Hello Everyone.

This is Ettore.
I have a few grands and a couple of months on hand which I though I might invest in some nice off road motorcycling travel and bush camping.

I have no experience whatsoever, just did my license last year (which of course didn't involve any off road), this will be my first chance to actually ride for myself.

Apart from riding mainly off road (or at least unpaved) and staying for the most of the nights in my own tent distant to anything civilized, I have no further specific requirements regarding my trip but to keep everything as easy, straight-forward and hassle-free as possible.

Since I like mountains and the sea, I thought about traveling around in the Andes range through South America.

Two weeks ago or so I discovered this site, and it already helped me a lot in figuring out things. Lots of useful info! Great!

Still there are many things to sort out, about which I'll read on and/or post the questions in a thread in the corresponding sections, like which bike to get (light, easy-to-handle, used, easy-to-fix, common, reliable, but still able to carry the minimal camping equipment?), whether it makes more sense to buy the bike in North America and drive it down (because of an eventually better market and/or better/easier ways to get insurance and paperwork done, especially regarding the foreseen border crossings etc.?), what cities/dealers (within a country) are good places to look for a bike (e.g. trustworthiness, good selection...), and what will be necessary in my equipment.

If in the meantime anyone enjoys leaving a word or two from his/her experience on the whole thing I'll be happy to read!

greetings

hope all goes well with your trip
I'm new to this also and finding it hard to work things out
I'm new to emails and all that stuff

Jep my planning went well, though it was laborious, maybe for some time I put to much effort in it. As I was planning the whole day I got tired. After all, what I was looking for is 'nature by motorcycle' and not clicking through the internet.
But thats OK next time I'll just take a slower pace in planning.

In the more or less final phase of my planning I decided to shift the plan to the future, like for a year, and do a little different trip, here in Europe, also as a 'training' so to speak for the longer SA-trip.

I had (or in some sense wanted) to care for my 'normal life' for several weeks now, and am now restarting to plan that shorter, smaller trip.

In any case, if you plan a similar trip like me, off-road-SA and camping, with little prior experience (like me), you might consider to have a look at some of my questions people here helped me with in a few threads I started.
I was surprised how much good information I got out of this site, it really made a difference to me.

Anyway, good luck, and hope you love your drive
Cheers