GO TO PAGE 1 for
PLANNING & PREPARATION
SHIPPING & LOGISTICS
CARNETS & VEHICLE PERMITS
VISA REQUIREMENTS
VEHICLE & 3rd PARTY
INSURANCE MEDICAL & TRAVELINSURANCE
LPG for COOKING
LPG for VEHICLES
WATER & WATER FILTRATION
COURIER SERVICES
SECURITY
TRAVELLING SAFELY
LANGUAGE
OTHER IMPORTANT MATTERS
MONEY
CURRENCY CONVERSION
COMMUNICATION & PHONES
PAGE 2 - Pre-trip Planning & Preparation
Remember the old army adage:
'Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance'
Guidebooks, Maps and the Web
Guidebooks
For individual countries we reckon the Rough Guides (www.roughguides.com) are the best guidebooks for the self-drive independent traveller.
Footprint’s South American Handbook is brought out each year and is now in its 86th edition! It’s a great place to start your planning. (http://www.footprinttravelguides.com/live/index.php)
The book, Americas Overland – The Driving Handbook, by Donald Green has a lot of useful info for the overlander. (http://www.americasoverland.net/)
There’s a handy guide for overlanders to Mexico called Mexican Camping, by Mike & Terri Church. This guide also covers a few campsites in Guatemala and Belize. They have a range of other camping guides for North America (see: www.rollinghomes.com).
Maps on Paper and for GPS
Getting maps for South America is a little different to Africa and Russia – you really are spoilt for choice!While there are a lot of good maps around, once again we liked the paper maps from Rough Guides … when you could get them.
There are also a number of different maps available for GPS units and computers.
The German based BS Maps (www.bsmap.de) were helpful in supplying maps compatible with OziExplorer (www.oziexplorer.com).
For maps suitable for use on Garmin GPS units check out:
www.garmin.com/garmin/cms/site/us/maps/mpcpage
From Hema Maps (www.hemamaps.com.au) we also got all of South America (@ 1:1,000,000 scale) in Memory Map format for my Hema HN5 Navigator.
Websites
There’s a host of tourist type websites on each country but one of the best sites we have come across is:
www.wordtravels.com
Most of the guidebook publishers have websites that have varying amount of info that is of use. A couple of other useful websites for info include:
www.horizonsunlimited.com
www.saexplorers.org/club/home
www.campingo.com/campsite.html
Amongst the many overland travellers who have blogs on their journeys (and a lot of info on campsites and the like) through South and Central America we’ve enjoyed following the exploits of:
http://overland.dreamers1.com/ - The Kingsmill's Overland Adventures
www.xor.org.uk/silkroute - The Silk Route Motorcaravan Network
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