I have been reading up on South America since I have nothing else better to do until my plane leaves in a couple weeks. One thing that I have found useful is a website called ioverlander.com that I read about in Junyah’s ride report on ADVrider called “A Yankee goes South”. (David stayed with me last year in Texas where I was working at the time.)

iOverlander is a website that was put together by overland travelers. It lists campgrounds as well as stealth campsites, mechanics, border crossings, etc. for countries around the world. All of the locations are viewable on a world map. Clicking on a country zooms you in to the area you are traveling. Clicking on the icons brings up a box with a brief written description of the camp, amenities etc. As well as campsites, there are icons for gas stations out in the sticks, border crossing buildings, campgrounds, stealth campsites. All of this comes with GPS waypoints. I think this is going to come in really handy. The nice thing about Argentina, for instance is that a lot of the municipal campgrounds in addition to being cheap often have wifi. Many of the gas stations have wifi these days as well. I can see this website as being very useful. They also have a free app for my iPod touch that links in to the offline mapping program maps.me that I use while riding around the backroads of South America with no access to wifi.

Another useful website I have been checking out is maps.google.com to see where GPS waypoints are in satellite view. For instance, I was wondering where the Bolivian border crossing customs hut was on the back road to Uyuni coming in near San Pedro de Atacama Chile. So I got the GPS waypoint from iOverlander:

and copied -22.880969, -67.798465 into the search box on maps.google.com

You can zoom in and see where the Bolivian shack is for aduana and immigration and if you click on the photos at the bottom of the map

it will zoom in to a recent photo of the site.

When I get too old to ride I can see myself traveling this virtual world in my rocking chair. In the meantime, this combination of websites is a great way to find a campsite by stopping at a cybercafe or other wifi hotspot and seeing what’s in the area in the country you are riding through.