I decided to post my off roading pictures from Venezuela. That's were I am from and were I started off-roading. In reality I don't go off-road anymore in here. Rules are different,and too many of them.
The set of pictures with the red car is my first truck, a 79 FJ40 and the set with the sand color car is my second truck, a 87 FJ72. The coral FJ60 is my dad's. It is from 1983 and still runs. All of this were stick transmission.
The last set are some random pictures of some crazy folks I know there. In Venezuela there are a lot of crazy off-roaders and we love Toyotas.

 

More pictures.....

 

and... going on vacation (BTW, this is not Venezuela)

 

wow that last pic is amazing

 

haha, that last one is funny... did you take that personally (or someone you know) cuz that would make it that much greater

 

Epale! Good to see more Venezuelans in Yotatech. Nice pictures!

 

I think i know this spot.... ¿Galipan by any chance?


https://www.yotatech.com/attachment....achmentid=9581

 

Crap. I was just in Caracas a week and a half ago. There are old FJ's EVERYWHERE. Since you guys are familiar with Venezuela...do alot of ppl use the old FJ's for some sort of taxi service? I saw tons of them crammed with people inside.

 

Venezuela is Cruiser land. The Land Cruiser FJ45 (troopies) have been in use since the early '70s to transport people in and out of the barrios (ghettos/shanty towns). The barrios are very densely populated shanty towns that are often located on the mountains around the main cities.

As you may have noticed, the access to the barrios is not easy, very steep and narrow roads. Only these Land Cruisers can stand the everyday abuse of working all day up and down these roads, packed with people.

The newer Land Cruiser models (60, 70, 80 and 90 series) are very popular too, dont forget there's a large Toyota assembly plant in Venezuela that's been making Land Cruisers since the '60s (the first Toyota assembly plant outside of Japan). Did you notice how many rigs are prepared for off roading?

 

wjwerdna: that picture is from a friend, but I don't think he took it, I just think is too funny!

Tepui: yeah, you are right, that spot is in Galipan. Where are u from? Your profile said Chile

kcebes: Tepui's explanantion couldn't be better. Toyotas are considered the best 4x4's in Venezuela and some of them are really used to the limits. Some of those FJ's that go up and down the barrios have tons of kilometers (1 mile = 1.6 km) on them. Some even make it to the million kilometers, off course rebuilt engines and so on. They are loaded with a lot of weight and spend the whole day, every day going up and down the barrios.
A lot of 4x4's are used for off-roading south in the jungle or the mountains. The nice thing there is that you don't need to drive that far to go to the beach, to the mountain, to the dessert, or to the jungle. And you can really go off-roading anywhere.

 

Tony, I am originally from Venezuela, I lived in the US from 96 to 03 and then moved to Chile. You must be wondering how in the world I recognized that spot on such a blurry picture! Good things are hard to forget.

 

Yeah, we drove our van into the barrios to avoid a traffic jam on the way to the airport. I was totally lost. Apparently they were doing some maintenance on a bridge and we would have missed our flight if we would have sat in traffic. There were landcruisers everywhere. It was really neat to see. Now I wish I would have taken some pictures.