Finding the Right Vehicle in 100 Days

We arrive in Buenos Aires October 30 to take delivery of the truck.  

We began shopping for it January 1.  

It started with a conversation in the darkest days of an Alaskan winter.  Clayton, the head of aircraft maintenance at Crystal Creek Lodge, and I had just arrived in Alaska from a couple glorious months of respective travel and free time with our wives.  We were just beginning what would become several months of working on aircraft and, during a break, were alternately congratulating my decision to dispose of the motorcycle while discussing the possibilities of resurrecting the road trip.  The BMW motorcycle had been sold and I, discovering it was not wise to begin riding at age 58, had not broken any bones. Clayton suggested Lynnette and I enclose ourselves within a vehicle, an overland vehicle to be exact.  Lynnette said yes.  A few days of internet searches revealed some amazing videos, blogs by persons who had lived on the road for up to 16 years and some cool looking rigs.  So, the questions were: Rent or buy? What kind of rig should we get and where should we get it? 

The idea of renting then smelling untold-someone else's smells for four months while dealing with the consequences of countless other persons bad vehicle operating habits quickly eliminated renting.  Buy, and for the same considerations, buy new was the direction we would take.  

More internet research ensued.  Van conversion? Slide-in camper on a 4x4 truck?  Jeep with tent on top?  As we imagined sleeping in a tent atop the Jeep in sustained 30-knot Patagonia winds, the jeep was quickly discarded from the list of possibilities.  A 4x4 Mercedes Sprinter van looked interesting.  The Sprinter is sold and serviced worldwide and we considered many but then we discarded the Sprinter van due to the expense. During the initial conversations the first vehicle we looked at was an Earthcruiser, made in Oregon. At the level of Earthcruiser, overland vehicles look armageddon-ready and cost uphill of $300k.  No, those were not for us, but while digging deeper into the Earthcruiser web site, a very interesting option presented itself: a pop-up, lightweight, slide in camper called the GZL.   Lightweight, low-profile and packed with features, the GZL had it all.  I went back to the GZL and thought it would be ideal to mount on the back of a Toyota Tacoma or Hilux.   Toyotas, of which Lynnette and I have owned for years, are tough and are also sold and serviced worldwide.  The Hilux is Toyota's version of a pickup truck sold everywhere else in the world except the United States.  Great trucks.  I had experienced them in Thailand, Europe and Argentina.    The Hilux is the Jihadist's choice for mobile, mounted machine gun platforms.  Good enough for the soldiers of Allah, good enough for Dan and Lynnette's big adventure.  We had made our choice: Toyota 4x4 truck with a slide-in camper.

In a short amount of time we discovered there are substantial, very substantial, trade barriers to bringing vehicles and vehicle parts across international borders.  Saving you the details of those barriers and the suspected motivations of the various nations imposing them, we looked at temporary import permits for a vehicle.  Again, a process wrought with red tape and clocks that would not suit our schedule.  Bye-bye Tacoma, hello Hilux.  There are opportunities a-plenty to buy a new Hilux so, first, we needed to secure the camper.  

I spent way more time on the GZL idea that I should have, but my bulldog focus, which usually serves me, took me on a wild chase on this one.  Still, it still is a great part of the adventure and there was much to be learned.  A phone call to Earthcruiser brought me to their sales manager, Brent Baker, who informed me the GZL was out of production and would not begin anew until the fourth quarter in 2019 at earliest.  Too late to ship south.  Brent did tell me about a version of the same camper called the MOD.  Interesting but weekend adventurer stuff, way too crude for our length of expedition and desire for comfort.  Brent did tell me the GZL is built under license by a French company, who calls it the GaZelle. My inquiries to the French and their dealers in the UK came back crickets.  I called some good friends in France who contacted the manufacturer then offered to drive to the GaZelle factory and broker a purchase.  The French replied they were not interested in exporting anything, anywhere on my behalf.  Constant research revealed there were no used GZL's to be had in the US.  

While chasing the ghost of the GaZelle, I was looking at other options.  Four Wheel Campers, a reputable company making tough adventure campers, made a somewhat heavier pop-up/slide-in, but they were back ordered for months. Nothing else looked suitable for the job.  Northstar, a company in Iowa, made a pop-up slide in camper, but I dismissed it as geographically undesirable from a shipping standpoint.  While shopping for the camper I researched Chile and Argentina as potential places to land the camper.  Argentina is wrapped tight with red tape and duties and Chile looked like a much more promising place to do business.  I looked into Chile as a place to purchase a camper.  Again, after substantial research, I found a company in Chile called Travel Camper Chile that manufactured a GZL lookalike camper, except it did not pop-up.  That was the one for us.  Repeated requests for quotes came back: "Sorry, I was out on a motorcycle trip.  I'll get you a quote next week".  "I'll get your quote soon.".  All I wanted to do was give him money for something he proclaimed to want to sell.  I waited four weeks, sent repeated requests and the quote never came.  Thanks, amigo.  More wasted time.  

While Chile is reputed to have a much more favorable market environment, one advantage Argentina has is Lynnette and I have several friends there.  We only have a couple acquaintances in Chile.  Argentina then became the hunting ground 100 days into the hunt.  

Next: The truck comes together