It’s exciting and adventurous to sail along the San Blas islands with your bike to reach South America. However, we completely underestimated the damage the sea air / water can cause to your bike in a matter of days. It’s impossible to avoid no matter how much DW40 you use. It’s a pain to transport the bike by container (extra admin + need other overlanders to share the container) but if you love your bike it may be worth keeping in mind. As for the experience itself, sailing around the Darien Gap is pretty tough … 42 hours on the open sea … we wouldn’t do it again and 85% of people on our boat were sea sick the entire time. And we didn’t even have bad conditions, so that’s also worth keeping in mind 😉 San Blas islands are stunning though!

Hi Wayne, South America on a TRP sounds great! I do hope that by next July the border crossings will become easier. Fiona and I got stuck in Colombia when Covid hit and until now the borders to Ecuador have not reopened. We have friends out there who decided to continue their trip and although they are waiting for borders to open still, we hear you can bribe your way to Ecuador for 75 USD. Quite incredible that people have been getting through this way!! I hope things will be back to normal by July. Where is your journey starting? Will you be crossing the Darien Gap?

Thank you