In mid-late summer, I’m going to be driving from Mexico to southern South America looking for cannabis seeds. I had been planning to do this in Asia this year, but Asia is gonna be closed for a while. I’ve decided instead, to drive the pan-American highway in my Suzuki Samurai, which I’m having built up for the journey right now. My plan right now is to set up a forward home base in Central America and use it to launch smaller, more manageable excursions to search for seeds, which I plan on giving away here for free.
In a couple months, I’ll start a signup wiki where people can sign up to get seeds. I’d like to start with 200 slots, and then adjust from there based on how the search is going. From there, more can be added and people can note country preference. I’d like to really emphasize expectation management here. Everything is complicated, difficult, and turbulent now with covid, but even with that said, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get a few thousand seeds over the course of a year in Latin America. In the next few months, I’ll be working to figure out seed distribution logistics.
My plan is to livestream as much as possible and document every part of the trip with photography and video. You’ll get to meet and know me on a personal level, which horrifies and terrifies me; the scariest part of all this is putting myself out there on social media. But, what’s a life if you don’t use it.
Now, for the prep… it’s really expensive, firstly. I’m throwing absolutely every cent I have at this, though, which is partly why I’m so certain it’s going to happen; cash generates inertia.
The Suzuki Samurai is in decent shape for the job, but needs a substantial amount of work.
It just had its engine and rear diff rebuilt. I’m having the electrical redone now. God I hate electrical issues. Unfortunately, the previous owners lifted it with a body lift, so I’m going to have to remove that and install new suspension, a spring over axel system. I also need new bumpers and a winch and recovery kit, in addition to heavy duty radiator and high output alternator. I’m going to need off-road lighting. Basically, if it’s old, it probably needs to be replaced. I’m going to have all the work done just because of a lack of time and sub-optimal knowledge. I need:
-Warn M800 winch w/recovery kit/tools
-ARB front and back bumpers
-New exhaust
-High output alternator
-Heavy duty radiator
-Electric radiator fan
-Spring over axel lift with all new suspension components
-Offroad lighting
-New top
-Carb rebuild (or swap, possibly)
-New wiring harness and rewiring the vehicle
I also need a considerable amount of individual gear. Luckily, I’ve got a lot from past adventures, and I’ve been able to slowly acquire more. Here’s my most recent layout/inventory:
I need still some of the more substantial pieces of kit. I’m going to need a satellite phone. I’m thinking about the Iridium Go, but I’ll have to use satellite time very sparingly. It’s super expensive. I also need a couple of GoPros. One for the the car, pointed at me, and one I’ll wear on a chest mounted rig when appropriate and safe. The camera I’ll be using is a Nikon D750 with a 35mm f1.4. I only photograph at the full frame 35mm focal length—a weird quirk of mine. I can carry more since I’m in a vehicle, so that changes the packing dynamic quite a bit. The core kit will be:
Sat phone
GPS
Compass
Binoculars
Camera
Waterproof notebooks w/ pens
Passport
Everything else is just there to make things easier, more comfortable, or to mitigate risk.
I’ll be posting preparation progress and periodic updates to this thread. Again, I’d like to focus on expectation management a bit. The world is pretty chaotic right now; if aliens came down from the heavens tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t be all that surprised. So, I appreciate your patience and look forward to more progress!
