Help Ship our truck around the Darien Gap donation road trip South AmericaTrans-Americas Journey

We just celebrated the five year anniversary of the Trans-Americas Journey. Our little road trip has now completed more than 1,825 days of travel, road tripping and reporting our way through the United States, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

That’s terrific, except that we budgeted for three years not eight or 10 or however many it’s going to take for us to ultimately fulfill the mandate of our Trans-Americas Journey and explore and write about all 23 countries in North, Central and South America before the road literally ends in Tierra del Fuego. So far we’ve managed to stay on the road for nearly twice as long as we’d budgeted for by being frugal (a fancy word for cheap) and creative. But that’s only going to take us so far.

We could really use your tips

Tip jar

During the previous five years we’ve given our readers hundreds of insider tips about the destinations and activities we’ve covered in our blog posts and our magazine and newspaper stories. Now we’re asking you for a tip.

If you love what we’re doing, if we’re your go-to distraction at work, if you’re living vicariously through us, if we’ve inspired your own travels, if you want to be part of every mile of our Journey please consider making a contribution to our Trans-Americas Journey Tip Jar.

We don’t need much

Question: Do you get at least ten cents worth of value out of what you read and see on our website and blog every month? Our website gets more than 17,000 visitors per month. If every visitor dropped even a dime into our tip jar once a month that would fund our travels for that month.

Of course, not everyone can or will contribute. But if you’re able, please put what you can into our tip jar by using the widget below. Or you can send your support to us directly from your PayPal account to ours at contact (at) trans-americas.com.

They call it the Darien Gap for a reason

All tips of any amount will be used to help us cover the impending expense of shipping our truck from Panama to Colombia around the Darien Gap, a dense expanse of jungle that’s never had a road through it. To get around this impenetrable break in the Pan American Highway we have to put our truck into a huge container and ship it around the Darien Gap. Though this boat trip takes just a few days it’s gonna take a massive bite out of our already dwindling budget. If we can’t afford to ship our truck around the Darien Gap we literally won’t get to South America.

We have incentives!

We recently started putting Eric’s very best shots up for sale online, making it easy for you to purchase custom prints of the pictures you love from our site including those adorable penguins in Antarctica, cool cowboys at the Calgary Stampede, fireworks over Mount Rushmore and hundreds more of our best moments captured in our best photographs. See a shot you want on the site but it’s not on our online store yet? Just holler and we’ll get you a print of the exact shot you want.

Stuff $40 into our tip jar and get 10% off your entire order
Stuff $80 into our tip jar and get 15% off your entire order
Stuff $150 into our tip jar and get 20% off your entire order
Stuff $200 into our tip jar and get 25% off your entire order
Stuff $300 into our tip jar and get 30% off your entire order
Stuff $400 into our tip jar and get 40% off your entire order
Stuff $500 into our tip jar and get 45% off your entire order
Donors who give $1,000 or more are invited to meet us anywhere during our Journey and spend a few days traveling with us in our truck complete with chauffeur (Eric) and tour guide (Karen)

Our heartfelt gratitude goes to everyone and every amount.

Are you a company (or do you own one)?

We’re also looking for a corporate sponsor–one company with vision (and some loose change) that’s interested in getting its product or services in front of our unique audience of passionate, independent travelers looking for real-world advice and inspiration as they plan their own adventures. Consider our inbox, at contact (at) trans-americas.com, open to any and all suggestions and leads!