Traveling South America - How We Find Each Other

living.boondockingmexico@yahoo.com

There is kind of a relationship between traveling in South America and how people find each other in the rv world not to mention the internet.  Since we met up with P.J. and Claudia also known as the Dutch Duo, I have been fascinated with traveling South America by rv.  Recenty, someone posted about travel there on the rv.net and mentioned a site called Drive The Americas.   It got me started again.  BTW, it is a website full of great information about SA travel.

Well, it isn't wise to take an SUV  and a travel trailer down through Central America and then pay to ship two vehicles across the Darien Gap, that would run thousands of dollars not to mention the hassle.   The Dutch Duo used a truck camper, and the famous writer Jim Jalliet whose book Panama or Bust which is to Central America as Mike and Terri Church are to Mexico,  traveled in an old Class A motorhome. 

I decided a long time ago that it should be a low-top van Class B type with diesel and 4X4  (my preference would be a hard top Safari Condo but that is like 100k).  I have ridden the highways of Chile, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala and others in a car, and for the most part they are pretty good until you get out of major cities and off major highways.  Chile is really my destination of choice but we would need to go through other countries to get there.  

Today I did some more of that exploring and remembered about the Chinook.   They make or once made an off road version for Baja.   So I went over to Ebay Motors and started searching.   I didn't find the Baja version so I began looking at Class Bs in general.  Then a couple of Chinook start showing up and I looked around.  I found a really nice one by a private owner.  As you know, you can ask the seller questions.  And down at the bottom of this really nice Chinook were a couple of questions.  One was about the outdoor accordian shower door gizmo and then there was a reference to a website where a fulltime Chinook owner was mentioned.  Cool! 

I went over to the website which is called To Simplify , a young musician who gave up the sticks and bricks and headed out originally in a Falcon but ended up buying a Chinook.   I started reading different blog entries and he had several on solar panels and one especially interesting about his new solar monitor panel.   I gave it a click and was enjoying the details, and when I scrolled down to the bottom to read comments, the  first one was by no other than Kevin and Ruth from Travels with Kevin and Ruth 

Now I don't know about you, but I thought that was pretty cool.  Funny how the internet is such a broad stroke of a brush that can be narrowed down to a hair.   How many others commented on that blog that could be as cool as Kevin and Ruth and our paths just haven't crossed yet?  Is it just luck or is there a method to the madness?