Wheels - they are needed!

To do a road trip you will need wheels. This is so obvious it is a bit like saying you will need oxygen, but what kind of wheels?

In our case we went through a process over several months when we investigated the trip itself, as in what route to take, what place to start in, what the best country to buy a car in would be, etc. We landed on, after a lot of thinking, that we would do a figure 8, starting and finishing in San Jose, Costa Rica, and that the initial trip would be going north through Central America. The second leg would be South America, and going this route would let us see all the countries up one side and down the other. It wouldn't be a short trip, and it would require a vehicle that could deal with a lot of different conditions.

We needed a car of the right size for us. We would not sleep in the car unless in a case where we couldn't find accommodation. Four wheel drive was a given, and we settled for petrol. Access to reliable and quality service in all the countries was also needed. As an added requirement for us we wanted a car that was not too old (it would be stolen for parts) or too new (it would be stolen for resale), and one with not too much mileage on the clock. In short, not completely straightforward. Buying the car in Costa Rica was the right decision as in no country would there be any tension with a vehicle with Costa Rica number plates, and the temporary import permit needed everywhere wouldn't be restricted because of some situation that we hadn't thought about.

It took a couple of weeks and plenty of looking to find the right one. What decided the final step was that a relative already had a car like it, and he was very happy with it. We bought the car a year before we started the trip so that we could try it out and grow confident that we liked it. It handled the mountains and dirt roads in Costa Rica well, Harold liked driving it and it was very comfortable for spending long days on the road. It had enough space to put our things in the boot, so we didn't need to have anything other than drinking water and a bucket in the back seat area.

Our car was a Nissan X-Trail, 2013, with almost 90,000km on the clock. We will post here the mileage when we arrive to San Jose, and this will be the distance we drove in total.

The car was serviced in Nissan agencies along the road. It had a few new parts put in, new tires once, and one new battery. We dealt with one flat tire, one occasion where it didn't start (because it needed the new battery), and one situation in Colombia where we had to return to an agency to get it fixed as it needed new parts (coils?) to make the connection with the spark plugs (bobinas in Spanish).

This car went day after day, up and down mountains, through deserts and tropical forests, through the Altiplano, spent long periods on ships without having the engine on, in heavy traffic and on muddy roads. It accepted all kinds of petrol, even the kinds we didn't know what it was (in Bolivia and in Venezuela). We don't have a single negative thing to say about it, except that Nissan doesn't have a full electric comparable model yet. It has been a trusted friend, and we will have a hard time finding a replacement.