South America with all its challenges is currently far more inspiring for me than Africa or the route east via the Balkans and Caucasus.
In 2021 and 2022, the shipping costs of the Dog.O.Mobil were much higher than my overall budget. That changed in 2023 and the article "How To Ship A Vehicle From Europe To South America" by Angela Devaney helped me immensely. 👏 The costs and potential dates are now clear to me.
While I've been working on the shipping to South America over the last few weeks, I've already made a rough list of everything I want to see and in what order. From the southernmost to the northernmost point of South America it is approximately 7,400 km as the crow flies. Google Maps claims that the shortest distance by car is 11,000 km. From Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego alone, it is 3,100 km by van.
I looked at the blogs from JoReCa, waypoints.ch, 4x4panda.at, or overlandsite and listened to a few podcasts. I marked locations that were hyped on Tripadvisor and influencers so that I could avoid them. I approach posts like “12 Top Destinations in South America” in a similar way.
And then there is the small difference. My Sprinter is not a 4x4, but only raised 10 cm higher and has BF Goodrich KO2 T/A tires. I'm curious to see if this really becomes a problem 🙄.
And the longer I prepare for the trip, the more topics came and still come up that I have to deal with. Let's see if I overreacted as usual, or if I didn't consider important things at all. You can find my current 🇦🇷 status update here 🇨🇱