Planning to do the Pan American HIghway one way December 2024-February 2025

[AKASubway]

Hi! I'm a beginner overlander one could say. I'm living in Buenos Aires and with a couple of friends have started to plan to drive the Pan American Highway during the summer of 2024-2025. We are college students and thus have a time constraint so we'll make the trip one way and fly the other. Would appreciate any veteran tips on the decision of starting off in Argentina and driving to Alaska or the other way around.

Is there any forum or website where overlanders buy and sell vehicles? Because our idea was to either buy a car in the US and sell it to an overlander in Argentina or vice versa. Also, how should we go about finding insurance? I'm under the understanding that car insurance is really costly if you are under 25 (which is our case), is there any way to circumvent this? (Also might be selling a 96 Land Rover Defender 110 with argentine plates in the US or Canada if anyone is interested).

In conclusion, we don't have a clue what we are doing and would appreciate any suggestions regarding budgeting, routes, sites to visit, things to look out for when buying a car, saftey tips, etc... (basically anything)
Kind regards,
Subway

 

[socal66]

I would think that 3 months to do the trip would be very tight and unrealistic. The route is over 15,000 miles long (24,000 km) and not all just open highway so you are looking at driving a good 8 hours a day every single day over those three months. Your summer is also the middle of winter for Alaska and Canada so you’re not doing any camping up there during those months. Whatever the cost for insurance will be it will be a lot less than the cost of fuel for the trip. If you cannot cover the cost of the insurance you simply will not be able to afford the fuel required. There are a lot of logistics for visa’s, etc. for travel between countries which many require your car insurance to be in good order and also require that your vehicle is for only travel use and can not be sold or imported. Your desire to sell the vehicle you are driving in another country is a whole other set of complicated processes that vary between the country it is registered and the country you are selling it.

A good book to read would be the Road Chose Me by Dan Grec where he does the trip you are trying to do in a Jeep from Alaska to the tip of South America. He also ends up selling the Jeep when he reaches the end. It is a few years old but it would kind of give you the flavor for some of the issues you would confront especially visas and border crossings.

If I were in your shoes I would do that summer trip just in Patagonia. Three months for many would be too short for that too but at least logistically it would be much more manageable and maybe more importantly it would give you a lot of good experience that would better position you for more ambitious trips.

 

[El-Dracho]

In any case, you have a great trip ahead of you. I think it's cool.

Mhh, where do I start. So especially if you do something like this for the first time, I would actually create a project plan. There are just too many topics where you can easily forget something important, e.g. car preparation, equipment, skills training, route planning, documents, shipping, entry regulations and much more. Take enough time for this.

With all the planning, especially the route planning, you should be flexible. On the way, something can always throw off the plans or you get tips for sightseeing and choose a different route. Remember that you have to ship at Darien Gap. You can find a lot of information about this on the internet. Insurance. For us Europeans it has become more and more difficult in the last years to get a car insurance with temporary import of the own vehicle for the USA and Canada. And if they are very expensive. There is a mexican insurance, which is mentioned among overlanders sometimes, where this seems to be different and easy to go, but supposedly with very low liability sums, which can be a big risk.

Maybe one more advice to the timeframe of your plannning. Do not plan too much, rather small steps and enjoy the tour.

To get an idea of the equipment and vehicle, check out the other Q&As here or the vehicle built topics. You will also find a lot of information about essential skils, e.g. first aid and (emergency) communication in the corresponding subforums. And, of course, the OB boot camp contains many important articles for preparation.