Garming map + OpenStreetMap?
 

Helloo all!

Me and a friend will soon be in South America for 2.5 months on a bike tour through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. We have ourselves a Garmin Oregon 450, and we are looking to purchase the Garmin City Navigator® South America NT

A couple of questions:

- Would you guys consider open source maps over the commercial Garmin City Navigator map?

- Is the Garmin City Navigator® South America NT known to be a reliable/detailed map? I know that while riding we will be off-route in many areas, should we consider a detailed topo map instead of the Garmin City Navigator?

- Odd, but Garmin does not provide any maps for Bolivia. Would our best bet be a download from OpenStreetMap.nl? Can we rely on OpenStreetMaps for navigating in Bolivia?

- Does OpenStreetMaps provide the most up to date open source maps for South America? Any other mapping websites we should consider?

Thank you for all suggestions! :scooter:

Having you cake and eating it too
 

As the osm maps are 'free' I'd suggest getting them and comparing them to ohh google maps for detail. You used to be able to look at garmins maps on their web site so you could see their detail too. Don't know if that is still the case? If not then a local garmin store might let you have a look at the detail on on of their demo units?

You can have both osm and garmins maps co exist – this way you can chose which one is 'best' (which can change depending on where you are and what you want to do).

From what I understand Garmin maps must be loaded on individual micro sd cards?

Is there a way to install multiple maps on one micro sd? Any help with this would be appreciated

thank you!

You can buy Gramin maps in various ways;

a) on a card (micro etc) This way you can use the map on any Garim GPS that the card fits.

b) on a disk. This way you can view the maps on a computer,\. Very usefull for planning, and using a large screen. You then obtain via the web a code that locks the map to a single GPS. Now on that GPS you can load the map, together with any other 'garmin' type maps that you have.

Hi,

I used the open street map from southamerica

DE:OSM Map On Garmin/Download - OpenStreetMap Wiki

for my trip all around southamerica and it worked very well even in big citys like Santiago, Lima, Sao Paulo or Rio (in 200 meters please turn right)

Packing List for Expeditions and offroad trips + GPS

To switch between different maps (Afrika, Southamerica or Europa) i rename the maps on the SD Card using any computer. The map in use allways has to be named gmapsupp.img in the folder Garmin.

Right now im selling my GPS for 100 Euro + shiping...pn me if you want it ;)
Have fun, Tobi

What GPS is it you're selling ?

I installed OSM maps of Africa, Latin America and Asia (minus Korea/Japan) onto one 4GB SD card, it took up 1.7GB.

Charlie