After three years, we finally made it back to Bolivia and we were treated to an incredible mountain pass on our way to Tarija.

For starters this is not my channel and I have no affiliation with Patrick and Orla (or Lewie). I would highly recommend checking out their content though as they are out living the overland lifestyle to the fullest, and tell great stories. I'm sharing their video since I think it could be a great prompt for a discussion around safety and decision making in bad situations. Watch it here.

TLDW: Two international overlander couples explore the Nevada desert in their Toyota pickups. They setup camp in a dry wash, and decide to evacuate when a storm causes a flash flood. The Tacoma gets hydro-locked by the flood waters. After several failed attempts to recover the stricken Tacoma they all made the decision to leave the truck and evacuate together in the Hilux, with Tom and Anna sitting in the Alucab camper. The bulk of the video runtime shows Patrick and Orla navigating through increasingly higher flood waters, almost getting stuck several times and crashing through brush as they could not clearly see the path out. They got to higher ground and after the waters subsided returned to the Tacoma to find that it needed a new engine.

My takeaways

1. The biggest lesson here is obviously not to camp in a drainage, and certainly not to stay in a drainage when there are storms anywhere in the region. Flash floods can be caused by rain falling miles away. Most people who are familiar with the American Southwest know this. These visitors clearly did not. I think it is important not to criticize them too much for this first decision. Sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. I personally have found myself in bad spots due to important location specific details that did not come up even after extensive research. What really matters is the decisions that you make afterwords to get yourself out.
2. In a situation like this I think it is easy to get yourself in the mindset that you need to evacuate entirely, but that isn't always the best call. Personally if this happened to me I would be looking for the very first bit of high ground that I could get the trucks to and wait the storm out instead of continuing through the raging creek. Hard to tell if this was an option from the video since the darkness limited the field of view for the cameras, but it looked like there was at least one spot early on where they could have pulled off and waited out the storm. You don't have to get out, you just have to get to high ground. Only thing that might change that equation is if you have limited supplies/communications and can't afford to get stuck in that spot for a few days... but generally speaking no one should be going to places like this without food, water, and a means to contact help.
3. It's hard to really evaluate the attempted Tacoma recovery without more information. Given the force of the flood waters, and whatever material had already lodged itself under the Taco I can see now it would serve as an anchor in a two rig recovery winch with equal weights between the vehicles. Without a third vehicle or useable anchor point to spread the load I don't see that working well under any circumstance. Only approach that may have worked better would be to start by yanking the stuck truck backwards instead of forwards. This is the point that I am most curious to hear all of your thoughts on.
4. I understand the decision to put the other couple in the camper for the evacuation since the rear seats on the Hilux were deleted... that said I would have huge concerns about egress from the Alucab if the truck got stuck in high water, or rolled. Despite the rain I would have considered keeping one of the side hatches open for this.
5. Every time people ask about mounting spotlights above the cab I try to tell them it is a bad idea. This video is a great example. The overhead light just gets caught by the rain, blowing out driver vision. Would almost be better off driving with them off in a situation like this.

Those are my quick thoughts. Would love to hear what you all think! All in all this could have been a lot worse. The four people and dog made it out alright. One truck came out fine, with only the Tacoma engine being the only real casualty of the trip.

I want royalties. 🤣🤣

Just a quick overnight trip in the old Willys.

Hello, my dad is looking at an overlanding trailer. It’s already equipped with RTT, fridge, water tank, 12v system and a few other things. What are the pros and cons to a setup like this compared to building out a rig? Picture is similar to what it would be.

This spring we moved from Florida to Seattle, and having the set up was really ideal to save money on hotels and see some amazing places along the way. Uhaul is not rated for offroading but it did alright on the more maintained trails 😅

I need to carry 16 gallons of petrol in my bed while towing a travel trailer to northern Alaska. My truck is a F250 godzilla (gas) with a 34 gallon tank. It gets ~ 8 mpg towing. Range assuming no problems (stuck) is 270 max. Rough roads.

I'm going to install a fully enclosed cap (topper) and am thinking through safely carrying 3 Jerry cans in the front of the bed. Loaded cans will be about 32 pounds each. They will be seriously strapped. The cap will have slide windows that can be open when under way. It will be packed full.

Would you all carry gas in this way?

ETA: Someone asked where else would I put the fuel. A shop in Fla will build a fuel cell pretty much any size that would bolt to bed front, feed into the OEM filler hose and could be filled in a port I'd put in the cap wall by the truck filler. ~$1,000

About 2 hours from where I live, there’s a FS road I visit regularly with the best dispersed campsites I’ve managed to find a couple hours drive from my house. It’s near a very popular national forest that only has one official campground in it that is often full. So the FS road is a great overflow spot when the campground is full or you want something more secluded, which I usually do. Between the two you always know you will have a camp. This FS road seems somewhat abandoned and unmaintained, so it is very quiet.

Anyway within the last year, some clown logged it on OnX. Now all these SxS dickheads have been wandering in from the OHV park down the road despite having hundreds of trails at the park. They are tearing this shit up at a record rate.

It used to be common to camp a whole weekend along that road and only occasionally see a 4Runner or Land Cruiser trundling down the road in search of their own sites.

Now every night you see a handful of SxS groups obnoxiously whiskey throttling down the trail, FLYING around blind corners often in groups of 2 or 3. They gun the throttle in the muddy parts and excavate the trail down to their hubs, with their empty trail sodas bouncing out of the vehicle as they throttle as hard as they can through everything. I hate these assholes so much.

Fuck SxS, this road will be lost to them and impassible in no time now that they are screwing around on it. I have never seen ruts and mud holes grow and deteriorate so fast in my life.

I don’t think there’s a solution sadly. I think this road will just deteriorate until it’s impassible.

I went to the Overland convention at Pomona Fairplex. The girlfriend and I were in and out in an hour.
It was 70% trailers and campers. The other was beef jerky, knives, and unrelated miscellaneous. I did walk away with bungee tie downs, and my girlfriend bought an ergonomic pillow. No vendors for battery packs, electric coolers, lights and camp gadgets.
I was really expecting more.

Heya to y’all my traveller friends !
Planning for a 6months travel in East/South of the African continent and need some help please.

The missus and I are looking at traveling from South Africa to at least Rwanda via Botswana, Zim, Tanzania and back by the coast.
Knowing these will be pretty rough roads, I’m looking for the car that would give me the best off-road abilities, space in the car (probably will fit a rooftop tent)…. for the best budget... ??!

Ideally we would get a Hilux, Prado or Landcruiser… but I doubt we can afford it as per the prices we have seen so far… 20K US$ for a 2012hilux with 300K kms seems a bit steep as we need to fit the vehicle for long travel after that., Another 8K US$ easily !
Any recommendations for other bakke that would bear the trip? With parts readily available for that stretch ? Pajero seems the way to go this far… Or do we have to go with Toyota and drop all our money in a car :/

I read that Botswana and ZAF are the two countries that would give us the best chance in terms or registration (we have ZAF friends that could buy and transfer ownership over to us) ?

Cheers for your input fellow travellers and 4wd aficionados!

Bit of background: Coming from Australia and working remotely I have a fair knowledge of 4wding and how diff lock works, in what conditions to activate it etc… however I’m zero about mechanical issues… The most I ever accomplished is changing brake pads on a flat piece of concrete near my garage…

I have a Hcalory toolbox diesel heater that came with a fairly stiff/short aluminum (possibly?) 90mm duct. I need to find a flexible and longer version but I have read that dry duct is not good for the heat and it can put off toxic gases. I have seen dozens of setups with dryer duct honestly so they either don't notice it or it's something else I can't find. Silicone tubing and the stiffer stuff it came with are what I have seen recommended.

I found this but honestly looking for suggestions for something that can compress/pack well.

https://www.uspmotorsports.com/product/obp-silicone-coated-ducting-hose-spring-steel-wire-90mm-id-75799637

We’re tent campers, but this year I decided to experiment with our accommodations. Glad I followed through because the first few trips have been pretty surreal…

It’s not totally finished. Now that I’ve proven the concept I’m starting work on the nose end aerodynamic so I can squeeze some better mileage out.

Photo isn't mine -- just an example.

Hello ! I have a Subaru Ascent (see my previous post in this sub), and I'm slowly turning her into a camper. I'm getting a fold-out awning to put on the roof bars, but I'm quite concerned about it being cut open and stolen even if padlocked.

This happened to me as soon as I moved to Seattle, where the gear on the back of my car had the heavy duty straps and leather bags cut open and contents (camping chairs, cooler) stolen.

Does anyone have experience with this or prevention methods ? Is there a small tracker I should put inside the bag ?

Thank you !

Full length roof rack, crossbars and a cargo box that comes on and off, when the box is off I want to cover the rig for the week. Every cover I’ve tried either can’t stretch over the rack or sits on top of the bars and sags, pooling water.

Is there a product that handles this or do I just cover everything below the rack and accept the roof is exposed?

Hey yall, I’m getting ready for a back country camping trip this Tuesday. I went to service my winch line, free spooled it out, oiled, and inspected it. Then when I went to crank it back in, I’m not getting anything. The remote is lighting up when it’s plugged in but I don’t hear the motor clicking. I’ve taken off the wires and cleaned off the mild corrosion but haven’t found a solution. Anyone have any advice or experience? It’s a smitty built x20.

A year ago I wrapped my Starlink Mini so I could pop it up in the woods without it sticking out like a sore thumb. This time I'm driven by the fragile exterior of my Iceco APL35. I decided to give it a wrap so it doesn't get scratched to hell. So far so good, tomorrow is the face with the logo.... I practiced on that a few times before starting the project so I'm feeling pretty confident it will go well.

What do you think?

My GF and I did a 7500 mile road trip in our 03 GX470! 28 days of being free and gas not being so free LOL. Now that I’m back home I’m releasing videos on YouTube if you’re interested!
@raidan_adventures

But would love to hear from you guys and see if you’ve done anything similar?

Hello ! I have a gorgeous 2022 Subaru Ascent I use to off-road and car camp often in Washington/Idaho/Montana, and she's equipped with roof bars and cross bars.

I would love an awning that is easy to set up, perhaps pole-less if that's not a concern, can handle rain/snow (I'm moving to Alaska soon), and provides good shade (I'd like to step outside into the shade, very susceptible to heat/burning).

Also, my car is already REALLY heavy just naturally, so something on the lighter side that doesn't have a huge impact on mpg would be perfect. (I adore this car, not how much gas I spend on)

What are your suggestions or opinions ?

Perfect autumn weather and scenery.

Whats everybody recommend for trash bags when you don’t have a spare tire on the back? I’d be open to just strapping it to the tailgate, but wanted to see options. (Hummer is the vehicle in question, not the Tracker)

Looking for a style of truck “topper” that’s like a bare bones topper system. Basically it’s a few rails and usually a few gear spots but it’s built so it’s modular. I’ve seen them online I just can’t remember what they’re called. Thanks!

Hey guys,
I'm looking for an Overlander / Suv in Europe. My budget is around 5k. I've found it hard to find common models from the US, such as the Toyota Land Cruiser or Jeep XJ, within this price range, as they are quite uncommon. I know its not a big budget but are there any alternatives that are more readily available?

Has anyone flown into Baja and picked up a rental from an overland outfitter? and if so what kind of kit did you put together And how was the experience?

I'm planning this out based on the below, but looking for ideas from people that have done similar.

https://expeditionportal.com/fly-and-drive-kit-universal-equipment-that-works-anywhere-in-the-world/

For me, I'm evaluating the time and cost if I were to do this for a family of 3 as an alternative to using my own vehicle and the long drive from WA.

So I have a truck topper with a popup tent, I’m looking to build a power control option like the Loan Peak”Juicebox” - it seems pretty cool, app control availability, I was curious if there are any other options out there like this?

Does anyone have a similar electric setup like the Juicebox?

I have a 1st gen rav4 and usually use it to get to trailheads for hiking, whether remote or an easy drive. One thing the car kinda lacks is adequate lighting. This is especially true for animals running out from the tree line. For this reason I would like to get 2 flood lights I can angle off toward the tree line and illuminate the trees on either side of my field of vision. I may get another 2 for the rear as well.

TIA

I have a 6 ft 2026 Tacoma and will be adding a pop-up camper in two weeks. I‘m planning a simple bed buildout with a bench extending lengthwise that doubles as a sleeping platform for friends/family.

What is the minimum width I can get away with that will still serve as a comfortable place to sleep? I’m reading anywhere between 20-25”, and I’m hoping to get to a precise number before ordering the T struts.

if I wasn’t 6’3, I’d trial and error this problem myself but I need the wisdom of the crowd here to tell me needs of a smaller human (unlikely will ever be a child).