The ultimate road trip - Off Duty, travel - Navy Times

The ultimate road trip

It was the first leg of my overland trip around the world, an expedition that I consider the last true adventure on earth: From New York to Argentina, through 12 countries, for four months and more than 13,000 miles.

My adventure began Nov. 15, when I gave up my apartment, quit my job and set off in a ’96 Toyota Land Cruiser outfitted with a rooftop tent, fridge, stove and portable toilet.

Since then, I’ve driven through jungles, mountains and fog, across dirt roads, desert sand and salt fields. Crooked cops tried to shake me down, and bad maps led me to places where the road disappeared.

I saw monkeys in the Costa Rican rainforest, pink flamingos in Bolivia, and llama herds in Peru, along with pigs the size of ponies. I camped on beaches in Nicaragua so beautiful and remote that you forget you have to go back to civilization one day. I visited Mayan ruins in Honduras, ancient tombs and painted caves in Tierradentro, Colombia, and the Spanish colonial city of Quito, Ecuador.

It was chilly in New York when my traveling companion and I started out, but we drove away from the cold weather, heading south on highways that roughly followed the Appalachian Trail to Georgia. We stopped in New Orleans (I am French, and I wish that France had never sold Louisiana), then crossed the border from Texas to Mexico and drove southeast through Central America. We drove through Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to Panama, where the Pan-American Highway ends at the Darien Gap.

The Darien Gap, a roadless region of swamps and rainforests that stretches 90 miles to the tip of Colombia, makes it impossible to drive the entire distance to South America. So we shipped the car from Panama to Colombia and flew there to pick it up, then drove south, through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia to Argentina.

We camped on beaches and in parks, and often got permission to sleep on farms.

We would park our car, drag a table out and begin to cook before nightfall. We bought food in markets, and our gasoline-powered stove was our best friend, especially in the cold, high mountains.

We bathed every few days, sometimes in a home, hotel or campground, sometimes in a lake or with buckets.

In Cusco, Peru, for $4 a person, we rented a hotel room and looked forward to a shower. Of course, there was no hot water.

We had a wonderful visit to a Cusco food market. We drank coca leaf tea and bought a massive amount of cheese.

At every border crossing, we filled out stacks of meaningless papers, always looking for the next stamp. In a few places, police officers, seeing U.S. license plates, pulled us over for imaginary infractions. In Honduras, I pretended not to understand, and they went away. In Mexico, a cop asked us for $5 to buy a chicken. I gave him $2 and he was happy.

In Managua, we were stopped by police 15 times; at one point I had to pay $15 when they threatened to keep my license. At the Bolivian border, we had this conversation with a customs official:

“OK, señor. Everything is OK, and now you can make a contribution.”

“What do you mean, I don’t understand.”

“Dinero?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Sí señor, contribution.”

“So is it corruption?”

“No señor, just contribution for the office.”

In the end they let me through without paying because I had no local currency.

We made it through Colombia OK, but safety was always on my mind. In Cusco, 10 minutes after arriving, a guy took a laptop from the trunk. I chased him and got it back. Twenty minutes later, some other dude tried to force open the trunk, fortunately with no success. We spent the rest of our time there locking and unlocking doors and paying extra attention to our surroundings.

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Nicholas Rapp is a former art director for The Associated Press.