A Good Plan Today Is Better Than A Perfect Plan Tomorrow

I'm not here to tell anyone how to plan their own trip, but I'm dedicating this post to telling you everything I did to make sure on this trip I'm not going to find myself (fingers crossed) laid to waste in any situation. I'll try my best to explain where I got the information, but please be kind: much of this is a compilation of a years worth of info over countless forum posts, don't hurt my feelings if i post something i shouldn't have).


First things first - I do have all country's frommer's and lonely planet's guides; I find them a tad useful, but for our trip, because it is so short, it's nearly useless because there is SOO much information of stuff to do we are focussing on only what we can see along the map we created. If the trip is longer I definitely recommend obtaining them, I use this term loosely because I found them all online (argh matey, alast I am guilty of staying on a cheap budget and have succombed to the seduction of Torrent sites and for those of you who are not calling the internet police on me, yes...they can be found as torrent files).


So besides the books, I compiled a few documents, a "master plan" of a bunch of dated facts, thigns to pack, prices, distances and everything, like most people will do. I won't quite share the document only becasue it is specific, but here is a few charts and data I found useful to carry over to the book I'll be compiling to bring with me before I go; a sort of "master guide" to everything that could go wrong or might happen).

The climates of Central American / South American countries and the best times to go (damn Ecuador)

 The best gear / tools / everything to pack list I compiled can be found in this document::

The EXTREMELY EXTENSIVE Packing List

This list is hugeeeeee, but it gives you an idea of EVERYTHING you could but might want to bring. 

Next I made a price list of everything I was bringing, and as time went on, I made the list smaller and smaller to make up for whats left to buy. Right now the biggest things I still need to get are a new progressive rear shock (i've been riding on a blown shock for a while now) and new tires (one to bring along, and front to put on before I leave); I'm buying Shinko 705's only because we won't be offroading too much, and we need a lot of mileage out of them for a REAL cheap cost, yes we are cheap and they are only 45.00 each.

We decided against the GPS, we haven't made up our mind yet about a microphone head set to keep in contact with each other, but other than that, its the simple stuff, harddrive, lock, sleeping blanketm, easy stuff to buy.

We decided on going with this lock:

Bully Alarm Lock

This is 150.00, and pretty much the ultimate in "shit someones got our bikes hoof it back" to quell any unwanted surprises. We'll use it as the second deterrent, we're installing kill switches underneath the bike to slow sneaky buggers down from starting it and giving us time to get back to the bikes before they are gone.

http://www.lewkiw.com/html/theft1.html -- a good resource on protecting ur ass-ets.

The best microphone set we found was the Scala Rider G4, but its a bit pricey:

Good for not running into each other with shoddy hand signals

In terms of buying all this stuff, well living in Canada, we're somewhat limited to having to pay high duties, or higher prices, but heres a list of the best sites I found over the year to buy everything we need.


http://www.ridersdiscount.com/ -- awesome for apparel, helmets, boots.
http://www.aviciouscycle.ca/KLR4.html -- particularly good for Canada residents
http://www.jcmotors.com/ -- cheap for just about everything


For our gear, we'll I'm thinking of keeping it cheap, I have a fieldsheer jacket as it is, two layers, more of a street jacket, as does Nik, and we will probably keep these as we are riding in the summer months and in relatively weather-consistent countries. I was thinking of the Fieldsheer Adventure:

Fieldsheer Adventure

 A pretty solid jacket for the cheapest price in terms of travelling jackets. It's $200.00 on ridersdiscount.com. For boots, we'll, the sturdiest hiking boots will have to do, and i have waterproof gloves.

I'll be wearing my RSF-2 Shark helmet. I might bring a second helmet if I have room to gimme some more breathing room. Yeah, overall I'm a be uncomfortable as hell, I know this, but I'm a stubborn cheap bastard with a strong ability to settle easily under these such circumstances.

Anyway!!!
Onward to a most valuble resource that I read regularly in the attempts to memorize everything I should know about Central America; I found this on ADVrider.com after a bit of searching and I believe tis the most essential piece of information you can have in planning a southern trip:

Central America Guide - The Wisdom

After this, if you're looking for places to stay, another must assuming you have Google Earth is this "little" plug-in that a whole bunch of ADVrider members put together over the course of a few years. This world map shows a COUNTLESS number of campsites and hotels/hostels around the world, nearly essential for just about any trip anywhere in the world.

Places To Stay On Google Maps

Alright, so with all this information, I ended making a calendar in Word to make sure I stayed on track with all the things to do before we go. Bah, I might as well throw that in there too ( at least the last three months until our trip) just to give you guys an idea of how long to plan ahead for certain events.

Calendar.docx From Rapidshare

And last but not least...at least for now, is another INVALUBLE tool I found on ADVrider, thwe budget calculator. Now I took a bunch of stuff out to make it personal to my trip, but if you can search it on the website, you will find the full calculator. If your lazy like most people, just click....

HERE

This excel document will do all the calculations for you, how much you need to save, how much you will spend everyday, how much you need to put aside in case of emergencies and other events. Really helpful to make sure you're on track.

Well, its a couple of resources to keep the planners busy, if you're a go-getter i just wasted your time, but I hope this post finds helpful to a bunch of people thinking about doing trips, but having a hard time finding some info.

There's still much to look forward to, when I finishing compiling all the embassy info, I'll have a list of all the Border entry/exit requirements, avg wait times, costs, insurance fees, and contact information (for Canada anyway). That will be coming in a couple more posts....


Until the next post: Where in the World ARE we going??

Robeeeeez