Could I drive from Canada to Costa Rica?
Let me be more specific…
I know I can drive from Canada to the USA / Mexico border.
i) Once I am in Mexico, is there a decent road / highway that will allow me to travel to Costa Rica?
ii) Could this be done with a reasonable amount of safety? Is there a likelihood I would be met up with gangs of pirates who would rob / kill / steal all my worldly possessions while I am trying to complete this drive?
Has anyone ever done this?
Many Thanks!
You want the Pan-American Highway, a system of roads that stretches from Alaska to the southern tip of Chile. The only missing link is between Panama and Colombia, which is known as the Darien Gap, but obviously you don’t have to worry about that to get to Costa Rica.
From Mexico City, you take Mexican Federal Highway 190 to the border with Guatemala, and then you follow Central America Highway 1 all the way to Costa Rica. For a detailed route listing, see this Wikipedia entry.
People have gone all the way along the route, and there’s at least one book about it. Safety is definitely something to worry about in some areas, though.
I once met someone who had driven from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego.
I am in awe.
How’d he bridge the gap?
And has anyone ever driven from the Bering Strait to the northern tip of Scotland? It’s been at least possible since the Chunnel.
Yeah, it’s not every day that you meet someone who met someone who drove all that way. 
He was saying he carried dozens of rolls of $1 bills, and from Mexico onward had to hand a roll or so over to the police every few miles. Not sure about the documentation required to take a vehicle through all those countries, but in places that are that corrupt, it probably doesn’t make that much difference.
No idea.
Not Scotland, but Ewan McGregor and a friend recently rode from London to New York on motorcycles (they flew over the Bering Straight). If you get a chance to see this program, I highly recommend it. Absolutely amazing travelogue. Very dramatic, and very funny.
This would probably be your biggest problem. There are plenty of areas in Latin America where the rule of law leaves something to be desired. Everything I’ve ever heard about such trips indicates that you’d better bring a small fortune in bribe money.
And check your auto insurance before you hit the road. I’ve never seen a policy that would cover you once you cross the border into Mexico. If you’re involved in even a minor fender-bender down there, you could find yourself being held in the local jail until you can produce enough cash to cover any and all possible damage claims against you.
The book already mentioned would be Road Fever, by Tim Cahill, about his attempts with a friend to set the Punta Arenas to Prudhoe Bay speed record. They used a container ship to get their pickup from Barranquilla to Colon, with the endorsement of the Guinness staff.
Well, then I suppose the logical question to ask is has anyone ever gone from The Cape of Good Hope to the Strait of Gibraltar?
I’m guessing lots and lots of people have crossed Australia, given that it’s always been a single political entity since colonization.
This is probably true, but don’t think that it’s easy simply because it’s united politically. The red center is pretty inhospitable; many early explorers died crossing its deserts.
When I was there (1999), you still heard lots of stories of tourists dying thinking that they’d go explore the outback a bit and that it’d be an easy thing. If you decide to do so, 1) take heaps and heaps of water, and 2) don’t leave your car.
There’s a fine book by Tim Cahill called “Road Fever” about a record drive from Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Highly recommended, as are his other books.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0394758374/104-2152345-2360766?v=glance
Dunno about that, but when the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed, British expats in Hong Kong used to brag that the only times they needed to cross water on the journey were the English Channel and Hong Kong harbour.
This is a great book about the record setting trip in the other direction: Road Fever.
Here is a link to the online travel journal of a Dutch couple who drove from Amsterdam to Capetown in a Land Rover.
The Darien Gap remains one of the more unexplored and difficult regions of the world. Dense forests, disease and still-hostile tribes discourage development of this area. The terrain is staggeringly difficult to navigate and has defeated exploration teams throughout modern history.
A good book about the area is “Darkest Jungle”, by Todd Balf, which chronicles one such expedition. As part of his research, he visited the area a few years ago to retrace some of the path of the Strain Expedition. Despite having all innoculations, modern hiking gear, etc., they were largely defeated in their effort.
Well, it isn’t quite as bad as all that these days. I’ve made 17 trips to the Darien, including one trip almost of the way up the Tuira River to the Colombian border. (The Tuira is the main route through the Darien Gap on the Panamanian side.) I wouldn’t say the tribes are hostile. I’ve mostly traveled with Embera guides, and often stayed in Embera villages, and they’ve always been exceptionally friendly. (The Kuna of the area can be a pretty standoffish and rather mercenary, but I wouldn’t call them hostile either.) The main peril in the area is not Indians, but the Colombian FARC guerillas, their rightist paramilitary opponents, and occasional armed robbers. But on my last trip to the Darien a month ago, my guide told me things haven’t been too bad recently, now that Panama has put a stronger border patrol presence in the area.
The Darien Gap has been crossed by car at least 3 times that I am aware of, the first in 1959-1960, by a Jeep and a Land-Rover. I’ve met one of the guys who has done it, Col. John Blashford-Snell, who led the British Trans-America Expedition in 1972. (He was in Panama last year organizing an expedition that I had hoped to join, but it didn’t pan out.) The 1972 Expedition drove from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. It took them over three months to cross the Darien Gap, chopping a track through the jungle, winching the vehicles over gullies, and rafting them over the Atrato Swamp in Colombia.
It is true that there are parts of the Darien that are virtually unexplored. In 1997 I led an expedition to the remote Serrania de Jungurudo, which had never previously been scientifically surveyed before. When we reached are final camp near the peak, my Indian guides said even they had never been there before. They spent several hours discussing what they should call the place, because the peak had no name in their language.
While I really enjoyed Balf’s book, he rather exaggerates the difficulties of his own trip to make a better story. (I talked to one of his guides, who is an acquaintance of mine, about the trip last month.) I think Balf just wasn’t much accustomed to jungle travel. To be fair, though, the Kuna of that region have the reputation of being unusually difficult even for Kuna, and the Chucunaque presents some problems, especially logjams, not typical of the other Darien rivers.