Joey & Flaco’s Excellent South American Adventure

Joey Jordan -

Racer, Coach and Adventurer!

Contact: Joey Jordan at N/A

    

• Propane powered cars in Belize
• Racing a Toyota Yaris in Guatemala at the base of a volcano 
• How he converted his right-hand drive to left-hand drive in Nicaragua to try and fool Costa Rican officials into letting his “illegal” car into the country… and how that got him stranded in no man’s land, stuck in between two countries and then later cost him a stint in a tourist prison
• Hanging out with crazy truck drivers in Colombia and Bolivia 
• His overall love/hate affair with my van; the relationship between car/man. 
• The Peruvian driving insanity and why order is good… why you should be happy to follow all the “stupid” rules we have on the streets here in America.
• Trying to locate car parts in Latin America.  
• Getting stuck in the Bolivian salt flats
• Chile’s roads with extra-grippy asphalt through the surfaces of the corners
• How the vibe of culture really comes across in overall driving styles throughout the country and the overall freedom of traveling by car brought him to beautiful places not many “gringos” have seen.

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports related.

With tonight’s guest, we could easily wax poetic about all his Mazda Cup and touring car races. But instead, we need to focus on an amazing 26,000 mile journey that S R O TC America driver, Joey Jordan, and his Van Flaco took in order to make his return to motorsports. I had the pleasure to meet up with Joey at the Porsche Experience Center in Los Angeles, where he works now.

But before we get there, we have to rewind and unpack this telenovela filled with stories of man versus machine love and hate, and even some South American jail time. So without further ado, welcome to Break Fix, Joey Jordan. Thank you, Eric. Thanks for having me. This is gonna be a lot of fun. So let’s start off by what drove you to leave GT Racing and head to South America?

What kicked off this whole [00:01:00] adventure? Yeah, it’s kind of hard to like nail down exactly why I chose the path to go down to South America. I know why I left racing and it was like a hard decision. It was my childhood dream to become this race car driver. I just put all my like life energy into it, pissed off girlfriends, pissed off, friends, you know, all of this for racing.

And I just got to realize as I started to progress through my racing career, That it wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to be. You know, I had some hard moments. So basically it was like my trip down to South America in this big travel was like my long walk down the beach after I was heartbroken by my childhood dream, you know?

I was like, wow, this thing that I’ve been trying to do my whole life isn’t, Really for me, I guess, and that was my journey away from it, I guess. So you got a couple bucks in your pocket, you pack your backpack, you get on a plane at lax. Why South America? Of all the places in the world to go to see? No, I didn’t get on a plane.

I drove to South America [00:02:00] from my house in California. Whoa. In a van that I, I imported from Japan. I still liked cars. My little breakup from racing didn’t exclude my fandom towards cars. So I chose a specific van from Japan. A Toyota Haase four wheel drive, diesel. Manuel. Yeah. So I drove it down from Southern California and you named it after our elite quarterback, Joe Flaco, right?

No, not quite. I’ve been going to Mexico a lot of my life. Anyone who’s like tall and skinny, or they’ll be ironic who isn’t skinny. They’ll call them flaco, which means skinny and this van, because Japanese vehicles get a higher tax if they’re wider than five and a half feet. It was only five and a half feet wide.

Nice. So that’s why we called it flaco skin. So you drive from LA all the way down to South America. So where do you find yourself? What happens next? It starts in Mexico and that’s pretty much smooth sailing. I’m kind of trying to find myself and figure out what’s going on and yeah, I’m just trying to figure out how to do it like I’m living out of a van [00:03:00] meeting new people.

I’m trying to figure out different rules of the road. One of the first things I did in Mexico besides surf a lot and drink a lot of Mexican beer, was actually went to the world rally championship race WRC by Leon, Mexico, and that was. Cool and crazy and yeah, that was a lot of fun. W r c as many of the fans of this show know is near and dear to my heart.

I, I feel that oftentimes I’m the only person in our organization or even in the D M V that appreciates w rrc. So I, I feel you there. It’s awesome. It’s a great sport to see in person. Yeah. And to do it with the fans. In, in Mexico, they were so like, Crazy and passionate and I was camping with like this one family and they uh, gave me a lot of mescal and tequila and was just, I dunno, it was a fun time.

It was crazy. Was there a shift for you there now on the other side of the fence with the fans and feeling their enthusiasm and their excitement versus being on the track? What was that transition like? It was different cuz the rally watching, rally racing, I’m used to road racing [00:04:00] so I was kind of trying to figure it out with the fans.

Of course I have a little more inside perspective of what the driver might be going through, but I kind of went into it not knowing what to expect at all and quite the spectacle, all-wheel drive crazy to see them just hook it around those corners and power out. Barely counter steering. Was there any one brand that stuck out to you?

Were you cheering for the Toyota’s or the Hyundais, or, not brand specific, but there was a local driver racing in one of the, like the lower classes that the guys that I was hanging out with told me about. And I think he was just driving like it was a Subaru of some sort. I related to him. They didn’t have much money.

It was a beat up car and he was just going for it. You continue to make your way south, then what happens? Let’s see. I go south and I’m just kind of cruising along. I meet like crazy Australian guy. He starts traveling with me, and then I meet a German girl and a British girl. So we’re all going along as a band of four in this tiny little five and a half foot band.

Yeah, yeah. We would stop at like hostels and stuff, or we, I [00:05:00] also had like a tent in hammocks and it’s really warm. It’s like the jungle. So we would just. Park on the beach and they would sleep in the hammocks or tents or wherever we could fit people. Sometimes in cities we’d all have to pack in all five of us sleeping in the van.

But yeah, then we made our way into Belize, which is the like southern east part under the Yucatan Mexico. Much like most Americans, I didn’t know much about Belize at all and it is, you know, I kind of thought it was an island, but nope, it’s part of Central America and it in Belize, it’s kind of like what you would think of Jamaica as they speak English, first of all.

Okay. Like they speak like a Creole English, which is, I didn’t even know, existed. Like a different dialect of English. So it’s kind of like Rastafari in, that was very interesting. Probably car wise, most interesting thing because they were part of the Commonwealth, their gas prices are way, way high. Right.

Just like England. So they use like the same form as England did, cuz it used to, it was an English territory. So because it’s so high and it is a poor country, they actually convert a lot of their cars. It’s. I guess it’s kind of a hybrid system, but [00:06:00] to propane power vehicles. So they have a big propane tank in the back of a lot of their cars, essentially a bomb hooked up to their car.

And I had a guy like show me how it worked. They had like a switch that would turn it from the combustion engine to the propane engine and yeah, that was just wild who, totally different kind of car scene down there. So is Belize like we are to believe it was. As we’ve seen it on like top gear or on the world’s, you know, greatest roads and and toughest roads and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, there’s some that are really, really bad, but it’s mostly just like pretty doable overall the road wise. It’s the other drivers that can make it like hairy. There’s definitely some bad roads, but like if you wanted to go to Belize and drive through it, and if you did research, there’s plenty of good roads to get you to wherever you need to be.

Just when you go off the beaten path and get lost, like I have did several times, that’s when you encounter these crazy, crazy roads. So any issues with the van? Up until this point it was, uh, pretty reliable except like I had a top bunk bed thing set [00:07:00] up like almost like a hammock. And the Australian Dan, I think was sleeping in and that fell like on me while I was sleeping.

So we had to scratch that idea. You know, I had an obnoxious amount of rust and was kind of like driving in a candy wrapper. Were you ever worried that if something broke, you wouldn’t be able to find parts for it or anything like that? Being an imported vehicle from Japan? Yeah, I mean, that’s part of the research that I did, so I knew it’d be fresh from California.

But once it got into South America, this van, except for in the United States, is one of the most ubiquitous vehicles they make. It’s everywhere. It starts in Panama. There’s a big Toyota Haase scene there. They modify ’em. And then in South America they have, they’re everywhere. They’re like the regular taxi van.

So I wasn’t too worried about parts, but if I broke down early, it would’ve been a little bit of an issue. You had a diesel and you had a Toyota. So it’s reliable and reliable, right? So yeah, e, exactly. And I got one beat up on purpose cuz from previous adventures, I’ve learned that you kind of have the best time when it breaks down or like [00:08:00] when you have something unexpected happen.

I didn’t over-engineer it at all. It was just kind of what it was and I drove it. But yeah, up until this point, no major issues. Do you think it helps you blend in too with the locals as you’re kind of traveling? I mean, that’s a big thing too. So I grew up in San Diego and I went down to Mexico a lot, and that’s where I learned you want to blend in with your cars down there.

I have friends who go down there and they’re Ford Raptors and they’re gonna get pulled over by police all the time. They’re gonna get hassles. Yeah, it’s a big part of it was about blending in. As we continue this journey, what are you guys doing for money? Are you just living off of reserves? Are you kind of living off the land?

How is that working as you’re continuing down this path? I was living off of reserves. I saved up a lot of money. But you can live cheaply, especially when you don’t have to pay for hotels. And I did harvest a lot of food. Like I’m a I spearfish too, so I would spearfish for food. I wasn’t doing as much spearfishing then, but there’s like coconuts and the food’s just really cheap overall.

Like I remember we were staying on one hostel where I met some of the girls I ended up traveling with and like mangoes would just fall into the pool [00:09:00] that you’re swimming in and you just take it, eat that like, I don’t know. It’s pretty easy to live, you know, cheaply down there. That’s part of the appeal, I guess, Belize to Guatemala.

And in Guatemala you find yourself back behind the wheel of a race car. How did that come to be? Yeah, Guatemala. Beautiful country, first of all. I was so shocked by its beauty and it’s like so close to us. You know, like here in Southern California, I think it’s like a four or five hour plane ride and it, it’s not like a hot jungley place that I thought it would.

They do have some of that more like cloud foresty, almost like San Francisco type of weather. And really green and beautiful love Guatemala. Got up in there and climbed up their huge mountain into the Capitol City and Ara Kipa. And you know, I did have some plans like, okay, I’m breaking up with racing here in motor sports for a little bit, but it, it was hard to completely like, let go.

So I had some ideas of like, Well, maybe I can film how different cultures race, you know, and take a part of it and I can make like some little sizzle reel and then send that off to whoever was a part of the race. Like if [00:10:00] they were on Yokohama tires, I could send that off to Yokohama, you know, and, and see if we could work out something where they could gimme a little extra cash to help me if my travels and I could provide them some cool, genuine content.

But yeah, that, that was part of my idea is like maybe I could see Anthony Bourdain’s, you know, parts unknown, where he, he sees different cultures through food. I was gonna think maybe I can do that through cars and racing. Yeah. I just started kind of shopping around on Facebook, found a guy from Ireland who knew some people who’s an expat, who actually lives down there and I already knew.

Where the, there was a race track near where I was kind of staying. Honestly, how I found it was Wikipedia. There’s a really long, awesome list of racetracks all across the world by country, and you can click on those tracks and then just like put that on the Facebook and you’ll see all the local races that run there.

But yeah, then I, I found my way into a Toyota Yarus and the Yarus Cup. You walk up with your helmet and you’re driving the suit. They said, oh, Joey, we see you in s Rro and they let you in. I mean, what was that process like? Yeah. They [00:11:00] don’t really have as much regulations there. Right. It’s um, and that’s kind of the beauty of it.

It’s almost like I felt like I was racing, like in the seventies there, and they were excited to have an American driver. I don’t think they’ve ever heard of me, an American race car driver that just gave me like some credentials. And I know they, they sides. Stepped their local licensing process and let me run as they told me in Mexico, on my way down, you know down there it’s the true Bais Lire, which is the real free country.

You can kind of do what you want and that’s the same in that race. You didn’t need a license. So how did you do in the Yaris Cup? I think I was like mid pack. They were, they did not want to let the gringo go by or be anywhere near them. There were some good drivers, but it was like a crazy tight track and I was, I don’t know what equipment I had anyways.

Race, car driver. Excuses. Excuses. Yeah, I was about mid-pack and just got beat up on by everyone. A lot of fun. Great to meet everyone. Crazy amount of fans. Insane amount of fans with all the flag girls and [00:12:00] promotions and wild experience. There’s a volcano erupting the background, you know, I remember that we were on preg grid and I feel a vibration, you know, I’m starting to tune into the car.

I’m like, what was that? I’m like, wait, the car’s not even on yet. I didn’t know if like the engine was shaking. Yeah, I remember Like finding out. Oh yeah. The volcano was just erupting. It was just right behind us. That’s pretty awesome. It was a road course, not like a rally cross or anything. No, it was. It was a road course.

Tight little road course, probably like only a mile and a half long. A bunch of corners. I think my favorite part of that race. This will give you an idea of. Exactly how much they live in the past and how much, uh, they don’t really have rules or regulations. There was a guy who broke down in the inside of turn one.

He was like maybe a foot off the track and he hops out of his car, which is my first red flag. Like, whoa, whoa, you don’t do that. But then he runs over and finds his mechanic in the paddock with his folk gear. He ran across the front straight away, have his mechanic with the right amount of wrenches, and they [00:13:00] start working on their car.

There’s just a standing yellow flag and they’re working on the car on the inside of turn one, uh, no protection. They get it running. The mechanic runs back across the track. The guy gets strapped in and, uh, yeah, he finished the race, so. Wow. Yeah, it’s insane. I can’t even, you know, the first rule of, of any of these schools and even the races never get outta your car unless it’s on fire.

Right. I mean, it’s just like, wow. I know, I know. People are just watching like, oh yeah, good job. Get your car running. That’s great. So for Guatemala, you head to Nicaragua and you make your first set of mods to flaco. The Van Nicaragua is where things started to not go to plan, and that’s a big part of Latin America is it’s hard to kind of plan in that kind of long form of travel.

Things are gonna go wrong. I was actually planning on doing another race in Costa Rica that I was trying to get down to, but in Nicaragua, forgot the president’s name. I think he’s still the president. Ortega. He’s been the president forever. But there is a bunch of protests. It started something with students, but basically it was the, the typical, [00:14:00] like it turned violent and it was government versus the people.

It just got really crazy and Nicaragua pretty fast. And I think Nicaragua is one of my favorite countries, so it’s a shame that was happening. But yeah, I get into Nicaragua, there’s a bunch of protests going on, like roadblocks. I knew I wanted to get to the South quickly, and Nicaragua takes up the whole Central America.

I can’t go anywhere around it. So I have to go through Nicaragua. I know these protests are going on. I had to go through like crazy roadblocks and back roads, and a bunch of local families helped me out. A lot of times the roadblocks were violent, so it was pretty edgy. But then I got down to the southern part of Nicaragua where there’s a bunch of surf and just kind of hung out there, pretty stressful, drive down.

So I partied quite a bit, kind of cut the edge off and enjoyed myself. And then, um, the protest just kept getting worse. So I was like, well, time to go to Costa Rica. I go to Costa Rica, they just look at my car. And they’re like, what? What’s that? I’m like, what do you mean it’s a car? And they’re like, this is all in Spanish, but like, we don’t allow right hand drive [00:15:00] vehicles.

Interesting. And that’s when I found that out. So right at Costa Rican border just completely unprepared. My journey ends there if I can’t drive through Costa Rica. Costa Rica is thanks to American tourism, a little more built up and they actually have rules and regulations. There’s certain situations in Latin America where you can just bribe them, and I think I got up to like a grand, and they were not budging on letting me through at all.

So there I was. I have violent protests pushing on me from the north. I was just trapping this one little kind of touristy town called San Juande er in the southern western part of Nicaragua. But I didn’t know how bad the protests were gonna get. They were talking potentially full civil war. Like I needed to get outta there so I could have just left the van there and hope that it would get better and, and continue my journey on foot.

I could just stop my trip. I could have put it on a boat, but nothing seemed very legal or like organized the boat that I’d have to put it onto. I would’ve had to go to the Capitol City, which was a really bad situation, I guess, being an idiot and thinking I [00:16:00] can just get my way with things. I came up with another option, which is.

I bet I can just move the wheel to the other side of the car, drive across the border super late at night, just engineer something, put like a fake dash and hopefully they won’t notice and I can just sneak through. Cause I know once I was in Costa Rica, none of the officials would care. It was just the border officials that cared.

And you’re not alone. So your passenger, who is technically in the driver’s seat, could be operating the pedals while you’re steering from the left hand side of the car. That was the crazy part I, to get this fabricated, I had to go into this city just north of me where they did have protests called Reuss.

I asked all these different fabrication shops if they could help me. It was the dirtiest grimiest one that said yes eventually, like the last one. And it was essentially a muddy parking lot with a chain link fence. I remember when I walked in, they were welding over a bunch of spilled diesel fuel, and there’s a spark shooting on that fuel.

It’s like, [00:17:00] Ooh, this is gonna be, I guess is the adventure I’d asked for, and took a steering rack out of another Toyota now that would fit my steering wheel. And we welded it in the passenger side through the glove box to my dash, basically another steering rack. And then we welded a pulley, like a drive pulley to both steering racks.

Oh, ran a belt. The wheel would actually drive the car on the other side. And this took a few days. I slept in this dirty decently lot with these crazy mechanics who just smoking cigarettes and welding. It was a pretty authentic experience. But yeah, and then we built like this fake dash around it. I didn’t come up with a way or really felt like at the time to do anything with the pedals.

So the pedals stayed on the right side of the car. While the wheel was on the left. And the crazy thing is, is I had to drive it to where I had some friends in the partying town I was hanging out in. I had to drive it to them by myself. Ooh. So I’m on the right side with the pedals and driving the stick shift with my left hand holding this steering wheel.

That was pretty crazy, especially [00:18:00] because I had to go through a pretty intense roadblock to get back there. Some guys and machetes trying to slash at my tires. It wasn’t good, but So did this modification render the steering wheel on the, or what would be the right hand side of the car inoperable Or did they both work?

There was no steering on the right side, so I just took Oh, gotcha. Stock one off and put, it was normally the passenger’s side. You needed a quick release so you could go from one side to the other. Right. I know that would’ve been smart, but I don’t think they had any quick releases there. I was pressed for time.

Right. There was like, in hindsight, I should have just hung out longer, but they really didn’t know what the situation was gonna be like in Nicaragua. They said everything is gonna get really bad. Everyone was recommending to just get out of the country. So it was kind of like my only option. But yeah.

Then I got to the town with San Juan del Se where my, I had a few friends left over. I asked this Canadian guy to wait for me and we, uh, drove it across together so we could at least mimic, you know, a driver in a passenger and a hilarious, we were in tears driving it to the border, um, in Costa Rica. [00:19:00] Cause it’s, it’s just so funny.

Like, I think top gear’s done some racing series like that where someone does the pedals and the other person does a steering wheel. Great exercise. I didn’t think they didn’t get across on that episode, how fun that is, but it was super entertaining. So you now find yourself in Costa Rica with a modified van?

Not yet. Oh, not yet. No. Nope, not yet. So there’s no real, uh, shortcuts to the story, but we go to the, we drive to the border, crying laughter. We get there and there’s so many different checks to go through, and we get through probably eight of those checks. Four on the Nicaragua side, three in the Costa Rican side, and we did it at midnight, so no one could tell.

And people were looking inside the car, it was going perfectly. Last guy comes out in the Costa Rican side. He basically was like looking for the vin, and then he saw that there was no pedals underneath the steering wheel. And then he shined his light and he could see everything. I would later learn to know him as.

Elfe, which is the boss, wrong man to find at midnight. And he wasn’t very happy with me. He’s [00:20:00] like, you’re never coming into this country. You have to go back. He actually let my friend who was with me go, cause I just pleaded him and said like, Hey, he had nothing to do with this. So they let him go. So he walked into Costa Rica and found a bus.

So I was by myself. I tried to go back into Nicaragua to just kind of gather myself. The word got around fast and Nicaragua all of a sudden made up a law that said they don’t allow on right hand drive cars anymore. Even though I was just there, I was like, I just drove through here. What do you mean? So I was stuck.

It was about 200 yards in between Costa Rica and Nicaragua of No Man’s Land. I would spend a few days there. I’d later call it Nika Rka. It was my own country. Nice. Yeah. And so yeah, I was stuck there. I was really, again, left with no options. I could have potentially gone on foot and just left my van there talking to some of the officials and they said, maybe you could do that, maybe you couldn’t.

So I was just playing with those options. I ended up going into Costa Rica Foot, they did let me in and I left the van there. And [00:21:00] then I just had to come up with the option of like, okay, do I leave the van here and continue the journey on foot? Does Costa Rica have my van now? And I really thought about just giving it up there because it was like a lot, you know, going through Nicaragua that was on the brink of a revolution was a lot on my consciousness.

So I ended up going back to Rescue Flaco when I tried to bring it back and just come up with a way to just get it through there. They essentially put me and flaco into this. I don’t even know what it was. I wasn’t allowed to leave. I just call it a tourist prison, essentially, it was this huge fenced off barbed wired yard where they had other cars and other people who weren’t allowed really in the country or they had some issues.

There’s a few Germans there and another American family there who also ran into issues and we weren’t really allowed to leave. We were stuck until we could figure out our issues. We were there. There’s a bathroom wifi Wow. In this little muddy lot. Yeah, and I don’t even remember how long I was there for.

It wasn’t too long until I jumped through all the hoops and litigations to tow [00:22:00] flaca all the way across Costa Rica and into Panama. So I ended up being the solution. Yeah. I had a little stint there in this, I don’t even know what to call it. This little tucked away, locked in yard. In in town block, right?

Yeah, exactly. That brought me into Panama. I kind of had a leap Frog Costa Rica. So in Panama, what did you end up doing there? Or did you just kind of continue your journey on up till now? That’s like four months of my trip. First I had a van with two steering racks, so I was trying to figure that out.

Just kind of trying to process what was happening, what I should do With my trip, I lost a lot of money. I had to spend nearly four grand. I just towed the van and I was kind of documenting my trip a little bit and I just scrapped that. I was just doing some soul searching in Panama, but I also had the, the next task of you can’t actually drive across in between Panama and Columbia.

It’s known as the Darien Gap. I think a couple Americans did it once and just the Darien gap, it took them three years to drive through. You basically have to like cut through the jungle. So what you have to do is put [00:23:00] your car on a, on a boat. I was figuring out how to do that. We actually have to put it in a shipping container and ship it to Columbia.

So in Panama is doing a lot of spear fishing, hanging out at the beach, trying to figure out the process of how to ship my van across, trying to figure out what I’m gonna do with my journey. You know, I’m young, I’m 23 years old. I’m just trying to like also go on this journey to like find myself and find what I was gonna do with my life.

A lot of introspection, a lot of hanging out at the beach, doing some surfing, doing some spear fishing. Panama was a beautiful country as well. So you and Flaco then end up in Columbia? Yeah, I’m in Columbia. I start to really find my groove of doing this whole van life thing. And this was in 2018. Just to give you guys an idea, you know, I, I got really comfortable with spearfishing harvesting coconuts, living very cheaply.

You know, I, I was starting to figure out my money problem. I was making these. Psychological gains of just spending all this time with myself and thinking, and I was feeling really good about myself and figured like I had things just figured [00:24:00] out. So was racing on your mind at any point? Did you have flashbacks to being on the track or was it the furthest thing from your mind at that time?

After I missed the race in Costa Rica and I lost a lot of, it was like the furthest, I think it was pretty far out of my mind. I was still always looking at cars and the car culture and seeing what they’re doing and, but racing, yeah, it just seemed like a distant dream, you know? Like that you like, yeah, that was a profound experience, but what kind of progression did you see the further you went south?

How did the car culture change and what kind of vehicles were you seeing as you moved through this? I would say that the theme of Central America and like Mexico and, and Guatemala and all those countries is just improvisation. They, anytime they have a problem with the car, they’re so creative and, and making it work.

And I really loved that. I mean, I remember seeing a car that the whole side wall was pretty blown out except for a few stitches and they just stuffed hay in the tire in this like work truck. And that’s what they were driving around in. Yeah. And I remember, I think we got a [00:25:00] flat tire somewhere, or someone I was traveling with got a flat tire.

Someone drove by like, oh no, that tire’s good. That has at least like 10 more years on it. Like just put some stuff in it and everyone just seems a little more mechanical down there cuz you have to be, if your car breaks down, you have to fix it. But lots of Toyotas, lots of Japanese vehicles, everything was older, more beat up and Guatemala.

They have crazy like chicken buses, which are all the school buses from the 1970s in America that they imported down there. That they just stuff with people and just go flying through these dirt roads. Yeah. And the style of driving, they just a lot of improvisation through there. But then in South America had started to kind of change more and get their own personalities.

I won’t get ahead of it there, cause that really started happen towards like Ecuador and Peru. I don’t want to get ahead of that. Columbia is, most of their cities are out like in these Rain Cloud forests, so it’s very high up in the, the start of the Andes, and it’s heavily populated cities. So the roads are absolutely insane.

Like that’s exactly what you saw on like the top gear [00:26:00] traveling episodes, like I think the World’s Dangerous Road is somewhere around there, but they drove on famously, like it’s pretty similar to that, except even busier going into Meine. The road is really tight and narrow and you have these truck, the truck drivers in all these countries.

They’re s, they have to be like the best drivers ever. I think they should be putting a world rally car and see how they do. They drive flat out, huh? Yeah. Yep. I hung out with a few of them at some truck stops and they’re just a crazy wild bunch. I mean, I’m sure they got some stories to share, huh? Yeah, and lots of drinks and they’re, they have a lot of energy.

Um, so did they give you tips on how to continue your journey? Like some of the best roads that take places to avoid and things like, I’m sure you probably gained some knowledge from those truck drivers. They would tell me like some roads that were good and bad, but they also had a big sense of humor and would just like to like mess with this random gringo, like hanging out, usually talking to them or hang out with them from like 10 o’clock at night until everyone woke up to drive the next morning and they would [00:27:00] just cut loose.

So they weren’t really in an advice frame of mind. Yeah, in some places like Columbia and in especially Bolivia, they had a lot of energy and that energy wasn’t really natural, right? It was kind of augmented by other substances, especially in Bolivia where it’s legal to just have coca leaves in your mouth.

So that’s the leaves they make cocaine out of, and that’s just what they’re chewing on, drinking a whole lot of. Stuff. Yeah. In Bolivia they drink, uh, this like spit juice that has fermented people chew on it, these things, and it’s called like cheetah. I don’t know. They made me try some. It wasn’t too bad, but, so did you ever get to ride with any of the truck drivers while they were on some of their runs to get the full experience?

Hell no. I would never want to do, no. I’m basically implying they probably weren’t sober while they were driving, so Yeah. Yeah. I got you. I got you. No, no, no, no, no. And the way they drove, like, I don’t think they cared and that was kind of their mentality, but almost like these rock stars, they didn’t really care if they crashed or if they made it.

They’re just there to make some money. The liver died, whatever. Full send, right? Full [00:28:00] send. Yeah. That’s it. They were happy to be there that night and to have enough money to, to buy a, a bottle of whatever liquor that country had. And that was it. So what was the political climate like once you crossed into Columbia and the other countries all the way through?

Was it, were you faced with more of these hazards or more of these protests, or was it different? Columbia kind of has just a long lasting political battle with like the Farc who, the people who operate the Darien gap. I did find some trouble cuz so right when I crossed in the Columbia, I, I was just right in that part where I thought I had everything figured out, you know, and I was just this like, like, okay, I made it through that Costa Rican debacle that Nicaragua one, I stayed in Nicaragua longer than most of the other tourists.

I think I know what’s going on. So I was camping along the beaches in, in northern Columbia, just not paying for campsite. Like I’ll just find some random beach myself on some dirt road and camp for free, like save money. I was fishing a lot for food, catching crabs on the beach for food. Just really [00:29:00] becoming like Tom Hanks in Castaway.

Like I had my Wilson in Flaco and we were just grooving. That ended up leading into kind of a, a rough patch there. But, and before I explain this, it’s really sad to me how afraid people are to travel to Latin America because of stories like what I’m about to tell, but. All these countries can be extremely safe, Nicaragua, all of them.

And they’re extremely beautiful. If you’re not an idiot like me, okay, I thought I could get away and just, and treat it like it was my own country, right? My own California, where I, I am safe and there’s secure places. If you just do a tiny bit of research, if I would’ve just done a little bit of research, I would’ve known that right hand drive vehicles aren’t allowed into Costa Rica.

It’s all over the internet. A lot of people have had similar problems like me, and then if I would’ve researched or just looked at a map, any of the traveling maps that they have, I would’ve seen that a beach that I was about to go camping to in a Northern Columbia was deep, deep farland and lots of bad stuff happen there.

But basically, yeah, you could go to [00:30:00] Columbia and be perfectly safe if you just do a little bit of research. I’m just an idiot. And I also like to find trouble. So, Camping on a beach in Columbia, like completely secluded. I passed by like one house with this kid playing like soccer with like a Belial rag ball, set up a fire.

I was looking for crabs, like I saw some crab holes. I found a coconut. I walked around naked for a little bit, like I was fully in it, like I’m jungle man. I was making this fire bent over and I heard like a twig snap and I turned around. One guy with a gun and one guy with a machete. Ooh. Yeah. I remember the weirdest thing was like when I heard that something behind me, I turned around, I almost like apologized, cuz every time in my life before it’d been startled, it’s just been like someone coming in the room like, oh, sorry, like, I didn’t see you there.

And I almost said like, oh, sorry. And then till I saw there was a gun pointed at me, I could tell pretty quickly by the size of their pupils, they, you know, we’re all filled with confidence. But basically, yeah, they tied me up, beat me up pretty good, pretty serious [00:31:00] situation. They told me they were gonna kill me, they cocked the gun in the back of my head.

I thought that was it. Pretty much ripped everything out of Flaco. For some reason they didn’t pull the trigger and they left me just tied up and beaten up on the beach. Do you think the fire was kind of the beacon that they knew you were there? Maybe had you not made that mistake, they wouldn’t have known or was it just you, this sole car that was at of place that also maybe got the attention of, of the community or something?

The fire wasn’t even at a point to where it would alert anyone yet. Cause it was like twilight, so you couldn’t see the glow, the flame yet. Like, I remember the sun was just setting and it was a beautiful sunset. I think they saw me roll up. Maybe that kid who saw me playing soccer saw me drive past, was like, Hey, guess what?

I saw some gringo. And then that’s such a weird thing to see for them. That news spread across probably a bunch of other small houses I didn’t even know were there. Yeah. And it becomes like a scene in a bad movie, like a Tarantino film suddenly or something, you know? Yeah, exactly. I think I, I have my private jungle beach.[00:32:00]

I’m walking around naked, they’re probably laughing, doing lines of coke, getting ready to take everything from me. Pretty harrowing experience. And yeah, I really don’t feel, uh, any like anger towards ’em at all. Like who knows what situation I’d be in if, like, if I was in their shoes and how poor some of them live.

If I saw some punk white boy walk onto my beach and he had like this fancy camera and my daughter’s like picking coffee beans and she has to be outta school, I would rob that guy and sell that stuff so my daughter could go to school in a heartbeat. So, Yeah, I don’t take anything away from them. Just learn some things.

Pretty, pretty crazy experience. So you graduated the school of hard knocks in Columbia, it seems like. So we gotta take a step back though. We gotta talk about Flaco for a minute. You did all these modifications in Nicaragua and Costa Rica, so did you have to undo the mods? What happened with Flaco at that point?

Obviously, like you said, a lot of stuff got taken. So now you’re there naked and afraid and the the van’s empty. What transpired next? Yeah, so I guess to catch you up [00:33:00] with Flaco, he in the city just not too far away from where I ended up getting robbed bot in Kia, Columbia. I got everything removed and I was driving around all on the right side, but there was still a steering rack there.

I basically just cut the pulley, took all the dash stuff out and put the steering wheel just onto the stock steering rack. But I had a bear steering rack just sticking out there, so that wasn’t very inviting to any friends that might meet. You wanna travel with me? So I got that, just cut out with like a, a grinder.

I just paid some guy like 10 bucks in Barron Kia, probably two days before I ended up getting robbed. Yeah, after I got robbed, I was just laying there like tied up. Probably had a few broken ribs pretty beat up and they told me. In Spanish, which my Spanish is like getting better, but it wasn’t the best.

They, they told me that a bunch of people in the jungle and then if I move within an hour, they’re gonna kill me. They’re gonna come and kill me. I have to stay there for an hour. So I got to lay there with like bloody snot and broken ribs tied up for an hour and just, I, who knows how much time it [00:34:00] was, but to me it seemed like forever.

So did anybody come to your rescue? How did you get untied? I basically had an inch worm across the sand. I was probably, maybe 20 yards, could have been 20,000 miles from Flaco, very painfully on some really beat up ribs. I was, it was excruciating pain. I had to really convince myself to do that. You know, a lot happens when you think you’re gonna die.

And I just remember that whole process. Like I kept thinking about my mom and I realized when I was laying there, oh wait, I’m alive. Like I can go see her. All the people, all the things that flashed in my head that I said goodbye to when I heard the caulking of that gun in the back of my head. I get that again if I just figure out how to get to my van and that.

And so that was the motivating factor to very painfully slide across my broken ribs to flaco. Very awkwardly like kind of backed myself up along the van and I knew I had kinda like a hunting knife and one of the door pockets, my hands were still free. It was just my legs and arms [00:35:00] that were tied up. So I was able to get that and cut me free enough to eventually get out and found a spare key.

Didn’t have time to really do triage, like all the drawers and everything and clothes were all thrown out of it. I just threw everything in and started it up and drove out of there. So where did you head to next? The local hospital or, or the next country in line. It’s almost hard to like remember where I was at.

There was a hostel that I stayed in, in carte henna Columbia before, so I limped into there. I didn’t have any money. So I begged them to let me stay until I could find like a friend. Cause I had a friend coming down there to meet me and was like, okay, I know he’s gonna be here if I can just get ahold of him.

They can pay this bill at this hostel. Don’t need to get into all the logistics of it. But I didn’t really have a plan. I had a lot of cash in the van. I had a lot of assets in the van that got stolen, and I got a lot of my, like, psyche stolen, you know? So I was just hovering and eventually I, I met up with my friend, you know, and I, I wanted him to still have a good [00:36:00] time.

So I just drove to Meine and we hung out there for a while and then, but eventually he left. And then I was just by myself and like I had to figure out what to do. But eventually I decided to just keep going. And I made it to the border of Ecuador. But I was like really outta money at that point. And I knew I probably couldn’t make it to my goal of Patagonia.

I had some credit cards. Luckily I didn’t find my passport, so I ended up getting ahold of my parents and telling them what happened. And of course that’s gotta be hard for parents. And uh, and I knew I needed to go make some more money, so they offered to like fly me back. So what I ended up doing was actually flew back to California for a little bit to make some money.

I left Flaco and Ecuador and then came back to continue the journey. That’s what ended up happening. But I remember when they bought me that plane ticket, I was sitting in e not quite Ecuador yet, and I was sitting in this mountain town and I was going through so much introspection, like I just got this renewal on life.

And I thought about just like throwing the ticket away and just living in that [00:37:00] town. I met some people there that were cool. I was like, I’m just gonna work in these coffee fields right here. I’m good right now. Like I almost died. Like maybe I can just go out that way. But I did hop on that plane. It was a close, close moment.

Did end up coming back to California. I didn’t really know if I was gonna come back to finish the trip cuz I was just so rattled and I didn’t really know what to make of life and death or anything anymore at that point. But I eventually decided like, I can’t let that be the story of my trip cuz then the FARC wins, then cocaine wins, then it’s a sad story.

So eventually I, I went back down to start the trip again and I So did you do any racing in between in your time back in California or did you say No, I’m still not ready to go back yet. I don’t think I did any racing. Luckily work at Porsche Experience Center, Los Angeles. I was able to continue on working there.

Thank goodness. So that’s, I guess, I mean, I was on a track every day. I can’t avoid it. Right. That’s kinda my opinion. Exactly. And I think there was some other stuff that, I can’t really remember it. It was really a weird state of mind [00:38:00] after that happened. It’s like I was just floating and appreciative to be breathing and not really putting much plan into my actions.

Right. Cause I was just, then you take a break from this grand adventure and then you hop on a plane and return to Ecuador. Is Flaco there waiting for you? Or did you find another Flaco? That was a big question at that point. When I left Flaco there, the situation was I could leave Flaco in this parking lot and I had to wait for my plane ticket out of there.

But the only money I had left, the only cash I could scrounge up. The only place I could stay cuz they wouldn’t let me stay in the van was in a brothel. So the last days before I flew back, I was sleeping in a brothel cause that’s all I could afford. And I would basically just sit in my room, eat tortilla cause it’s all I could eat with a little bit of the T sauce and some bananas.

And then I’d walk around town and like talk to people. I was kind of in a weird fugue state, but that’s where I left it from. So I had like no money. I couldn’t set up anything properly. So I really didn’t know if Flaco was gonna be there. But yeah, then I land in Ecuador and this town’s such a small [00:39:00] mountain border town, it’s like hard to get to.

But I ended up figuring out how to get some buses from the capitol of Ecuador and keto to this tiny mountain town. And Flaco had moved somehow from a different part of the parking lot. But it was still there. Wow. And I think it’d been like, sort of like six, maybe eight months. So just sitting there, it took me like an hour and I got it started.

The love hate relationship with Flaco continues. Did you find, especially with your time by yourself, did you find yourself, you know, like you said, it’s like you’re Wilson, did you find yourself like talking to Flaco and you know, hundred coaching him along, maybe, you know, the sound of the diesel was giving you motivation or something like, especially as you restarted this journey so many months later, what was, what was that like?

Flaco was completely my Wilson. I talked to him constantly. I, I mean, I was really talking to myself, but I mean, that’s why I think I like, love older cars so much. And that’s like my style that I started to develop when I left for the trip. I think I liked newer cars, like, you know, all the exotic cars, but old cars have character.

Flack out of personality. [00:40:00] He liked warm weather. He didn’t like cold weather. You know, like a person, he like to be driven a certain way. He would protest when I would drive him a little too hard for too long. Just little things that would build up. And yeah, sometimes he would just give me hell. But when I started him back up.

Like, it was very emotional. Like after the whole thing, after the robbery, I was almost like a zombie. I was like emotionless. But starting flaco back up and knowing that I could finish my journey, like I was almost completely breaking down when he, when I first drove him away. That was a pretty magical moment.

But then he quickly, uh, got on my dark side right after that. Oh yeah. So what broke? Yeah, everything started breaking after that. I don’t think it was good for him to sit. And yeah, that was at like 4,000 meters where he was parked. So roughly 12,000 feet elevation. I made it all the way to keto. Barely, barely, barely, barely kept breaking down.

It was like, had no power. It was overheating a little bit. So I found a really cool garage [00:41:00] in keto. That kind of took me in and helped me rebuild Flaco on the cheap. He let me do a lot of my own work and I just kind of paid like garage space and he ended up being race car driver in, in Ecuador. He raced like old, I think Volkswagen, like Carras, but maybe something different that’s even more unique, but some really cool little cars.

That was a cool experience hanging out with him and, and getting to know like a, a cool genuine car guy in Ecuador. But yeah, I had to source some fuel injectors. I had some problems with the fuel rail coming off. Everything was rusty, so it was breaking stuff. Got to know keto Ecuador really well. Had to stay there for like six weeks roughly.

You fire up Flaco, you get ’em all fixed up, you’re headed outta Ecuador and next on your list of countries, right? We did Columbia, we did Ecuador. Now it’s Peru and then Bolivia. So what happens in Peru, I spent quite a bit time in Ecuador. What I was starting to learn is that like traveling slow is like my style and what I like to do.

So I was actually spending a lot longer time in just a few towns and then moving in big chunks, something [00:42:00] American travelers, it takes time for them to learn. We like to just like go see and do all these things. The Ecuador is beautiful, cool car. Thing about Ecuador, their fuel is subsidized. So a gallon of diesel was $1.

Ooh, a whole gallon. Not today. It’s like six bucks a gallon here on the east coast. Yeah, I know, but it probably is still there. Maybe it’s like a dollar 25. They had a big protest when they, they wanted to raise the price of gas down there, not, not too long ago. So yeah, I was happy in Ecuador, just filling up my tanks of fuel.

Made a run into the Amazon in Ecuador and that was beautiful. I’ll never forget. I mean, I think this needs to be in a driving magazine is the most crazy thing I’ve seen from out of a windshield of a car. But I was driving in the Amazon jungle and I could see from Amazon Jungle a huge volcano covered in snow.

It made me feel like I was on a different planet, like how can I be seeing snow? I’m drenched in sweat right now and I’m just looking at the snow covered mountain. It was beautiful to see like the jungle start to rise up into [00:43:00] this mountain where there’s, there’s snow. But after I enjoyed Ecuador a lot, filled up all my spare jerrycans with $1 gallon diesel.

I went into Peru and that’s where the driving personalities really started to come alive. The Ecuadorian people are pretty calm and a little like to themselves. In their cities. They had some aggressive driving, but that kind of showed in the public like street driving style. They would just be, they would kind of let you give you room.

They weren’t too crazy. It was nice. They were just overall a nice experience. And then I get into Peru and it was exact opposite. Anyone who complains about like LA traffic over here, they need to go take a journey and drive through Peru. There are people who are very like a bit more brash and they aren’t afraid to kind of say their opinion and they kind of walk their own line.

You should appreciate all the rules that we have to follow. In the United States, there are a beautiful thing. I used to hate them, but in Peru, they don’t follow any of the rules. Driving down a freeway. They don’t stay in the lane. If there’s traffic, [00:44:00] they will take up every inch of the space across the whole shoulder and then fight for every inch of space.

If you leave a gap, I’m talking like three feet. Someone else is gonna nose in, so you have to be on it. Just gas break. Gas break, gas break. Not too different than a me out cup race then. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. More stressful. That was the most stressful. Driving outta due. Driving through Lima, Peru. You have to pay so much attention and fight for every single inch.

That’s part of their style. They would come into an intersection like full speed, like they were gonna run right through it and then slam on their brakes to try to scare you to slow down so then they could jump in front of you. So it’s just, that’s nuts. Stressful. Stressful driving the whole time. And how good were the brakes on Flaco?

Not, not so great, right? Yeah, I’m, I was afraid cuz if you look on YouTube you can look up hi a nose wheelies where people put good breaks on ’em and it’ll break and it’ll do like a nose wheelie. So vodka’s breaks are pretty good, but like, I felt like you’re on top of that thing. So I was a little worried about, and I’m too hard, it felt like you were gonna go through the [00:45:00] windshield.

That was pretty interesting to see And it, and it just kind of showed through the people too. Like I love the proving people when I was outside of a car, cuz they were just like, almost more like your east coasters, like the mass holes, right. Like that’s them in Peru and then Ecuador is more like New Mexico or California.

Right. Just like calm, like more rural. Just like, yeah. Go right ahead buddy. Just so did the car culture also shift as you got into Peru, did you see anything different? You started to see, I believe, I think it was in Peru, Bolivia, some French cars for the first time. So some renos. Some PEs, so that was cool.

Not really too different between Ecuador and Peru. Later on. It starts to go a lot different with the car cultures, with like the, just the different type of cars that they drive, but a lot of like heavily modified Nissan Sentras, like the most basic car. And they’re gonna put it like a sticker in a huge muffler that they just found off of anything to make it louder.

They’ll modify anything like a Toyota Previa. They’ll modify, they’ll modify whatever they can do just cuz they [00:46:00] like cars down there. And I think Peru definitely had more modifications. Like every taxi driver had their own little thing to their car, you know, like I think I remember seeing one little Nissan thing, I think they called something else down there, like a Subaru with like the tailpipes going out the side of the car.

You know, why not Side exit, let’s go. Yeah. Side exit. Yeah, that’s the, that’s the jargon term I was looking for. Just stuff like that. Like cars, we would be ashamed to be driving here. They flaunt it and make it cool and modify it in their own way. So Peru, when you find yourself finally in Bolivia. Yeah, so Bolivia, those were probably the craziest truck drivers.

It’s the poorest country of all the ones in South America. One of the most beautiful as well. Now along this journey, I’ve met a couple other friends that I was traveling with. I met a snowboarder from Northern California that was kind of in and out of the van with me from Peru into Bolivia. And I really loved Bolivia.

It was like genuine, you know, a lot of other places like Americans don’t travel to Peru so much, [00:47:00] but they have a lot of like touristic areas, you know? And I was starting to learn that I really liked like the genuine little towns and those genuine experiences where, you know, kind of look at me differently cause they don’t see many white people or Americans.

So Bolivia was a lot more of that. I didn’t feel like they were trying to sell stuff to me cuz they’re just not used to tourists. While you were in Peru, before you left, did you make it a point to go up into like Machu Picchu or anything like that? Or some of those more historic areas? Part of me discovering myself, cuz it was such a dream of mine to go to Machu Picchu.

But from what I’ve learned on my travels and some of those similar places, the big pyramid in Mexico, chia, I think places like that, I never really enjoyed it that much. So I drove right by Machu Picchu and didn’t go, and I did it as like an overt decision. Like, you know what, I don’t need to see that. I understand what it is.

I’m gonna get frustrated by it. I would rather spend the time and the money that I have in these smaller towns and just places that I end up finding. So yeah, I, I skipped that Flaco did break down in a, in a city called ar kippa, [00:48:00] Peru. Lost a water pump. Luckily caught it before it, uh, got too bad. Yeah. And yeah, locating parts down there is just so hilarious.

They have a million different shops and every shop, it, it’s very specific. You’ll have a shop for bolts that are metric and then a different shop with their own hours and their own different employees. For bolts that are English or American, there’s a place just for water pumps. And I remember the world was Bombas and there’s a place just for everything else, but they all had their different hours.

It’s basically like, almost like a swat meat style that you go into there and just trying to locate. A water pump sort of the highest was a little challenging with my still uh, kind of limited Spanish that doesn’t know car jargon at all in Spanish. Yeah, I was gonna say, you’re not gonna walk into the local auto zone or advanced or Toyota dealership and find the parts.

It’s all bargaining and bartering. That’s right. Yeah. And a lot of people looking at me like, what is this guy doing here? Like it was a lot of blue collar Peruvians and I don’t think they [00:49:00] expected to see this kind of goofy white guy walking through asking for a bomba. Well I think you mentioned earlier about doing your research, at least you did the research on the vehicle because like you said, you had a vehicle that was super common, so you didn’t drive in there with a reno and people go, oh, we don’t have parts for that.

You know, the commonplace cars down there, Volkswagen, Beatles, and, and your truck and things like that where parts are plenty full. I mean, you made the right move there, that’s for sure. Cuz otherwise you blow a water pump on something else. Good luck. I guess I should pat myself in the back for that amount of research.

Cause it did work out. Like I could always find parts. It just, things just take a lot longer down there. Um, yeah, and that taught me it was good. You just relax if you don’t have the right bolt or the right gasket. I think that was a problem there. I didn’t have the right gasket. I had to wait a week for the gasket to come in because the guy who has a gasket shop was on vacation and I was only gasket shop in town.

Like things like that, you know? So, uh, you just learn to really go with the flow. Yeah, it was good that I had [00:50:00] Flaco and a Toyota and a car that was down there a lot. So now we’re in Bolivia. Yep. Bolivia things get interesting, right? They get interesting again, but in kind of a better, more lighthearted way, at least this time.

One interesting thing about Bolivia too is their gas is subsidized, but only for locals because they had too many people coming from Brazil and Peru buying their cheap gas and then driving back over. So for me, there’s only like a few gas stations in the whole country that they can legally sell gas to tourists for.

So that was a whole interesting deal. What I ended up doing was just trying to make friends with a local, paying them a little off the top and having them pretend like it was their car and filling up that way. So that was cool. Got to meet a, a bunch of cool local people, but also had some times where I was just outta gas.

My go-to move, there’s a few times it happened. I would just go in a bar, find someone who was kind of lubed up, and ask them if they wanna make a little extra money by helping me out and getting me some gas, and we’d go fill up my jerrycans, fill up the gas, put it in my car, and then away we’d go. As I mentioned earlier, I, I had a [00:51:00] friend I came with from Peru.

I fell in love with the city called Su Gray, Bolivia. Stayed there for a while and um, met a lot of friends. A big thing that I knew I really wanted to do since the very beginning, daydreaming of this trip when I was just like a 14, 15 year years old when it was just like thing I would do instead of studying biology was go to the salt flats.

A uni, that’s the name of the place. It’s the biggest salt flats in the world. Really beautiful. It looks like it’s just des, it looks like you’re on a different planet and sometimes when it rains it gets that crazy mirrored effect, like, and it’s just, just beautiful. So I knew I wanted to do that trip, but I kind of wanted some people to, to do it with.

I had a lot of solitude earlier. Now it’s starting to flip to go back to more of a social travel. I ended up assembling a crew of 10 people. I met another Australian with a Range Rover who was kind of doing the same thing and we geared up and we go to camp out in these salt flats and it was a dry season so we weren’t gonna get any of the rain.

It’s a lot of people [00:52:00] who aren’t used to like camping so much. I think we had two German girls, two French girls, one that is now still currently my girlfriend and lives with me and two Americans, three Australians, so it’s quite the eclectic group. We were a good crew and we go out there and you basically can island hop.

There used to be these islands there and you like camp on the islands. And we’re not with the tour guides, which is great and beautiful cuz that’s what I wanted. So I’m leading these group of cars and it’s like on the second or third day we’re kind of cruising along an island that we wanted to go camp at.

Cause it looked like a butt. So we wanted to see if it really was a butt. And so we drove over there and it wasn’t a butt, it was an island basically. I was driving the road, the ground just falls out from underneath my car and comes to a pretty abrupt stop if we get out. My van is just completely stuck like in the mud.

Basically the crust of salt fell through and broke. And it’s something I knew happened like in the wet season. They said, never drive close to the islands because this can happen. Like the water [00:53:00] will seep through and the crust will fall and you’ll go into like this mucky, mucky mud. And so the Australian loved it.

He was like, haha, your little Toyota can’t make it out of there. Now let me hook up my winch to you and pull you out. He was loving that. I was stuck as a good friend, wood. And as soon as he tried to pull out, he cracked through with the winch. So now we had both cars stuck in the, and the Range Rover’s much heavier than the Toyota.

Oh yeah. It started sinking fast and like once it was in the mud, it was going further and deeper in, so we were stuck. We were 20 miles away from the nearest post where we knew we could probably find people, but we were 20 miles away from anybody. Stuck. Stuck. We tried some pretty ingenuitive things, like we buried a huge boulder.

We dug into the salted and like into the mud and buried a huge boulder and tried to winch to that boulder. We named it Rocky. He ended up being like another Wilson of that stuff. Experience. He was a table after that. He was, you know, a, a chair. Yeah. Rocky couldn’t pull us out. The Australian guy was super prepared and he had [00:54:00] like one of those jacks called, like they’re, you kind of ratchet ’em up and they Yep.

Like go up on a pole. Yeah, he had one of those, but everything would just sink through and it was getting worse. Like once he broke the crust, the mud was kind of like spreading. So yeah, we were stuck there and I was kind of like, great, this is an adventure. We gotta figure this out. An Australian guy was loving it, but everyone else was like freaking out.

This crew of people, like, they don’t know how we’re gonna get out of there. We’re, we’re trying to come up with some plans, but. Overall is a good, fun experience. The Australian guy actually had a satellite phone that he could send text messages to, but we’re still in a very remote area and we only have American numbers.

So how are they gonna be able to contact this little dusty town called the uni? To send the right people to come and get us without them sending like the military or somebody we didn’t want there. So I think it was after day three or four of camping there and trying to figure different stuff out.

Finally, the Californian that I’ve been traveling with, his brother spoke pretty good Spanish. He was also an avid traveler, figured out to hire, like, I don’t know what they did, but just some [00:55:00] guys to come out in their trucks and dig us out of there. What we essentially had to do is build another road underneath the car.

So we would dig, they had a bunch of jacks, we’d lift up the car a little bit and then put rocks underneath it, and then put it down. Then lift up the other side, put rocks underneath it, and we just kept doing that and the rocks would sink, but eventually that would settle until we built the road out of all the rocks on butt island.

Um, so that took a, that took like a good day’s work. I think we finished in the middle of the night, just in time when we started to run out of, you know, some essentials. Uh, we still had a decent amount of water. We were out of beer at that point and almost outta pasta. So. So did you use the Land Rover still to pull the Toyota out or did you have to do the work for both cars?

Actually, we used one of their trucks and a Land Rover to pull me out, but Flaco got out pretty easily once. They were like, they knew where the saw ground was, the locals, they were like kicking it and they knew where they could, could kind of set up from and anchor down. Yeah, that was a pretty wild experience, you know, just kind of being stranded 20 miles from people.

We, we were [00:56:00] considering a lot of things like, all right, do we send someone out to go walk to that place where we think there’s people in a really brutal climate, like with a bunch of water? Do we send them to go tell them that we’re stuck? We considered that we were pretty close to doing that, but the weather there was extremely harsh cuz the, the salt is like a mirror for the sun, but it was also extremely cold.

It’d get down to freezing at night and very windy. So it was all the extremes of temperature and climate. There’s a road, probably like a mile away. Cars would drive maybe twice a day on that. We learned after like day two or three and one day, I don’t think they drove at all. So we built a sign like with cardboard and a Sharpie had a Spanish, like, please help us.

I was on duty at the sign when a car came and they stopped and talked to us. The problem was they didn’t speak Spanish, they spoke ink. Oh. And they were terrified of us. I don’t speak any inkin. That was just like the month two of knowing that the inks had their own language and people still spoke it down there.

So yeah, they drove off [00:57:00] scared and just drove away from us. They thought we were gonna like rob them, or we were like some cannibals or something. Wow. Um, they didn’t help us, but it was just interesting to consider all those. Options. So after you pull Flaco out of the muck and the Meyer, did he fire right back up and continue the journey or did you have to fix it before you kept going?

No, he was fine. Like we dug a hole, I think from the exhaust. We were actually able to run it and like turn on the heater and stuff and use it. It was just the bed was really crooked and like the kitchen, you know, you had to build something for the stove to make sure it was flat. It ran fine. I drove it out of there.

We just had to get a very extensive like bath cause it’s covered in like salt essentially. And he’s already a, a rust bucket. So we tried to wash it as best as I could. I remember the guy like power washing it, like chunks of rust were just flying everywhere. Like, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know if this is doing any good or bad.

Like this power washer is a little too aggressive, but, uh, so Bolivia is not where the journey ends. So where did you go from there? I think some of that crew was mad at [00:58:00] me, so we parted ways with some of them cuz I got everyone stuck. Then I narrowed down to a group of five of us and we went into Chile or Chile.

Things really changed there quickly. It’s, it’s a much more advanced country. I kind of needed that at that point after slugging it for a while, like a good, like six months up to that point of not living with nice things at all. Chile was really cool. You know, they had really interesting things as you’re going through the Andes.

They had roads that actually had more grip in the corners, so it’d be safer. So it was like a softer compound of asphalt and it was a different color. So it’d be like safest and you could go through the corners a little bit quicker. So that was pretty cool. But there’s a lot of things in Chile that are much more advanced and like more advanced in a lot of ways than things that we have here, like free wifi everywhere.

The roads were way better than the roads in California and just did a lot of surfing, hanging out. The cars there started to get nicer. You started to see newer cars. I didn’t get to see it, but they had a really cool racing series where they race a bunch of fiats. You can [00:59:00] find it by reverse mapping it through Wikipedia.

I remember seeing these videos of them racing ’em in like in a Hawaiian shirt and just like a neck roll helmet with no visor and they’re racing these fiats through dirt and asphalt on like a mix like road course right on the coast of the ocean. There’s definitely a very alive and well like car culture there.

I just didn’t get to explore as much. But then from Chile, I went into Argentina for kind of the last leg of my trip. Flaco and me, our honeymoon phase is long gone. He had one more cross. The Andes in them, I mean in Bolivia, was up to 16,000 feet. It started its life with 91 horsepower, 6,000 feet elevation.

It, I don’t know, it felt like it had four horsepower, you know? Yeah. Uh, across the Andes again from Chile to Argentina and Argentina almost felt like Europe. You know, there’s a lot of Italian and German expats in, in Argentina. Yes, there is. Yes, there is. Yeah. And everything’s like really nice. And new except for one key thing and that is their cars.

They have a [01:00:00] heavy tax on new cars, so they have the coolest, oldest cars there. All the cars are like stuck in like the seventies and eighties and they just keep ’em alive. I loved just being on the streets and seeing cars. I don’t even know what they were driving by like a bunch of really old French cars, bunch of old fiats, but just had so much more character and style and I think that’s when I like cemented in like I think I just like older cars now, you know?

So did you make it to your goal of getting to Patagonia? Yeah, I did with despite Flaco trying to make that not happen, I was getting flat tires. It was starting to overhear a lot for mysterious reasons. It was just, The rust issues. Like I couldn’t even close one door hardly. Things were just falling apart after the Salt Flats on Poor Flaco, you know, I hung on Argentina for a while, drank cheap wine, ate cheap steak.

And then I parted ways with everyone that I knew. Cause I kind of wanted to do this end journey on my own really. The mountain that I was going for in Patagonia, it was called Mount Fitzroy. I’ve eventually made it [01:01:00] there and that was a really cool feeling to make it and finish it. The whole reason why this trip started was cuz I was in a science class when I was probably 14 years old, wasn’t paying attention to some documentary that was put on and they showed a clip of what I would later learn to be Mount Fitzroy and there was a road leading up to it and the road looked so like nice, like it looked like a really cool road.

But this mountain just like grabbed at me and I was like, wow, where is that? And they started talking about Patagonia. And then I opened up my science book and I found where Patagonia was. And I saw this all collected by land. So my first thought happened from Mount Fitzroy. Ever since that moment I started kind of daydreaming about the ability to, to drive all the way down there.

This is some adventure I never really gave any weight to cause I was pursuing racing until my breakup with racing happened. It was a pretty powerful moment to be seeing my van at the side of that road from the same image that, like, it looked exactly the same as the documentary that we watched. It was pretty powerful too, cuz I felt like I was [01:02:00] free from this big journey that I did.

You know, I, I had to go back to Ecuador after I got robbed because I couldn’t go the rest of my life wondering what if I finished. Now the story was done and I was free from that burden of what if I saw my mountain? Great, great feeling. Flaco was done. I was done at that point and then I made my way back home.

Did you do like Richard Hammond bringing home with you and now it’s a prize possession or anything? Sold the van. So you sold the van at the end of it all, huh? I love flaco and great, great car and like I owe him so much of my perspective that I have now. Like I was forever changed from that trip, you know, and I have all the love for him, but I was ready to part ways, you know, it was like it wasn’t gonna be worth the trouble.

It was like it was a miracle it made it down there. But yeah, I ended up selling it to some rock climbers down there, a couple Americans. That’s kind of only way you can do it is sell it to other people who are from America down there. Yeah, sold it to some like ranch and had a horse back out of there where I [01:03:00] sold it to them and that was it and I was pretty ready to, to come home after that.

So obviously, You think about it often, it’s changed your whole life and your whole latitude. It’s redefined who you are as a person, especially, you know, you know now as a, let’s call it a more mature adult, right, than when you started the whole trip fairly. Yeah. But you found yourself back in racing again.

Did it change the way you look at racing? Did it change cars for you? I mean, how did it change that side of you now that you find yourself back in that world again? It kind of showed me how to reengage racing in a different way. How to have a different relationship with it. And it showed me, even when I try, I can’t run from cars and racing.

I, there’s a genuine love and passion for the sport, the activity for cars, and I can’t run from it. The problems that cause me to leave racing aren’t things that I should just bury away. They’re things that I should try to maybe address and help kind of change and mold my own path in this racing world.

I think it just gave me [01:04:00] a. A good, fresh perspective. That’s it. Yeah. So if you had to do it all over again, knowing what you know now, would you do it and what would you do different? Oh yeah, I would, of course I would do it with all the cracked ribs and robberies and all of it. Absolutely. But the knowledge I have now, I probably wouldn’t take that beat up of a car.

Flaco gave me a little too many adventures. And I would just travel a lot slower, not try to like bounce around so much. Cause I really enjoyed the time to think if I would do it again, I think I would fly to country, just buy one of their cars there and just travel around that one country in their car because crossing the borders was such a crazy, crazy headache.

So if that’s the case, what would you buy now? Knowing what’s available down there? I think I would fly in and see what everyone else is driving. I would drive what the taxis were driving. So you gotta get a Toyota High lux. I mean, come on. Yeah. But those are a hot commodity down there, you know? I would rather be like in a tiny, small car and like look hilarious.

I don’t [01:05:00] know, I think I’d get an old taxi car or an old ambulance, you know, or just see what just kind of catches my eye and looks cool. It’s a lot easier to buy a car in the same country and then sell it. And cuz I learned, I like to travel slow. Like I could spend six months in just Peru or even longer.

So yeah, I think that’s what I would change. But do you think you’ll go back? Absolutely. Certain countries, I’m more eager to go back than others. Absolutely love to go back. I kind of want to make some plans if I can find some more remote work. I wanna move to La Paz Bolivia for like a few months cuz it’s one of the craziest cities ever.

It’s like Disneyland. They go around on gondolas, so like the things that you go on like in a ski lift, that’s their taxis cuz it’s like sitting in this bowl. So they just have gondolas taking people everywhere. It’s just such a bizarre, weird, cool city. I would like to sit there for a few months and see where my mind goes.

And I know they have some cool racing in Bolivia as well, so it’d be cool to check that out. Towards the end of my trip, when I started learning what I liked about that journey, I got to spend six months about just kind of [01:06:00] thinking, especially on the back of almost dying, thinking I was gonna die. And that was a beautiful thing.

So I’d do it again, do it slower, don’t care about where I go, how I get there. Spent some really good quality time with myself and some cool other cultures. I think there’s some important, valuable points there. It’s been said probably a million times if it’s been said once, right? It’s not about the destination, it’s all about the journey.

But I think you’ve brought something else up that’s very important that I’ve said before, even on this show, which is driving that love of driving, getting behind the wheel, not really knowing where you’re going. We just get caught up on the rat race and we just kind of check the next box. You’re not having to be beholden to your phone or people or email and all this stuff, and the day-to-day grind, just getting behind the wheel and and going somewhere.

There’s just something about that that’s indescribable. You know, a lot of people talk about, well, I can’t stand a drive. I can’t wait for autonomous driving vehicles and all this kinda stuff, and I say to myself, You’re missing out. You’re missing the [01:07:00] bigger picture. Those epic road trips are what it’s really all about.

I mean, you don’t get the same experience on a plane, right? You take off, you float, you come back down. It’s not the same thing. Yeah. Suddenly in a different place. But to your point, this is pretty extreme. It’s. Absolutely epic, but so many life lessons learned, so many things that you’ll look back on forever and you can pass that on to other people.

So I can’t thank you enough for coming on and sharing this story with us and I really hope that we can get together again and talk more about your love of driving and how that’s changed your framework and how it’s changed your mentality and how it’s helping you change the world of racing. Cuz I think you have some thoughts on that.

So I don’t want to give away too many things, but I think this is super cool. Yes, yes. Thank you for having me on. And yeah, let’s, uh, get a little bit of my, uh, adventure perspective into today’s racing. I think we could do some cool stuff, talk about some cool things, put all my six months of introspective thought into, into work.

[01:08:00] And, uh, yeah. Just want to touch on one last point, like what you said about cars. And again, with the road trips, it is complete freedom. I really fell in love with just cars in general and their ability to kind of just transport you to places you would never even dream of you didn’t even know existed.

And those are the parts of my trip that I valued the most was, you know, if I flew there, I’d have to take these buses and they would, they only go on certain roads. I had families take me in, you know, like from a little farming village. I met all these people and saw these cool places because the freedom that the car can give you, I, like I always say, cars are not appliances.

They are tools to be used for all sorts of different things, including adventures like this. Yep. So listeners, if you want to learn more about Joey and his adventures, you can hit him up on social media on Instagram at Joey Jordan Ivy. That’s Joey Jordan the fourth. Or if you’re in the LA area, stop by and request him as your coach at the Porsche Experience Center in la.

So Joey, [01:09:00] again, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Eric. I look forward to talking to all you guys soon.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

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