Tag Archives: 4×4 Driving

Copper Canyon – Brave or Stupid?

“Those Mexicans are out to hi-jack your car, steal your dollars, poison your tortillas and eat your Hershey’s”. To some, merely popping over the border to order a taco in Chihuahua amounts to ‘Operation Certain Death’. We could not agree less with that particular approach, but we’d be a bit naïve to not recognise some travel risks. To cope, we’ve developed our own finely-tuned BSMS (Brave-or-Stupid Monitoring System). Every overlander has to tune their own personal sense of ‘brave or stupid’ and Copper Canyon posed a small challenge to ours.

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Mud-roading Cuthbert – The Videos

A belated Happy New Year for 2018!  Over the Christmas chill-out, Marcus ‘Spielberg‘ Tuck has put together some more video stuff from our 2017 moochings around South America in Cuthbert. Four short videos including the mega-adventure double-feature-set of mud-roads through the Amazon jungle, hiking through Colombia’s towering wax-palms and a super-moon setting at dawn.

First ‘proper’ blog of 2018 coming soon, but in the meantime… get your popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show 🙂   Continue reading →

South America Overlanding Video Fest!!

Central Colombia is as good a place as any to take a bit of time out and rustle up a few much-overdue videos of our South America travels. We love it here and are more than happy to stay-put near Medellin for a while, but if we’re honest… our sojourn is actually less our choice and more enforced by Iveco. Remember way back, weeks ago, we placed an order for spare parts with Iveco (Navitrans, in Colombia) which were going to arrive second week of November? Well… surprise, surprise, they didn’t arrive on time and we had a week of sitting around waiting. Anyway… here for your delectation and delight, are the results of our South America Overlanding Videos Fest week: the Lencois Maranhenses, the Salar de Uyuni, and the Sacred Valley Skylodge. Continue reading →

Driving the BR-319 (with free pants and a soup tin)

The BR-319 is one of Brazil’s most notorious routes, a mud-road cutting diagonally across the centre of the Amazon rainforest. After our dolphin swim and tourist-time in the city of Manaus, it’s time for a bit of ‘proper’ overlanding. On one of the most remote tracks in South America, we get some free pants and find a novel use for a Campbell’s soup tin!
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Guyana: Rupununi

Every now and then, overlanding travel throws up not just a gem, but a surprising gem. A kind of “Well! Who knew???” moment. In south Guyana we have such a moment. After the minor disaster that was our short-lived attempt to reach Kaieteur, in the Guyana Rupununi we’re surprised to find compensation in spades: the beauty of the savannahs and the little visited Amerindian petroglyphs.

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Lençóis Maranhenses – Dunes and Lagoons

It’s challenging driving to Lençóis Maranhenses, but is it worth the schlepp?  “A spectacularly unique place… thousands of crystal-clear lagoons between dunes”… so they say. Our faith in travel journalists has been tempered slightly by our recent experience in Jericoacoara (see last blog), but we’ve not lost hope.  Actually, Lençóis Maranhenses manages to exceed our high expectations, there’s just the small matter of getting there, testing Cuthbert’s off-road capabilities and our nerves!

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Brazil: Tudo Bom!

Tudo bom… All good! The most common phrase we’ve heard all over Brazil. It’s a statement, it’s a question, it’s a greeting, it’s said with a smile and it’s a reflection of the consistently chirpy Brazilian nature which continues as we head into the far north. We’ve done middle Brazil. Now on this latest stretch we hit the coast at Salvador then head north: dodging coconuts, reaching the far east, dining with Iveco, and testing our nerves with Cuthbert’s capacity on dunes and deep-sand tracks.
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