When it comes to surfing and travel I’m sure all of us dream about our perfect trip, setting off somewhere warm, with endless waves and casting aside everyday life. Not all of us have the opportunity to make our dreams a reality but one couple from the UK’s North East coast have done just that and left the 9-5 behind to travel the length of the Pan American highway on 150cc Motorbikes with only surfboards and each other for company.
Tom Bing and Sally McGee’s are riding small motorbikes from Santiago, Chile where they started in Oct 2015 with their eyes set on making it to California later in 2016.
The last time we featured them on the site they had thankfully left behind a very sketchy situation after departing Colombia and landed safely in Panama after sailing across the Caribbean to the next Central America stage of their 15,000 mile journey.
Here’s their story in Tom’s own words:
We feel that we are skirting round the edges of the Panamanian culture; we have no idea what the local food is like, we have barely spoken to any locals and we don’t have a clear picture of what life is like for people in this country.
The problem is that we can’t afford to be here, everything is way out of our price range so we have been sticking to surf spots we know we can camp at; we buying food from the big (cheaper) supermarkets and try to live as cheaply as possible. We are really struggling to find decent fruit or veg anywhere, but the pineapples we have found have been the best we have had anywhere in the world.
After getting the bikes back, which was a fairly straightforward process and after a small delay we were finished and on the road before noon the next day rather than 5pm the original day. We crossed straight over to the Pacific Coast, passing straight through Panama City and over the Panama Canal.
We camped one night in hammocks under a shelter on a beach in the middle of nowhere, there was potential for good waves but the swell was small when we got there so we left early in the morning.
To read the full blog from Tom head over to the Northcore site here