Portland to Santiago or Santiago to Portland
 

Hi Guys,

There is a huge amount of information on this website which I have been pouring through for a few weeks now. Truly amazing what people are doing out there.

My wife and I are planning on leaving the UK in October with the main intention of surfing our way up or down the pacific coast on motorcycles. We spent 6 weeks or so in Indonesia last summer riding a 90cc moped with a board rack mounted to the side. We put both our boards in this and spend all day every day riding around.

I think our overall budget will work out to be just under 10k. We are more than happy to sleep in tents, dives and are practiced at eating nothing but rice for long periods of time! We plan on being on the road for around a year. We don't want to ride anything bigger than a 250cc each. Mainly to keep costs down, ensure cheap repairs and we don't have a huge amount of experience riding. We're not going to be in a rush and don't need to be flying along at 90MPH anywhere. Something simple like a Tornado 250 would be ideal I think.

We have done a lot of reading re. the Darien Gap and think were cool with our plans for that.

Few questions I would love people to answer would be...

Which way is going to be easier for border crossings with bikes? US to Chile or Chile to US?

Do we need a Carnet for either direction?

Has anybody camped in these countries?

Is it worth thinking about shipping bikes from here over to Chile or the US or just buy when there?

What are the laws on riding bikes on UK licences in the states?

Are there parts of Baja that we might struggle to get water and petrol?

There are obviously loads more but if anyone has any insight into these that would be amazing!

Thanks,

Tom and Sally x

Tom & Sally,

I've done the trip pretty much in both directions. Some comments:

The border crossings seem to be the same in either direction. Mostly miserable in Central America, much easier in South America. Take plenty of copies of everything (registration, license, etc.) and getting copies can be a major delay. You will still need to get some copies locally, such as copy of the stamped passport page, but this will depend on location.

I was riding a KLR650 with a 6 gallon tank so gas was generally not a problem. You might have quite a different experience. In Argentina, for example, in the busy season many of the stations run out of gas. With a small tank this could be a problem if you don't have extra. There is also a stretch of about 400 miles in Baja with no gas, although there was a guy selling gas out of old bleach bottles.

You do not need a carnet for any of North or South America.

Most of Central and South America is not set up for camping. There are some places with "proper" campsites but they are rare. I saw a few in Peru and Chile, but nothing in Central America. Not particularly safe to camp on the side of the road. That said, there are lots of reasonably cheap hostels.

Have fun!