I won't pretend like I'm a master long-term camper. But.

1) I would worry about packed size more than weight. You're on a motorcycle - you don't care if the tent is too heavy for a backpacker to carry on a month-long hike. You can trade off the lightness for cheapness and/or ruggedness in other models.

2) 500 euros seems like an awfully big part of the gear budget. Unless you and your partner are very keen campers, you may find that for a large part of your RTW trip, you will have options for sleeping indoors that will be much more preferable. Developing countries will simply be cheap by Western standards; developed countries will have restrictions on wild camping, and official campsites will often cost the same as a decent hostel.

This is not to say "don't carry a tent" - more to say "don't make camping the center of your strategy". Spend a hundred euros on a *fine* tent instead of five hundred euros on an *excellent* one. Those four hundred euros will get you much further in experiences. (Speaking as some whose hundred-euro Coleman Darwin 2 tent has lasted fine through multiple trips.)

3) That particular model seems to have a lot of unhappy owners on Amazon at least.

I concur, at least for traveling Mexico, Central and South America. We spent a lot of money on a Hilleberg tent, which we have hardly used in the past 10 months of travel. And not because we don’t enjoy camping, it just turns out there are not as many occasions as you might think where you can, or it makes sense. If you can get a hostel/hotel with breakfast for $15, vs wild camp behind some gas station, and you are dead tired from a long day with another ahead of you, you decide what option you’ll take. It wasn’t until we reached Argentina that we started to see established campgrounds as a regular feature. That said, two wild camps, one in Mexico and another in Peru, rank among trip highlights.

We have camped some, and hope to do so more as we head into Patagonia, but we would have been well served by one of my existing backpacking tents, saved a lot of money and taken up less space.

The Hilleberg is an awesome tent though, and perhaps we will be glad for it in windy Patagonia . But still, in the balance, I think it was more than we needed.

Jim


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Like everyone else, I carried a tent and (minimal) camping gear throughout Central and South America, using it seldom. There were a couple of times when I actually could not find a place to stay in a given town after arriving right at dusk—usually due to some sort of local festival, although sometimes it was the Dakar rolling thru—and was glad for the tent option.

I didn’t bring the complete kit, since I knew I wasn’t going to be camping regularly. When I went trekking in Torres del Paine, I bought a little camp stove locally, plus maybe some other odds and ends that I’ve since forgotten. This is easily done in any area which has a camping culture. On the other hand, most of South and Central America have little or no camping culture. When a friend from Venezuela came to visit in the US and we went camping with friends, he said he’d never been camping before and was furthermore amazed that we just slept outside without bringing along bodyguards. That would be a country where I would not expect to find a lot of camping gear in the shops.

I have several Hilleberg tents, and I had one with me in Torres del Paine. Mine was one of the very few left standing when the winds picked up late one night. Yes, it cost a lot—but it’s still going strong more than 20 years after purchase, and it’s light, waterproof, windproof and compact. If I’d just been buying a tent for a single trip, I’d have bought a cheaper one...and gotten miserable that night in TDP. Instead, I look long term to the extent I can afford, and it’s been a long time since I had to even ask the question “what tent should I buy.”

YMMV, naturally.

I bought a Hubba Hubba 2 man tent from MSR back in 2008 for a trip across Europe, around Greece and back over the Alps. Worked faultlessly and used in in many camping trips since. Easy to set up and pack and at around 2kg can be used for backpacking too. Only now there is the odd drip, probably due to the seam tape having dissintigrated, but that can be replaced. It is nearly freestanding, the vestibule areas have to be pegged out. Good for hot weather as the two entrances are on opposite sides and can be left partly open at the same time, allowing a draft through.
I did look at the lone Rider ADV tent, as a replacement one day, this seems to have a similar design but looks tougher and roomier.