that's definitely some tight quarters, although I would think there would be safety in numbers when driving through South America with American plates.

 

Damn that's a nice lil camping set you got there. Gave me some ideas, I hope these folks take heed to what your saying.

 

I can't comfortably sleep in a tent anymore thanks to a speeding dump truck, so I too have figured out a way to sleep one or two people in reasonable. There's enough space to sleep with your girlfriend or wife or whatever between the wheel wells, but if you're sleeping beside one of your buddies, its too little small. I do fishing trips are cold, rainy times of year when tenting sucks, so its preferable to sleep in the truck anyways. I built a cargo box where i keep my stove, axe, tools, food, TP, garbage bags, lanterns, chains, grill, tarp etc and the topside is level with the tops of the wheel wells.

I'm usually alone and I head up to the lakes after work and drive all night, when I'm on my own, I simply set up the bed when I'm packing and use the other side of the bed for coolers etc. When I'm too tired to drive, I pull over and crawl into bed- so setup required.

 

I built my kit after reading many of your posts about camping and fishing. I would KILL to make a trip up there and do some off road fishing runs with you just to see a 5lb trout on the end of a 5wt fly rod.

Matt16 sold me on the Aussie locker, BJ spacers, solo camping, fish to live and survive on the outside lifestyle. Man has good advice.

 

That's pretty high praise. Thanks man. Offer stands, you make it up here, and I'll take you out fishing. I just got into chasing sturgeon, its pretty fun as well... actually, lets call a spade a spade- it's kick-ass.

Not my fish, but its pretty hard to take pics while fighting a 40-150lbs fish (they get up to 1000lbs+ but that's pretty rare).

 

Nice fish!!!

 

sturgeon?

 

That's what it looks like to me and he mentioned that they had gotten in to catching them in his post. Damn I wish I had half the time he has to go fishing.

 

this is developing into a great thread.

that is some good fishing.

1st gen 4Runners ARE tents. mobile tents.

i used to use a twin size air mattress, which fits between the wheel wells, because i like having my gear along the sides, within the truck, in case i need to grab it, or to bug out quickly. but blowing up a twin mattress is a real lung buster. so now i have two pool floaties that lay next to each other. i can use only one if i'm by myself, they're only $2, and i have a half dozen more that are the size of a TV Guide if i pop one.

my plan for extra stash will be to cut a hatch in the bed and weld a box underneath, where the spare used to go. i want to keep my bed deck stock height.

 

My daughter wants to know what happens when someone farts.

 

 

lol What happened to the original poster? Guess he ran out of things to say?

 

Or they have been captured by a Mexican cartel and are being sold on the black market? Sorry i got a bad sense of humor or so i'm told. GO to Costa Rica in your travels, trust me getting married there in Feb 2010 place is so great might not come back. Mexico scares me though dunno why maybe because they can just kill Lawmen and their families and no does natha..... Or it could be the 9 year old with a loaded AK47

 

i am really intrested bro, just wondering why are you going there? and what country are you going there?

 

Bingo, you get a baseball-sized gob of fresh roe, 14oz of lead, 300yds of 150lbs line, a halibut rod, and a Penn 330GT2 conventional reel and cast it from shore into BC's lower Fraser River.

 

Sro, we water at the eyes a little bit, but that's about it.

In other news, I went and snagged a 94 V6 SR5 with immaculate interior and all sorts of goodies for $500. Gonna be a very helpful donor vehicle.

 

So a quick rundown of the three participating parties for this endeavor.

Calexico (myself): trip mechanic and engineer. My personal responsibility and priority is keeping the Jipopotamo alive and well.

Dustavo: trip doctor and religious liaison. His dad is a RN/anesthesiologist and has side taught Dustin everything necessary to keep the three of us breathing and moving. His bible is "Wilderness Medicine" by Paul Auerbach, wonderful book. There is a field copy that is much more portable and would benefit everyone interested in first aid, first responding, emergency response, and living at large.

Drea: trip personnel and linguistics. Drea has family in certain locations within Mexico and Bolivia. She has also tracked down and made very good connections in many other countries. Also, with Spanish as a first language, she is our point of translation when Dustavo and myself get mixed up.


Our first aim is a little 5-acre parcel owned by Drea's mom outside of Monterrey. There are teepees on the land and we will base between the teepees and the Jipo.
Our second aim is a 22-acre parcel owned by Drea's dad outside of Mexico City. This is wild, undeveloped, and very lush and vegetated. I am thrilled about this basecamp as this puts us within striking distance of Pico de Orizaba (http://www.caingram.info/Worldwide/P...de_orizaba.htm), Mexico's largest peak at 5610 meters. That will be fun. There are a whole slew of mountains, volcanoes, and caves in that region and we are looking forward to it.

Past that, it is are very loosely defined. We want to head south a bit from there, towards Oaxaca. I am a self-proclaimed naturalist, especially mycology, so Oaxaca will be kind. Then east towards the peninsula?

We are all three quite the creatives and will have our cameras trained. We'll also do our best to keep an online trip log through travelpod and our website, www.twentyfirstcenturynomads.com

I hope I am not boring you guys out. We are really excited about all of this and it's very easy for me to start on a rant. I'll go ahead and taper off for now. We absolutely love sharing too though, so please lemme know if yall wanna know more or any specific questions or comments. Thanks for listening guys.

Calexico

 

cool beans man

 

Hey Jipo, are you still interested in making a cheap cooling system for your in-truck sleeping arrangements?

These guy's actually sell an A/C assembly that is essentially what I was talking about earlier in the thread. I'm not sure how much they cost and the lack of pricing info without contacting them makes me think they would be fairly expensive.

I could easily walk you though making your own version of these though. Even mounting them and hooking them up either to your secondary battery or to some sort of waycool battery with solar charging system. All you need to purchase are the diodes, a few discrete components such as resistors and capacitors, some small cpu heatsinks and some fans that don't mind getting rained on. Mounting them to your cap should be pretty straight-forward and easy to seal.

 

Please make your own thread about doing this, it sounds like a great idea. Would like to see it put into effect.