The Driest Place on Earth – Atacama Desert, Chile

The Atacama desert in northern Chile is one of the driest places on earth. There has never been enough rainfall to make a record of the precipitation. This unique place has been on our “to visit” list ever since we…

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A Time Warp in the Baja Desert.

We got lost in space-time amidst the landscapes of Bahia de los Angeles. See the video and read all about it here.

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03/26/2015 – 630 days/52769 miles

After Death Valley, I headed further south to make my last stop in California…Joshua Tree.   I spent a few days hiking around the park, and another day riding around a few of the dirt tracks. Immediately after leaving the … Continue reading →

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More cacti, more sand, more stars… more of Baja

After a brief stint on the narrow and shoulderless Highway 1, we took our first opportunity to get back to the peaceful coast of the Sea of Cortez—via Bahía De Los Ángeles. It was here that we spotted our first roof dogs of the trip and started to really feel like we were in Mexico. As we […]

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Unwinding on the coast

After all the driving around we’d been doing in the USA, followed by some off-road adventuring around the mountainous back roads of Baja. It was time to slow down and enjoy the beach again. There is very little to report about our time in San Felipe. We simply spent several mornings and evenings on the beach, watching […]

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The Desert and the Grind

  Heather We decided on a whim to head to Osoyoos, number 1 it has a cool name, number 2 […]

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Utah. Definitely another planet.

Our initial plan to take a detour south through Escalante—Grand Staircase National Monument was foiled—by torrential rain washing out Cottonwood Road. We formulated ‘Plan B’ when a couple we spoke to in Kodachrome Basin State Park motivated us to pay a visit to Capitol Reef National Monument. A quick look at a map showed an […]

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Utah. Possibly another planet. Part 2.

Still not convinced that the landscapes of Utah would be more at home on another planet? Take a look at the slot canyons of Grand Staircase—Escalante National Monument. These are deep, narrow canyons carved into sculptural forms by flood waters as they sweep through the canyons after heavy rainfall. In our attempt to explore some of […]

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Nevada, not just aliens and neon lights

Since we completely failed to be abducted by aliens in Nevada, we felt it was time for some adventures of a different kind.  First up was a really big dam.  I guess we expected more. It wasn’t as large as we had imagined and what we had really wanted to do was visit the old […]

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The lowest point of our trip

All trips have their low points. This journey is no exception.  Fortunately this particular low point is measured in altitude, not in how many hours we spent plotting to poison each other.  We arrived in Death Valley after the worst of the summer heat… or at least we thought we had. It was still a […]

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The desert coast of Chile

Leaving Tal Tal (Taltal?) after a night we ride south, following the PanAm as it moves in and out of the desert and along the Pacific.  We ride the most compacted dirt road I’ve ever been on for 20-30 miles… Read More ›

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Chapter 14/Iran

Further into our quest we headed to Esfahan. This is Iran’s No1 tourist destination and there is a very good reason for this. Its gathering of tree-lined boulevards,
Persian gardens and important Islamic buildings gives the city a visual appeal unmatched by any other Iranian city. The many artisans working here keep up the reputation as […]

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San Pedro de Atacama to the Coast of Chile

The last few miles of the ride down into San Pedro de Atacama passes through some lovely moonscape that reminds me of the Badlands back home in South Dakota. Fitting since that is where you turn onto the road that… Read More ›

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Northern Chile

We ride south out of Ollague not knowing what the road will be like.  We hope to make it to Calama and then turn east to go to San Pedro de Atacama, an oasis in the desert of northern Chile, for… Read More ›

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Burning Man—Everyone else has an opinion on it, so we feel like we should.

At one point the explanation on the Burning Man website read that: “Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular colour looks like to someone who is blind.”. We think this pretty much sums it up, but we […]

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Across southern Peru

After stopping for lunch in Nazca the town, we keep moving on the PanAm that has now turned east and climb up and out of the desert dunes to the high mountain plateaus of southern Peru. Not far out onto… Read More ›

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An oasis and desert drawings in Peru

After 3 days in Lima we keep moving south. Paracas National Park on the coast sounds incredible but there’s not a lot of roads there and the sand riding sounds like way too much work for me and my heavy… Read More ›

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Central Morocco

We arrived In Merzouga a little worse for wear but (myself anyway) incredibly excited to plow the Landy over some sand dunes. I quickly learned that the sand dunes that you picture when you think of the Sahara are actually sand seas, some, such as Erg Chebbi, not more than 30km across. The majority of the Sahara is actually…

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Ghost Towns and Deserts

While on the drive between the mountains and the Bardenas Reales in the north of the Navarra region, we noticed a surreal long abandoned village on a mountain side. The place had evidently never had a road leading to it, and the track that did was little more than a footpath, but we plowed the…

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The joys of the desert, or: A new level of heat

The day we had set to leave Khartoum, we got up at 4:30ish and rolled out of the gates of our Youth Hostel at 6am. The roads in Khartoum were eerily empty – lucky for us also void of rainwater…

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