What are your travel goals for 2020? Let us know in the comments below.
One Brazilian couple is putting the average person’s 2020 road trip goals to shame. They’re driving their 1951 Chevy pickup from Argentina to Alaska.
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Prepping for the trip
Meet Andre Jardim and Julia Prates. Per The Drive, they’re packing up their modified 1951 Chevy 3100 pickup truck and hitting the Pan-American Highway. The plan is to drive 19,000 miles from Tierra Del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska.
Currently, the couple is making final preparations for the journey in the Tierra Del Fuego area. They anticipate an Alaskan arrival in May or June of 2021, where Jardim says they’ll celebrate the truck’s 70th birthday.
The truck
The couple currently lives in their modified Chevy full-time ever since the spring of 2018. Though the truck, affectionately dubbed “Mary Lou,” has been in their family about three decades before that.
According to The Drive, it’s been modified only slightly, in prep for the trek. Jardim and Prates spent about a month having it mechanically restored so it’ll be functioning at its best for the trip. It’s powered by just an inline-six and three-speed transmission and lacks four-wheel drive, a feature that might prove useful when traversing across the diverse terrain and rural roads on the Pan American route.
However, the couple has driven it all over the continent in its current condition. So, they’re confident that Mary Lou will take the journey in stride.
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The travel route
Jardim, Prates, and Mary Lou will have many challenges to brave as they drive across two continents, as The Drive confirms. The Pan-American Highway is a network of byways, highways, and rural roads that vary in navigability. Then there are no less than 14 different border crossings.
The geographical landscapes are another feat they’ll need to overcome. They’ll experience a range of different landscapes ranging from swamps to deserts.
But any ambitious road trip has its share of challenges and rewards. We wish Jardim and Prates the best of luck as they embark on their Pan-American trek sometime in the near future. Follow their progress on the road via their Instagram @expnaestrada.
Whitney Russell is a current resident of Dayton, though her spirit can be found beach-bumming on Puerto Rico (the land of her half-Puerto Rican heritage). When not adventuring through the exciting world of car news, she can be found hiking with her husband and their two dogs, motorcycling, visiting her cute nephews and nieces, discovering new memes, reorganizing and/or decorating some corner of the world, researching random things, and escaping into a great movie, poem, or short story. See more articles by Whitney.
