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Irish Unimog motorhome in South America
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29-10-2012 3:12pm#1Hi folks,
My wife and I are traveling around Argentina at the moment in our truck, and are suprised by the amount of Europeans we've met, though we've not met any Irish yet. We were wondering if anyone had concidered this as a location for a motorhome holiday? The roads are quiet, scenery amazing, diesel not too dear.
If you'd like to see what a bit of the roads look like through our windscreen, take a look!
Ours is a Kildare registered truck, with a home made camper back. We have been living in it since last christmas, and have sailed across from europe with it on a commercial freighter ship that takes a few passengers on each voyage.
We plan to explore South America for about a year or so, and hopefully things at home will be looking a bit less gloomy by the time we have to come home.
When we started our trip, we visited Morocco for almost 3 months, that's a superb country for motorhome travel, as thousands and thousands of french folks have discovered. If anyone can make the time to go, it's well worth it. We wrote up the highs and lows of it as a location in our blog here.
Anyway, We thought it might be the kind of trip that folks may have an interest in.
Take care!
Merv and Sarah.29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RfBGUgxNZ8Comments
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Yes, blogging like a pair of mad folks. We have been planning for this trip for a long time, so we're enjoying and documenting as much of it as we can.
You'll find the blog at www.moglander.com
and a facebook page at www.facebook.com/moglander
We're not trying to make anyone jelous, but hope by talking about the trip we might inspire someone who is on the cusp of making such a trip jump in the deep end and go for it.
Merv.0 -
That's just about the coolest thing in the world.
Yes, blogging like a pair of mad folks. We have been planning for this trip for a long time, so we're enjoying and documenting as much of it as we can.
You'll find the blog at www.moglander.com
and a facebook page at www.facebook.com/moglander
We're not trying to make anyone jelous, but hope by talking about the trip we might inspire someone who is on the cusp of making such a trip jump in the deep end and go for it.
Merv.0 -
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No worries on the questions, I'll answer some of them. :-)
It started life in the German Army as a troop carrier, then bought by a guy just outside London who converted it, and drove it on a 2.5 year trip that included North Africa, middle east, far east, Russia and then back home.
We bought it from him last year and made a few refinements, and off we went.
It gets about 11mpg, which is shocking, but our average kms per day since we left home is only 89km, so the total fuel bill per day is not too bad. We're now getting fuel at less than a euro per litre, and as we go further south in Argentina the price is still dropping, we hope it will get as low as about 60 cent per litre (Euro cent).
We will do up a page on how it looks inside, but it's pretty simple. We do have a permanent double bed, chemical toilet, shower (water heated by the engine as we drive OR heated by a diesel powered water heater if we are parked up), 4 gas rings, grill, oven, 60 litre fridge (compressor electric), 40 litre freezer (engel - electric compressor) and so on.
It lets us go just about anywhere, and we have 330litres of fresh water on board, so we can stay "out" for over a week easily, and longer if we push it.
We have not used an electic hookup for over 2 months, and the 2 solar panels are doing the trick, and keeping us going. Note: the freezer is currently turned off as there are way way more shops in Argentina than we thought. We will just need it when in places like the atacama desert etc.
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A Quick update. We have reached the end of the world. No, I don't think it's ending, but We have in fact driven to Ushuaia, the most southerly city in the world. If they had a bridge, next stop would be Antartica.
In fact, we saw these guys a few days ago on our way South, so there are Penguins living somewhere WARMER than we are. Crazy!
We have had our hickups:
with a damaged wheel bearing and drive gear, but we're back in action. It's not all plain sailing!
We've met folks with local home built bus or truck conversions, one guy even had his dog driving....
(Kidding).
Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone. Here's to new adventures next year.
Merv.0 -
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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.0 -
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Merv...
IFWDC...
The penny just dropped!
I think I remember you & your crew from a few years back. Off roading in the Slieve Bloom mountains.
I think you were driving a white defender 90 at the time... (in the background) Are you the same lad?
(I never knew my LWB Pajero could go to the places we went to that day...lol)
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hi MervHi 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.
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.0 -
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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 :-(0 -
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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.
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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.0 -
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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! :-)0 -
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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 time0 -
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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.0 -
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