Challenges

Shipping to South America

We contacted the German shipping agent Mafra Tours to arrange our RoRo (Roll-on roll-off) transport of Mr. Snorkel. We decided to ship from Antwerp to Montevideo, which went relatively smooth (Mafra Tours was a very competent shipping partner). Only downside: our ship had in total 2 weeks of delay, which our agent could have communicated better to us – but apparently a delay like that is quite normal. Cost: 2,500 EUR incl. everything.

Shipping back to Europe

We will ship Mr Snorkel back from Cartagena, Colombia. We will ship with the German shipping agent Hansen Caravan Shipping. Our cost estimation incl. everything is around 2,000 EUR. One logistical challenge when going back: you have to stay in Cartagena until the drug control has checked your vehicle just before the ship leaves. Since the schedule of cargo ships changes almost daily, this makes it very challenging and you need to be quite flexible in your return flight dates. In the end, everything worked out as planned and we managed to get our scheduled flight as the drug inspection happened precisely one day before we had to fly back – just in time.

Vehicle Insurance

Since European / German insurance companies do not cover South or North America, we had to arrange insurance for Mr. Snorkel locally. This is not as easy as it would be in Germany as we have a foreign car and no domicile in South America. We contacted Klaus Schubert and Claudia Metz (info@abgefahren.info) – a German traveller couple that settled in El Bolson in Patagonia after 16 years of travelling the world on a motorcycle. They have a fleet contract with an Argentinean insurance company and help arranging vehicle insurance for foreign Overlanders. Please do get in touch with them (not last minute). You can also stay at their farm and enjoy the breathtaking surroundings.

Border crossings

Every country and every border has their own procedures and regulations. Basically, there are always the following basic rules to follow: 1) obviously, you always need your passport to stamp in and out of every country 2) when you are traveling with your own vehicle, you always need to get the temporary vehicle import document from customs that proves you brought the car into the country and are allowed to bring it out of the country again. Important: should you / the customs officers forget to give you this temporary import document, you might lose your vehicle as they might impound it when you’re trying to leave the country (yes there is an actual case of a Dutch family that lost their VW Bus in Bolivia due to not having the import document).

Food and other annoying details: in and out of Argentina & Chile were the most annoying border crossings. They are not only looking for any fresh food and seeds but also for any organic material that could contain fungus or other unwished substances that they are trying to keep out of the country. Frankly, quite ridiculous rules as shown in the following example: we found a very nice bone of a cow and put it at the front of Mr Snorkel to make him look like the Flinstones vehicle – fair enough, you can argue about taste. I crossed around 10 borders between Argentina and Chile until at the 11th border, someone decided that I could not bring this bone into the country as it is very dangerous – it could contain a fungus from the neighbor country. Yeah, right. I’m just saying, be aware of the rules, bend them as you wish but be prepared they might be a bit ridiculous from time to time.

Useful gadgets / apps

While traveling through South America, you often don’t have good or any cell phone reception and you probably don’t want to pay the considerable roaming charges. Two tipps from our side: 1) get a local SIM card in every country – which is relatively easy except for Chile, where we stopped trying after a few attempts and 2) get two very useful apps for your smartphone (assuming you have one in this day and age): iOverlander & Maps.me.

iOverlander is a user-based app that gives you information on any sort of places like campgrounds, wild camping spots, restaurants, hotels, insurance, water and and and. Trust me, this one is definitely worth it. And if you find an awesome wild camping spot not yet registered on iOverlander – do others the favor and mark it in the app so you contribute in this great tool! Oh yes, it’s all offline and synchronizes as soon as you have Wifi – the perfect travel app – free of course.

Maps.me is a navigation software, which uses Open Source Maps (OSM) and is therefore for free as well. Just make sure you have the necessary maps downloaded during Wifi – it will not only find the smallest backcountry dirt roads but even hiking paths. Just remember that the time estimation can be completely ignored as the route planning is not dynamic (obviously, it is offline) and it usually chooses the shortest route (which can be unnecessarily “adventurous”)

Altitude

Altitude can be a serious challenge for both our bodies as well as for our vehicles. At altitude, there is less oxygen in the air that we breathe. Due to the decreased amount of oxygen, every activity gets a lot more exhausting than compared to sea-level. This effect becomes noticeable from around 2,500m altitude and very challenging from above 3,500m. If you ascend too quickly into the altitude, you might get seriously ill of altitude sickness. Every body reacts differently to the differences in altitude. If you are sensitive for altitude sickness, you can minimize the effect with a very slow ascent – no more than 500m per day. If you encounter altitude sickness, you either wait until your body is used to it or you start descending again. Watch out – altitude sickness can kill you. Luckily, we hardly had any problems with the altitude and were able to be at 5,000m without any serious problems – just keep in mind to move very slowly.

Your vehicle might have problems too. As the combustion engine works with oxygen, the combination of fuel and oxygen inside your engine is not as balanced as it should be, i.e. the motor gets too little oxygen and therefore is a lot less powerful. If you have a gasoline motor, that’s usually the only effect. If you have a diesel, in addition to the loss of power, your vehicle will start emitting black diesel smoke. For us, this was the case as from 3,000m altitude and got a lot worse above 4,000m. For our engine, this was not a big problem, as the Defender TD5 is a very robust engine system and a real utility vehicle. With modern diesels – especially when equipped with a particle diesel filter – you might have big problems. Due to the insufficient combustion, the engine can’t burn the diesel properly. As a result, you produce lots of black diesel smoke as described. If you have a diesel particle filter, your filter will very quickly jam up by these black particles. If that happens and you’re still at altitude, you will lose a lot more power and your engine might have a serious engine failure. The repair is expensive and unneccessary – so as a serious advice: if you want to overland with a vehicle with a modern diesel engine with a diesel particle filter, do talk to a specialist first and find a way to remove it.

Police

In South America, it is normal to have a lot more police and military checkpoints as compared to at home – speaking about Europe. Usually, they are quite curious about your vehicle and want to take a look at the inside of your camper. But usually – if your papers are allright and you have insurance – they are friendly and let you go quickly again. We had only two bad experiences with the police in Northern Colombia, where they asked us to pay for something we didn’t do – twice on one day. Of course we refused, but after long discussion, we had to pay at one of the stops a bribe. This was one of the most negative experiences in 6 months South America and definitely not represantative for the continent. One piece of advice: if you do get stopped by the police and they do want you to pay something unjustified, just pretend not to speak a single word of Spanish and not to understand them!

Mechanics

As we were traveling with a Land Rover Defender, we had some problems especially with spare parts. This vehicle is not common in South America and people usually don’t know much about it. Spare parts are not only expensive but also very hard to get. Our luck was that we quickly became member of the Land Rover Club de las Americas, which was unbelievably helpful in finding skilful Land Rover mechanics and spare sparts. In addition, it was a nice community and we met some other Land Rover drivers along the route.