Hi, everyone. I've been reading here and over at ADVrider for several months and planning a pretty big ride. I'm still undecided on a few factors and the bike to use is one of them. I'm planning to ride from Canada down to South America. At this point I am unsure about riding through Central America or boxing the bike up and meeting it again in South America. My main goals are to ride through the USA and through Argentina, Chile, and Peru, spending the majority of my ride time in the S. American countries.

As far as bikes go, I have one local dealership, with other dealerships about a five hour round trip from me. The local dealership has the two bikes I'm most interested in, anyways: the Suzuki DL650 (Wee-Strom) and the Suzuki DR650 (no cute nickname). The Wee would suit me far better for North American riding and riding at home, because I'm not big on off-roading, due to previous serious injury. I'm just wondering if the DR650 would be better for South America, which is where I'll spend most of the time riding on this trip.

All the ride reports I've read are by people who love hitting the trails, so I'm not sure whether or not there were sealed roads as alternatives or not. If I can do South America on pretty much all sealed roads I'll go for the Wee, for sure. But if a fair part of the time I'll have to ride on muddy roads and whatnot, the DR seems like a better choice.

Any opinions or things I missed? Obviously, I have left out a ton of details, but I didn't want my first post to be a book chapter.