. . . LAND ROVER OVERLAND EXPEDITION

11,000km - 3 countries - 5 weeks
December 2003

Originally concieved as a 3 month trip for my wife and some of her friends, plans were changed when we found out we were pregnant. Stacey and I decided to only do a six week segment in Patagonia and leave the rest to the friends. Unfortunately, bad shipping information and mechanical breakdowns forced us to detour to Ecuador to pick up the Land Rover and do the entire Panamerican in five weeks.

In retrospect, it was too expensive, too ambitious (and if pregnant - too strenuous) to try and do a trip of this length in that amount of time. At best, this could have been a handfull of great days separated with long endurance drives. Unfortunately, this was the expedition where everything went wrong - and where we severely strained some friendships.

It's the kind of trip that tests a marriage and makes you think twice about launching another expedition. But credit to Stacey for being such a trooper, and despite some scares we welcomed a happy healthy baby boy into the world six months later. As for expeditions, I have some ideas, and we shall see...

For the reader, it’s a great case study of pitfalls that can be avoided when planning an expedition (see Journal 4 - Lessons from Misadventure).