Well, the maps are really not that expensive and to be honest it's quite fun to actually figure out your own route in the sense that you know where you are riding and what you are passing I think we bought maps for five countries or something and spent 50-60 dollars? Depends a great deal on where you buy them and the maphunts are really fun, especially in countries like Bolivia where a good map is hard to come by. Still have them, think I'm gonna use them to decorate a wall back home, although you're absolutely right in saying they are a bit torn up!

However, I fully agree on the cities thing. As you saw, we drove with two and intercom. If we needed to find a specific place (and we figured that out some time before) we would sometimes load in google maps on an old iphone, so that GPS could help us further. Was handy, but only if you're riding with two on a bike I guess so that one's able to check it. But mostly we just got to know the city streets really well (a bit too well I guess) in search for a place to sleep. For the small places more than fine, for the bigger cities however, a bit annoying, especially if there is traffic, the engine overheats so you turn it off every time you stand still - old motorcycle - and it's freaking hot ).

But the benefits of getting yourself into interesting situations and meeting new people just by asking around (actually learned a lot of Spanish that way) weigh heavier for me! We got invited into people's home and in the evening waved the kids and grandparents goodbye with the whole family as they went on the bus on vacation, found ourselves way past sunset on a pass above 4000m in the fog with no idea where the next sleeping place would be, drove the most wild offroad only to find out we took a wrong turn 3 hours earlier and had to drive back the whole way, took an officially closed road as shortcut which locals told us we could take because we were with the motor (turned out, no way anyone could have done that road and turned back after a couple of drops)... and I absolutely loved all of these things in the end! I mean, you could bring a Garmin only for cities, but who are you kidding when you don't know the route anymore and are tired and soaked or something? Probably other people would disagree with me though. If you are to use a Garmin, I heard there are many community maps available with the better routes on it!

Well, this is starting to become quite a long post So what are you planning? And you said you also rode in South America? With paper maps? Love to hear about it!