Well I'll keep this as short as possible, there is 2 of us, one 19 year old Canadian, Eira-Shay and one 23 year old Australian, Will , we both love travel and adventure, hence why we are here. But first a bit of our story:



After meeting in Canada, Eira decided to fly to Aus to travel, create art (She is an amazing artist as you'll soon see) and fulfill a dream of visiting the desert. Silly old me not knowing what I was getting myself into, cheerfully accepted and with about 24 hours of preparation and "research" (wikipedia counts right?). We hit the road in my 2003 Mercedes "Hotel El Vito" 2 wheel drive city van for a 6500km journey from Brisbane - Birdsville - Adelaide - Melbourne - Sydney then back to Brisbane. All which involved some crazy territory including the Simpson Desert and the Notorious 600km stretch of no man's land road known as the Birdsville Track. None the wiser, with smiles on our faces we took off into the sunset, unbeknownst to us the trials and tribulations that this journey would hold for us. I won't go into detail here, but I'm sure these photos will tell a million stories.















So now, while working hard and saving every penny, We are tree planters hence the dirty attire pictured above, With some scenery of our work area below:





We plan our next trip: Rural.


We leave Aus for Canada in April, tree plant and save for 4 months then hopefully embark on our journey mid August-start of September, 2016. Hopefully with a little ( a lot) more research. Which is kind of the reason I am posting here. I have been trawling this amazing website for the last 3 months gathering a general understanding of the task we are facing ahead but id love to get even further insight from you wealths of knowledge.

The plan:

Buy 2 bikes somewhere between Vancouver - Portland - Northern California (Where ever we can find some cheap bikes, If anyone may have any available around this time. We are willing to do some farm/house work to negotiate a price) Hopefully around $2000-$2500 Canadian.

Ride said bikes down the west coast of U.S, then into Central America visiting as much as we can along the way and following routes from fellow travellers and locals alike.

One big specific im not sure about is what to do with the bikes once we reach Panama, which is where we hope to rid ourselves of the bikes and head into South America where we will continue our travels. (any info on this would be greatly appreciated)

We hope to reach Panama/Columbia by the end of December, although we have no real time frame, just depends how our shoestring budget holds up.


So the essence of this journey is to get as far as we can, as cheaply as we can and see and experience as much as we can along the way. And hopefully document the trip, so that those at home (and on the road) can follow along with us, as we have done with so many of the other ride reports here!

A few questions that would be awesome to have some help with:

1. Would it be possible to take a road based bike with some dirt/ish tires. Reason is there seems to be a lot more road bikes for cheaper as i haven't seen too many dual sports in the sub $2500 mark.

2. Any suggested routes or must see spots, or absolute no go areas (Particularly for CA)

3. Any information/suggestions for our dilemma once we reach Panama

4. Any tips/info/comments! we're all ears open as we're not really sure what we are doing, but that's the fun right?

We hope you follow along and can enjoy this journey as much as us!