technical dirt of the) Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR) from southern Colorado, heading north, and then taking the (dirt route) of the Continental Divide Route through Wyoming and Montana.

Oh and I also picked up a travelling partner in Las Vegas in the US, he and I travelled the 2 months through the US and then the remaining month in British Columbia, Canada together (Worldoverland.ca). He was taking a 'trip within a trip', his 'trip', being a round the world trip, which, having started in BC, Canada, was postponed having met me in Mexico - seen as I was such a distraction! He's now back on his initial 'trip' heading through South America himself, over to Africa and Europe, Asia blah blah.. you get my drift.

At the end of this second phase, I had ridden 20,800km through the 3 countries of Mexico, the US and Canada.

All up, I covered a total of 59,500km on that 250, through 13 countries in 20 months.

North America