We learned some very valuable lessons about vehicle size while camping with a few other travelers along Riviera Maya a week ago. The first two couples were heading towards Alaska after exploring Asia, Europe and Africa for 3-4 years. The young German couple was in a small 1998 VW minivan, the 79 year old South African couple, in a single cab, short bed, 2002 Toyota Hilux with a bed cover and RTT. Then we camped with a family of 4 (2 teenage daughters) from Argentina who were taking a year to drive to Alaska driving a 5' bed Colorado with homemade pop up camper. All of these vehicles had decent stock ground clearance, short wheelbase, 4wd/AWD and completely self fabricated gear. All were 4cyl diesels that were extremely fuel efficient (35-43mpg). They all advised that with the smaller vehicles had these advantages: (1) They were able to access more places than a larger vehicle (2) They had less problems with reliability by not carrying too much weight (3) Parts are available globally for their vehicles (unlike many American full sized vehicles) (4) They wouldn't have been able to afford their trips if they had a larger vehicle, but small cars are cheaper to purchase, repair and service, fuel is more expensive in other countries where fuel is not subsidized, tolls are 1/2 the price for small vehicles, they pay less in import fees when crossing borders, and shipping across waterways can be 1/2 the cost for small vehicles.
For $5,000, you can buy a compact vehicle just reliable and capable enough to travel across a couple continents. Isuzus and Mitsubishis have almost been completely forgotten in this country so they are cheap and they are extremely popular everywhere else in the world. $10,000 on top of that is just enough cash to support you and a sidekick (or in my case family) for a year of amazing experiences in these less expensive countries. If you think about, $15,000 is what some people lose by driving a new vehicle off the lot! Once the cash runs dry you might just have to sell the little vehicle to someone on a return trip to buy yourselves a flight back, so you can get your lazy touring butts back to work to pay for the next trip!
