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Date:         Mon, 11 Mar 1996 08:01:02 MST
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Jacob Shaun Dustin" <DUSTINO@caedm.et.byu.edu>
Subject:      Re: Trip to S. America

Just a suggestion--check to see if the Pan American through southern Panama is finished yet before you go. I was planning a similar tripin a '68 Landcruiser with a new Chevy drive train & the whole bit a couple of years ago. Finances were doable (although for the 34,000 mile round trip drive to Tierra del Fuego, gas money looked a little steep at an anticipated 10 mpg, and averaging 200 miles a day for a 170 day trip would have put a little bit of a dent in my cash flow for the year). My extensive (no kidding) research was pretty encouraging; the trip is doable. There's a guy that's done it twice in a datsun 280zx. The only problem is, as I intimated earlier, that as of 1993, according to AAA, Rand McNalley, and any & all other maps/atlasses/sources I had, driving from Panama City to Bogota compares well with driving from Anchorage to Juenu(sp???) in the 70's (and 90's?). Good luck. Not a single road cuts through those mountains. My buddy who lived in Paraguay for a couple of years tells me that when the Pan Am is marked 'planned' or 'under construction' on the map, it generally means 'on paper' or 'follow the bulldozer'. not trying to discourage the trip; just encourage preparation. If you can arrange for passage on a boat from Panama to Columbia or Venezuela, you should be good to go. One option I looked at was driving to TDF and selling/junking the vehicle there. A 20 hr flight home would provide a heck of a contrast to the road trip of a lifetime. Bien buena suerte!

--Shaun Dustin


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