A Date With The Darien

It just got real.  I’m excited and nervous. 

The question everybody asks when you’re talking about South America is “How do you cross the gap?” The Darien Gap is 60 miles (100 Canadian miles) wide and has no roads. The reason is to keep South American foot-and-mouth disease far away from US cattle which haven’t seen the deadly illness since 1954. That leaves wanderers like us to figure out a way past the gap. A young Panamanian Overlander came home from his travels and saw a market for his services.  The Overland Embassy is the hub nowadays for Overlanders crossing the Gap where they provide all services to ship vehicles back and forth, most by container, motorcycles (and lately small cars) by air, and large expedition vehicles by open containers (flat rack) or Roll On, Roll Off (RORO). 

We now have our loading date and have to be in Panama City by the end of November, the 27th is our goal. The estimated cost for a shared container is about  $2300 for each vehicle which is less than we feared. 

And we also know who will share our container with us. Meet Sandro and Lisa from Austria in a 1998 T4 Volkswagen (a Eurovan in North America). Alejandro at the Overland Embassy says our vans will fit perfectly in a 40 foot high cube container though we probably will have to  remove our roof top air conditioner.

 It so happens Sandro is an engineer and says “no problem” to a job that looks like a huge problem to cluster fingers me. But we speak Spanish and they don’t so the relationship is symbiotic more or less  and they are great fun. Even for an elderly couple like us. 

The youngsters are planning to sail on a charter boat that does the trip through the famous San Blas islands but for us Rusty is not a sailor so Layne has a lead on a private pilot who may fly us three in the cabin to Colombia . We sailed that area in 1999 so we’re okay with missing the sail. Especially if we don’t have to crate Rusty for the albeit short flight to Cartagena. 

Many details to firm up but it seems to be falling into place. All we have to do is drive hard to Panama. Faster than normal for us! If anyone wants to meet us in South America we plan to take a year to reach Patagonia where summer is at its peak in December. Think Alaska no with the seasons reversed. But that is for later. Now we have to drive.