[Above: The Drive Around the World team drives their four Certified, Pre-Owned Discovery vehicles onto a Willenius Wilhelmsen ship, the Hume Highway, for passage to Australia.]
(Photos by Neil Dana)

Journal by Todd Borgie

Finally, after years of dreaming, planning, and execution, we have reached one of our first major milestones on this expedition: sending the vehicles to Australia. Although we love traveling in the vehicles, the whole team has looked forward to our forecast 6-week break from the daily rigors of the expedition, especially the grueling last month. Neil has talked about going to Brazil from the day I met him, and with a big smile on his face he realizes the day has almost arrived for him to go. There’s just this one last task to do.

Although it might seem easy to put a vehicle on the boat, there are really a lot of things to consider. There are three major ways to ship a vehicle: LoLo (load on/load off), when the vehicles are loaded by crane, RoRo (roll on/roll off), when the vehicles are driven on and off the ship, and finally container shipping, where the vehicles are loaded into a container (like the trailer bed of a semi). The most common type of vehicles that are shipped are vehicles straight from the factory. In this case, everything in or on the vehicle is bolted or screwed down, so LoLo or RoRo is the most practical. In our case, however, our cars are loaded with gear, so RoRo or LoLo is not the best option for us. You have to remember that if they are driving the cars on and off the ships, the car is going to be open for a certain amount to time, and this is a significant security risk.

On the last expedition, we learned the hard way. After driving around the world and having no problems, our vehicles were robbed in New Jersey. Although we had been subtly warned, we didn’t want to have to carry everything with us while we crossed the Atlantic by plane, so we left quite a bit of stuff in the vehicles. Yes, we lost lots of stuff, but the most amazing story was the story of the videotapes. All the videos we had shot over the course of the expedition were stolen! Yes, we were dumb to leave these tapes in the vehicles. We could blame one another for leaving them there, but nothing changed the fact that they were gone. Nick did what he could to get them back, but we resigned ourselves to lamenting their absence. Eleven months later, Nick received a phone call from a fellow in the New Jersey port. Apparently, he had seen the reward signs and was holding the right information. He quickly shipped us the tapes, and we still remain delighted and amazed. Anyway, lesson learned.

Container shipping is what we prefer, as the vehicles are locked and sealed into a freight container, and the only people holding the keys are the property owners. When the ship arrives, you go down, do the paper work, open the container for the customs people, and then you are on your way (sounds more simple than it actually is; sometimes this can take days). If we have a container, we can pack all of our valuable belongings into the vehicles, knowing that they will be safe; furthermore, we would not have to lug around extra things. When you know your stuff is safe, it is nice to only tote a small bag around, as now you are relying on subways, taxis and buses.

Our freight forwarder, Mercomar, did everything possible to obtain a container for us, but this was not a container ship. Cargo ships are laid out to hold the maximum amount of cargo. Our ship, the Hume Highway, would be holding more then 3,000 cars. There was not a convenient place to put a container that would not interrupt the flow of loading and unloading of the other cargo. It is amazing how fast they can load this amount of cargo; this ship would be loaded in about 6 hours.

We needed to be to the port by 6:00pm. The team spent the morning and afternoon buying chains, cables, and locks to secure our gear, packing and repacking gear so it would safely and securely under the locks and chains we had purchased. The best thing to do would have been to remove everything from the vehicles, as I mentioned earlier, but this was not the practical thing. We have big bins of camping gear, parts, office supplies, and other assorted bulky items. It would have been frightfully expensive to ship separately (most likely it would not have been accepted on an airplane), and a huge pain to deal with, so we decided to take our chance. We removed everything that couldn’t be replaced but left most of the gear. Also, to increase security, Nick made an agreement with the shipping company. This agreement was for the Captain to keep a special eye on the vehicles, and they agreed that he would be the sole person in possession of the keys to the vehicles. This was also important because this ship was due to arrive in Manzanilla, Panama, March 9, the day our other ship was to leave for Brisbane. This is cutting it close, but it was the best thing available. Arrangements were made in order to secure a quick release of the vehicles once the ship arrived in Panama.

Six p.m. rolled around, and we set off for the port. The whole team went along, as we had made arrangements to film the vehicles boarding the Hume Highway. It was loading time for the ship, so we saw the thousands of cars, which, yesterday, were sitting in the parking lot, buzzing onto the ship. We drove the Land Rovers onto the second floor of what must have been a six-story ship. I was totally impressed with this ship! The floors were almost clean enough to eat off of! The people were great, and the cars were secured off to the side. I must admit they looked pretty cool, loaded and waiting for their next adventure.

We bid the vehicles good-bye, and all walked off the ship like we had just completed a mission to the moon. It was kind of a weird feeling, as we now had to flag taxis back to town.

We spent the remainder of the night eating Argentinean meat at a Parilla. This place is packed full of meat, steaks, sausages innards, you name it. All will be served up here, and cheap! We just can’t figure out why people aren’t huge here. We have much to do over the course of the next 6 weeks, so the team looked ahead and began developing strategies for how we could go into the second half with renewed energy and efficiency.

Logbook for February 18th, Day 110
Start: Buenos Aires, Argentina
: 34*33.000
W: 58*30.000
Finish: Buenos Aires, Argentina
S: 34*33.000
W: 58*30.000
Mileage: N/A
Notes: We miss our vehicles. It's hard to believe we'll be without them for 6 weeks. To mark the occassion, we all went to a "tenedor libre", or all-you-can-eat steakhouse for dinner. We ate all kinds of weird meat, including blood sausage, intestines, some other icky organ, and some other nasty stuff. Tomorrow, we head to Buenos Aires. (N.O.)

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four certified pre-owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking here. 100% of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.