RV Caravan to Panama?

Thanks, it is indeed hard to predict where problem will rise. For example, a caravan member broke down between Morelia and Mexico on the main road, he was there for 7 days to get repaired at a garage on the side of the road, everything was OK during the day, and we never had any problem when we went through. But at night there was people testing the cargo doors, he was sleeping in it, and there was petrol black market dealing near his place at night. Nothing happened but it was a very long 7 days.

I never felt any danger, but did hear some stories from other groups. It would be nice to have a list or a map of places not to go through. Not in general because we already have warnings for the northen states, but things like do not use a specific road or do not go through a specific town.

For example I was told not to go through Guadalajara, your RV will be towed, you have to use the periferico, or like Mexico for the license plate control.

I think we can be at some risk no matter where we go. The list of countries with the crime stats I posted above is quite long with countries you might not think up higher than you might think. People who think nothing of going to certain Caribbean islands would never go to Mexico. Lots of other places people will go or will not go with much of it based on rumor and gossip and misinformation - alternative facts - fake news. Statistics are statistics and may well be meaningless. It is always difficult to know if a road problem today will be a road problem tomorrow - or that crime areas will be the same one day as the next. Keeping up with events as they happen on forums like this can help. But we all know bad things can happen anywhere at any time. We can hide or we can live.

As far as Guadalajara - I have not heard about being towed but I would not want to try to drive through the middle of town. There are now perifericos around town and new ones being built to keep us further from town. We have heard that trucks and buses are supposed to take the lateral roads on the side of the periferico not drive on the periferico. We do not know if this applies to RVs but we have driven the periferico in our Bus and probably got lucky in that we did not get stopped. We have not done it often as we try to avoid big cities with our motorhome - though we do take our car to visit the cities.

As far as the Mexico City License Plate Restrictions (Hoy No Circula) I have posted at length about this and gotten into arguments on this forum about it. As much as I can find about the specifics of this can be found on this thread . . . .

https://forums.goodsamclub.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/29024788/srt/pa/pging/1/page/1.cfm . . .

but I am not sure anyone can answer for sure as it seems the whole thing can be open to interpretation and not even law enforcement people in that area know for sure. We do not intentionally take our motorhome into that area but there are places we would visit in our car.

Thanks briansue for the info. on crime rates, it put things in perspective, US versus Mexico is one example. I only traveled on the main land with a caravan so far to Mexico, Ixtapa and PV. I did north from Mexicali to Ensenada a few years back.

I never felt any danger, but did hear some stories from other groups. It would be nice to have a list or a map of places not to go through. Not in general because we already have warnings for the northen states, but things like do not use a specific road or do not go through a specific town.

For example I was told not to go through Guadalajara, your RV will be towed, you have to use the periferico, or like Mexico for the license plate control.


Thanks

I guess maybe I should spend more time learning to use ioverlander but so far it does not seem to suit our purposes. It has useful information for small rigs and tenters and some info for big rigs like us but as I look it over in the US it is lacking. Example would be - there are dozens of RV parks etc. around the Yuma, AZ area but not one shows up on ioverlander. It probably depends on what you are looking for and where you are looking. I know of places in Mexico that are not on ioverlander. It is probably like anything else - the people out in the world need to report on these places so they get listed. And detailed information is the most useful information - a few words tells us very little. But it can certainly be a resource and by all means should be added to the tools used by anyone who travels as most of us do. Lots of people on this forum can help with tips about Mexico but beyond that info can be limited.

briansue wrote:
I don't really know all the details of how to use it but this . . . http://ioverlander.com/ . . . website is supposed to have a lot of info about camping etc. in lots of countries around the world. This is mostly for smaller camper vehicles and tenting I think.

They also list parks for big rigs. They have pretty well taken over from the churchs guide

Adventuretrek has caravans in July. Caravanas de Mexico will get you to the Belize border if they have room for a one way. (Oct & Jan)

Ioverlander ioverlander.com is far more than camping and also has a lot of info about border crossing procedures that is hard to find anywhere else.

From all the information published on a few specialist overlanding facebook groups and forums dealing with the Americas and from my own experience (but none in Central America), it is quite obvious that the personal danger posed from criminal acts by travelling through the entire Americas is absolutely not worthy of consideration, BUT some of the border crossings need careful attention. For instance there is one country in Central America where if you are heading south through it, you can't return north through that country within 90 days. Possibly some exemptions or procedures to mitigate it but a few get caught out by the rule.

iOverlander does have a BigRig suitability estimation but as Brian said, our big rigs tend to be a bit different. Man truck up to 8'6" wide, 12' high and up to 30' long, but ranging down to bicycles too

Just a few overlanding vehicles down in South America

One comment relevant to the OP is that many countries do not permit permanent importation of vehicles under any circumstances or only if they are less than 2 or 5 years old and the valuse they figure the import taxes on are what the vehicle would cost brand new in that country

I don't really know all the details of how to use it but this . . . http://ioverlander.com/ . . . website is supposed to have a lot of info about camping etc. in lots of countries around the world. This is mostly for smaller camper vehicles and tenting I think.

In the winter season of 2008 and 2009 the wife and I traveled all the countries in central america. We had a great trip in our class c at the time by ourselves and met a lot of nice people. Crossing the borders presents a challenge if you try it yourselves,but there where at the time facilitators at the borders and for a fee would guide you through the process and change your money. Rv parks are scarce, there was a full service park in San Jose Costa Rica also one at Santa Clara, Panama which is a little north of Panama City other than that it was campgrounds no hook ups or boondocking or truck stops. We boondocked in a large parking lot by the Balboa Yacht Club in Panama City for two weeks while we visited the area and a few times left the rv there for a few days while visiting other parts as there was no campground or rv park there in Panama City.Though our info is not current it might be of some help. Travel and enjoy.

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