Irish Unimog motorhome in South America

Blagadan

mervifwdc wrote: »

Wow! That's going back a while. That is indeed my Defender in the background of that photo. And those were the days! All water has to be avoided now, so you got to have more fun than you would today.

Merv.

Yeah, you're right.... its more than "a few years"... lol

I guess that pic was taken back in 2002/03. The IFWDC crew took a few of us novices up into the slieve blooms to experience some off roading. Nothing compared to what some of the prepared vehicles were capable of, but enough to realise that bog standard 4x4's were capable of so much more than just towing horseboxes... ;-)
The guy that I brought with me that day still talks about it every time we meet, he had such a good time.

Anyway, Now at least I can put a face to the name!

Enjoying your blog.... safe travels.

Koops80

Great photos and story. Amazing to see an irish reg vehicle down there

How do you manage visas / motor home registration at the borders. Dud you plan it all before you set off?

SHIFTER

mervifwdc wrote: »

Hi folks,

Well, after a brilliant visit to the end of the world in Ushuaia, we are now on our way North. This time on the Pacific side of South America. We're spending the next while in Chile which has got stunning scenery as it has the Andes mountains running through much of it. We spent 12 days in Torres Del Paine national park, and it's really nice at this time of the year.


The truck in the photo belongs to a German couple we have met up with.


This is "the Torres" at dawn, when the early morning light creates amazing colors on the rocks.


The park was badly burnt by some tourists a few years ago, but still amazing to visit.


We then went to see the Perito Mereno Glacier which is simple stunning.


Some of the small wooden bridges can give buttock clenching moments with the creaks and groans from them! As you can see, the roads are pretty small in places.


Stunning scenery everywhere!

We are travelling up through Chile at the moment, and hope to have more photos from the road to share soon. If you'd like to see more, there are loads over on the Blog, at www.moglander.com


Merv.

hi Merv
the uni mog in the first pic was it a German man called BRIGITTE MAIER he was at portrush last year parked up beside me.

mervifwdc

Hi,

Visas and Registrations: This is one of there brilliant things about South America. You do not need to apply for any Visas before you arrive. You get a 90 day visa at the entry point to Argentina, Chile or Uruguay when you arrive at a border. You must leave within the 90 days, but can get another when you turn up again, even if it's a day later. As to the Vehicle, you get a TIP, Temporary Import Permit at the border from customs, and they allow you to bring in the truck and drive it. When you leave the country, you give back the TIP, and get another for the new country you drive into. And so far, zero cost involved.

As to the truck in the first photo, if you mean the shot with the flowers in the foreground, it's a MAN truck and has been in South America since August last year, and the Owner's name is Jurgen, so I guess that's not in. The Unimog in the shots is mine, and it was parked in rush in 2011 (the Weekend of the Prince concert) as Sarah and I went the concert as part of our shakedown test weekend. Good concert too!

Merv.

Koops80

Thanks for the reply. Spent 4months in South America and loved it. Aiming to go back at some stage. Enjoy the travels

dickwod1

Amazing pictures stories and truck!

mervifwdc

Hi folks,

Well, we've had an interesting time since St Patricks day. We took the opportunity to wander around some some national parks, and the Mog was really at home with the Volcanos. when they blow, they redefine the whole park.



Luckily they do not blow too often, but as the signs say, be careful!



More on the Volcano's in this blog post.


after that, we decided to take a few wine tours in the Mendoza region of Argentina, and catch up with another travller that we had met and was in the area. We aranged to meet when he was in Bolivia, and we were in Southern Chile, so we were a few thousand miles appart. Bit like aranging to meet someone from the south of Spain for a pint in Andorra...

This was our camp spot for the first few days.



Then we headed off to some Bodegas (Wine factories) on some non-4x4 tranport!



The couple we met were from the UK, and on their way home after 6 years on the road! Made us feel like beginners.

From there, we headed to San Rafael, where 2 English folks have bought and run their own Finca, which is a fruit farm. We had a few great days there with them. The full story is in this blog post.

We were there for the end of the harvest, so helped out with the last days of plum and grape picking.



and of course, had a few great asado's with them!


We are now by the Chile coast, just above Santiago, and it's a lot colder here than in Argentina, which is just over the Andes. Might have to go back for the warmth!

Hope that your getting out of winter, and the days are warming up. Ours are getting cooler :-(

bogman

Thats mind blowing stuff, puts me thinking, lot of that id love to do on a motorcycle, what kind of money did it cost to transport the vehicle to S.A and what route did ye take? love the pics especially the one of Perito Mereno Glacier
Keep up the good work Merv
Charles

And by the way, hello to Blag (Kev) who I know personally

mervifwdc

Hi, We took a rather strange route which involved heading to Morocco for 3 months before heading to South America. But the way we got the South America was with Grimaldi Lines, who ship large vehicles RORO style from Hamberg to Montevideo in Uruguay. South America. The ships leave every few weeks, and stop off in Tilbury (UK) and Le Havre (France) where you can alternatively board. What is unique about this service is that you can go on the ship with your bike or truck. Each ship can carry up to 12 passangers, no more so you need to book a bit in advance. This costs about 2k per person, plus 2k per large truck (VERY rough pricing guide as it's always changing). it incudes 28 days at sea, and they provide all meals etc. looking at like that, and having the time to do your spanish lessons, it's pretty good.

to see a bit of what it's like to be on one of these ships, take a look here and here.

with a bike, you can do it by flying the bike and yourself probably a bit cheaper. Check out this site and go to this meeting (And tell Liam I'll see him in a few months when he gets here).

The hubb is for real, an amazing resource for overland travellers, and yes, one of their very few travelers meetings is in Ireland. I went a few years back, and was on the road inside 6 months. :-)

Merv.

bogman wrote: »

Thats mind blowing stuff, puts me thinking, lot of that id love to do on a motorcycle, what kind of money did it cost to transport the vehicle to S.A and what route did ye take?

mervifwdc

We are now back in Chile, and are house sitting for a friend of ours for a couple of weeks to mind their dogs. It's given us a chance to look back over some photos from Antarctica, and we've created gallery of images on our site, you can see it by following this link to antarctic landscapes.

here is a sample of one of the photos on that page.

mervifwdc

Hi,

We are back on the road in a big way. We have traveled north through Argentina from Mendoza all the way up, and we are now in Bolivia. We've a few things from our last weeks in Argentina that are pretty cool.

First off is a bit of video. We ended up on a small track that got a bit tight along the way. I'll get you take a look and see for yourself. We're hoping not to repeat this sort of thing, but you never know!

Unimog on small mountain road in Argentina

From there, we got to see some pretty cool sights, including a traditional Gaucho (Argentinian Cowboy) festival.



And we got to see more Cactus plants that we could drive over in one day. Just kidding about driving over them!



Now that we are in Bolivia, we hope to visit the huge salt flats they have here. Since we got into the country, the lowest altitude we have been at is 2600 metres (approx). And we have been up to about 4000 metres. Bit a challenge to live in a motorhome in these conditions, it's usually -2 to -10 by the mornings, and we understand even colder at the salt flats.

More on that when we get there!

Merv.

Benbecul97

Extraordinary stuff - what an adventure!

It very nearly came a cropper for Moglander near the end of that video!:eek:

Aidan_M_M

You could sell those pictures to a travel magazine . Outstanding .

hi5

bogman wrote: »

Thats mind blowing stuff, puts me thinking, lot of that id love to do on a motorcycle, what kind of money did it cost to transport the vehicle to S.A and what route did ye take? love the pics especially the one of Perito Mereno Glacier
Keep up the good work Merv
Charles

And by the way, hello to Blag (Kev) who I know personally

This guy flew his Honda 50 from Wexford to Alaska then rode it to Argentina.

http://hondavstheworld.com/tag/alaska-to-argentina/page/3/

mervifwdc

We would have loved to meet up with "Honda vs the world" but it didn't work out, his schedule was a lot quicker than ours. It would be pretty cool to meet up with another Irish vehicle off out here!

mervifwdc

Well, we got to the salt flats in Bolivia. They are simply amazing and well worth visiting. We had a bit of craic with taking photos there.



Loads more photos on our blog post about Salar de Uyuni

What was interesting was that at night it got down to -14. but, because it was so dry it was not a big deal. The truck was not over keen on starting in that level of cold as we do not have any glow plugs (Standard on Diesels now), so we parked facing east at night, and waited for the Sun to do it's job in the mornings.



We did a stretch from Uyuni in Bolivia to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile for just over a week, and never saw tarmacadam, Fuel stations or shops. We were all tooled up for it, but it would not be funny to run out of toilet roll! :-)

hardCopy

Such a cool bus. Keep the updates coming!

Michael_Myers

mervifwdc wrote: »

Well, we got to the salt flats in Bolivia. They are simply amazing and well worth visiting. We had a bit of craic with taking photos there.



Loads more photos on our blog post about Salar de Uyuni

What was interesting was that at night it got down to -14. but, because it was so dry it was not a big deal. The truck was not over keen on starting in that level of cold as we do not have any glow plugs (Standard on Diesels now), so we parked facing east at night, and waited for the Sun to do it's job in the mornings.



We did a stretch from Uyuni in Bolivia to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile for just over a week, and never saw tarmacadam, Fuel stations or shops. We were all tooled up for it, but it would not be funny to run out of toilet roll! :-)

WOW - love the whole concept!
Certainly beats all the Irish campsites

Love the Mog - what a workhorse and engineering marvel


Have a great time

mervifwdc

Hi Folks,

We are now in La Paz in bolivia, and still moving north. Load to see yet.

However, we are also planning our future, and we are thinking about what happens when we get to Columbia. We are considering selling our beloved truck in about 10 months to a years time. If anyone was thinking about doing a trip in South America we would sell them the truck, and meet them here to hand it over, and do a bit of training on how to look after the truck, service it, and how to travel about in South America and share a few tips for the road.

This is easily done with a person that has an Irish address, so that the new registration papers for the truck can be issued in Ireland.

This saves me shipping the truck home, and you from shipping it out here.

The truck will be delivered ready to go, spare parts, cookware, gas, cups, glasses, basic tools, manuals etc. Basically, just bring your clothes and a guidebook.

To do a trip like this takes a bit of planning time, mainly to get time off work, sort out your house, learn a little spanish etc. So, if you were dreaming of doing something like this in 2014, now is the time to think of it!

to help you along, we spend less than 20 euro per day on diesel, and you can easily see what we get to see, and where we go on the blog. We spend less than 10 euro per WEEK on campsites, the truck allows you to find quiet and out of the way camp spots. as to food and drink - that's up to you :-) 3rd party insurance for the year for all of South America is less than 800 euros.

We have put up a page on the site all about the truck, if you look at the menu at the top, and "hover" over "the truck" you can find out just about everything about it. We just added a load of photos of what it's like inside.

We have not definitely decided we are selling the truck next year, but are thinking about it. If you are looking for a truck out here, then we should talk! :-)

Merv.

mervifwdc

Well, the adventure continues. We've spent 3 wonderful months in Bolivia, but 3 weeks of that was spent visiting a Dentist to get a serious problem sorted out. I had to get 2 root canals done, and now have 2 crowns in my mouth. Very professionally done, $1300 (about €1000) the whole job.

So, what have we been at? Well, we had to go take a crack at the Bolivian death road, the one seen on top gear. It seems they had a hastle with landrovers and suzuki jeeps, so we decided to go for it on mountain bikes!


After that, we went to see some of the Bolivian Amazonian Jungle - What an adventure! We loved it there, even with the mozzies and other insects that loved to bite us. They do stuff there that's crazy. Like using small rafts to cross rivers with no engines, just a guy in a small boat with a 20ph outboard that looks like a reject from a mad max movie to shove it across. They not only took our mog over a river like this, but also this bulldozer!




we also loved La Paz, and the countryside. Brilliant place to visit.

We had a few dodgey roads to deal with though. No place for the sane :-)


We have just made a side trip to the Galapagos Islands, Turns out you can fly there and stay in small hotels for about $40 per night, and do as much or as little as you want. It doesn't have to be a multi-thousand euro trip (well, we didn't have to pay for flights from Europe so that helped a LOT)


That just about brings us up to date! We've heading for Lima now to get back to our truck, and heading to Cusco then with a couple from Cork that we have traveled with loads before. Looking forward to catching up with them, we've not seen them since July 2012.

Merv.

mervifwdc

Hi,

we have been exploring South Peru with our 2 good friends from the peoples republic of Cork. They flew out and hired a 4x4 pop-up camper, and we had a few great weeks together. We have written a pretty big blog post on our Peru Adventure, with loads and loads of photos from the Jungle to Machu Picchu.


This was our mode of transport for a few days on the rivers of the Jungle.


This is what the Inca trail looks like, the 4 day hike to Machu Picchu if you do not want to take the train. The trail is hard-core, and it gives loads of amazing views along the way.


View from the Inca trail.

Anyone interested in doing such a trip let me know, and I'll answer any questions I can. it's possible to do in 3 weeks.

What are the chances of meeting another Irish camping truck out here? - pretty small I would have thought, but we met a huge 6x6 truck. but not the owners who are home in Ireland at the moment.

I cannot link to the image of the truck, but it's on our facebook page at www.facebook.com/moglander

We will now head North, hoping to get to Ecuador for christmas and to find a warm beach somewhere. It's pretty wet here in Cusco, bit too much like home :-)

Merv.

mervifwdc

Hi Folks,

We are coming to the end of our adventure here in in South America. It's been brilliant, and thank you for everyone who followed along.

We are going to sell our beloved camper, ideally here. This will be perfect for anyone wanting to explore South America for a while, as the truck will be left ready for action. It's just got a full service including a new set of belts on the engine, so it's good for quite a while.

If anyone is thinking of doing a trip like this, let me know and we'll see if we can work something out. We would ideally like to sell it in May, but can be flexible by a month or so either way.

http://moglander.com/the-truck/unimog-camper-truck-sale/


Merv.

mervifwdc

We are almost out of Ecuador, and have have found it to be a great country to travel through. They are not uses to campers, so are very interested to chat about ours. Our spanish is not great, so with a bit of sign language, they get to understand what we are all about.

Ecuador Overland blog post is here.

As a snippet, we spent new years eve here, in a town called Vilcabamba. It got a write up years ago in something like readers digest as the place with the most people over 100 years old. We did see some old codgers, but on new years eve it was the younger folks have the craic.


Fires were lit of puppets on most street corners at midnight, and the local lunatics jumped through the flames.


Small roadside food stalls are even smaller than this! This setup was able to cater to about 30 people at a time. 2 things on the menu, end of story! And tasty empenada's were one of them! :-)


Volcano with a lake in the crater. It looked even better in real life.


And proof that we made it from the bottom of South America - way down in Tierra del Fuego to the equator. We're pretty happy with that!

Next stop: Colombia.

mervifwdc

Hi Folks,

It's been a while since we've updated the various forums on the web that we keep an eye on. Since our last update, we have driven through Colombia and through Venezuela and are not in Brazil. Pity we're not simply a bit early for a few matches and could welcome people over to the world cup.

As to what you can see by motorhome in Colombia: First off is the coffee farms. Colombian coffee is as good as it gets, and they are glad to show you round the farms. We stayed on one for a few days as they gave us free expressos whenever we wanted.



We also found a few pretty wild places to wild camp along with a German couple in their very nice MAN truck. Total traffic on this road: 4 vehicles per day, 5 donkeys and 9 hikers. Perfect.



I had my third birthday while on this trip, guess we're travelling a while now! it's not so bad, I still get cake!


We made a trip to Visit Bogota, the first time in quite a while when we stayed in a hotel and left our truck on a camp site many miles away. That felt weird! It was nice to wander the streets of Colombia's capital and we spotted the locals who had moved their chess tables into a bus stop to beat the downpour of rain.
Very Irish I thought.


We had a bit of a technical hiccup and needed to get the wheel bearings replaced on one of the back wheels. Colombia has it's own "Mr. Unimog" who sorted us out pretty lively.


We in Ireland might moan at the prices that we pay for fuel, but we do not have to queue for it all day long. This is a Venezuelan fuel station:
More about all that on our Venezuelan blog post.

Shortages in supermarkets is normal.


We skipped out of the truck for a boat to get to Angel falls, the highest waterfalls in the world. It's a wild trip to get there, but worth it where you go through rain forest in a dugout canoe with an outboard motor. Loads of the rain forest is disappearing and being replaced by farmland.


And: Our trip is coming to a close. We have almost completed a look around South America, and we are thinking to the future. We might ship our beloved unimog camper home, but if we can sell it here in South America to another motorcaravaner with a sense of adventure that would be our preferred option. Details about the truck are on the moglander blog if you click here.

There will be a few more updates, but the end is in sight. It's been a brilliant trip for us, and many thanks to everyone who had a read of the blog and left is a comment or email, it's meant a lot to us.

Merv.

How many wheel bearings have you replaced I've lost count?
Bet you'll be sad to part ways with the Mog. When's the sequel?

mervifwdc

2 wheel bearings, and a king pin. The joys of using a 1986 vehicle for long term/distance travel. Still, We cannot complain as it's brought us through adventures deep and mucky :-)

as to the Sequel, as soon as we can refill the piggy bank. It may be quite a while, if ever, that we can afford to do something mad like this, but we sure will be trying!

Merv.

Sir Liamalot wrote: »

How many wheel bearings have you replaced I've lost count?
Bet you'll be sad to part ways with the Mog. When's the sequel?

Malta1

Fantastic Photos as ever

Thank you

mervifwdc

I am guessing there are not too many World Cup fans on here, but we've ended up in Brazil as part of our travels and we're now surrounded by people from all over the world who have arrived to Brazil to watch the World Cup. We have no tickets and no plans to go to a match, but the atmosphere is great craic.

We got here by driving through Venezuela, but once go enter Brazil, you pretty quickly hit a major obsticle to overland travel - the Amazon river. It's bigger than just about anything you can imagine. We sailed for over 1000 miles on it, and it was usually between 1/2 mile wide and up to 2 or 3 miles wide. It can handle pretty large ships.



Paddling across this huge river you can see families in their home made dugout canoes.

and just about everything else in between.

We were on board for 5 days, and set up our dinner table at the very front of the barge. We had one heck of a view and it kept changing while we were eating, probably one of the most surreal places I have eaten a meal.


The truck drivers that normally use these barges have seen it all before, and have a nice way to pass the time during the voyage.


This is the Unimog driving off the barge at the end of the Voyage in Belem.


As usual, the whole story and more photos are on our Blog in the post about the Amazon cruise by Unimog

Oh, And the truck is sold! More on that later....