On January 14, 2020, Pablo Imhoff He left his hometown, Saint tomein Santa Fe, heading to Ushuaia, to begin there, at the end of the world, his continental journey, which he called “Alaska Project”: travel from Ushuaia to Alaska on a small motorcyclea 90 cubic centimeter Honda Econo.
At the time of publishing this note, Pablo is traveling through Central America, having just overcome his first major obstacle: they denied him entry to Nicaragua -without explanations-, so had to “skip” that country to go from Costa Rica to Honduras by plane. The Econo, meanwhile, traveled by truck, and They just met again in Tegucigalpa to resume their path north together.
But to understand the origin of this adventure you have to go back a little further; to be more exact, to 2014, when Pablo took what he calls “the best decision of your life”: At the age of 27, he quit his job in an optical laboratory, terminated the rental contract in Rosario, where he lived, and He left to tour the country in a Gilera Gran Turismo 200from 1970.
That trip, which he named “Return to Argentina in Gilera“, marked the start of a new life. “In three years and four months I visited all the provinces of the country and the Malvinas Islands. with that trip I started a new lifestyle“, and since then I haven’t stopped,” Pablo tells Clarín from San José, Costa Rica, before beginning to tour the country of “pura vida.”
That initiatory journey began and ended in Santo Tomé, a town located very close to the capital of Santa Fe. And there he also began this new journey towards Ushuaia, from where he began his journey towards the north, without arrival date and without a precise place: “I hope to arrive as far north as possible in Alaska; for example, Prudhoe Bay,” she says.
An intermediate between the car and the bike
The preparation for this trip began as soon as he returned from returning to Gilera. And the first step was buy a used motorcycle, which he repaired and restored to new. “I bought a 1992 Honda C90 Econo Power because it is an emblematic motorcycle, known all over the world and that I really like. Furthermore, making this trip with that motorcycle is quite a challenge,” he says.
And he says that the type of trip that this motorcycle proposes allows him to “get more in touch with the landscapes, with the cultures. If you go too fast, you miss a lot of things; and if you go too slow, you will never arrive. The motorcycle is a middle ground between a bike and a car that I really like.”.
From Santo Tomé he went to the Fuegian capital along National Route 3 – quite a trip in itself – and after touring Tierra del Fuego, he crossed to Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island in Chile, on the other shore of the Beagle Channel. and a great unforeseen awaited him: “I returned to Tierra del Fuego a couple of hours before the confinement was declared because of the pandemic,” he remembers.
That, of course, changed all his plans. But he does not regret it, because he assures that that year in which he was forced to remain at the end of the world was one of the best years of his life. “I stayed in Ushuaia until March 2021, at the home of a woman who lent her house to me and another traveler. In that year I was able to do many things that I never thought I would do, like traveling a lot in the mountains, skiing, getting to know every corner of the city and its surroundings,” she highlights. And he claims that he became “a specialist” in the city at the end of the world.
Then yes, The trip began in March 2021 from the Fuegian capital, fulfilling another dream: travel Route 40 from end to end, from km 0 to 5,121. “It was a journey within another journey; Route 40 within the Alaska Project,” he says.
He remembers Route 40 as an “epic” trip, because “it is an incredible route, which has many contrasts, landscapes, geographies, cultures. I toured it and recorded it in detail, from Cabo Vírgenes to La Quiaca. Thousands of things happened, almost all of them nice and some not so nice, like the altitude sickness that I got in Abra del Acay, the highest point of the route, at almost 5,000 meters above sea level. I broke down and felt very bad,” she recalls.
The south of the 40 did it in winter, with snow, frost and ice on the route. “I woke up with a frosty tent,” he says, and also remembers the difficulty of the more than a thousand km of gravel in the north, complicated for traveling on this motorcycle.
From La Quiaca he crossed to Villazón, in Bolivia, a country that he describes as “amazing” but “hard” to travel alone. “The height also affected me, and since in Bolivia people are more introverted, the trip becomes lonelier.”
Then they continued Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and now Hondurasin a patient step by step that Pablo plans for each day, aiming to reach a certain destination at the end of the day, but open to plans changing as we go due to unforeseen events, to places that fascinate you and force you to stay a little longer or due to invitations or chats with people you meet along the way.
Travels at an average of between 50 and 60 km/h, and generally rtravel between 200 and 300 km per day, on a motorcycle that he equipped with two side suitcases, a tool box in the front and a wooden trunk in the back. Of course, he carries technical camping clothes and equipment, which are light and take up less space.
Along the way he spends the night sometimes in a tent, sometimes in lodgings, sometimes in houses to which he is invitedin many cases, followers who see their journey through the networks: it was adding followers until reaching more than a million on YouTube and 600 thousand on Instagram.
“The topic of networks is very nice because I am sharing everything I am experiencing, and a very nice community was formed. Every Sunday I upload a video to YouTube that summarizes the trip of the last few days, and the response from people is incredible,” says Pablo, who can be found as Pablitoviajero on Facebook, as Pablo Imhoff on YouTube and as @imhoffpablo on Instagram.
Additionally, he created the website www.pablitoviajero.coma store where he sells T-shirts, caps and hats alluding to his trip, several of them designed by himself, and the book “Crossing Borders – Stories of the Road”, which he wrote with his brother Gabriel and in which stories of journeys are told. which they did together in several South American countries.
These sales, and the views of his videos on YouTube, generate the income that allows him to maintain this nomadic life.
Furthermore, networks foster what Pablo describes as “the most beautiful thing about the trip”: the human relationships that are generated“the friendships that one makes and the thousands of anecdotes with people who help me along the way.”
For example, he says, when he stopped on a route in San Luis, a person approached him and told him that as a boy he dreamed of having a motorcycle like that. “And chatting and chatting, he invited me to his house in Trapiche, a place of incredible nature, full of trees, a stream. It turned out that that day was his birthday, and there was a grill full of meat, lots of empanadas, and I ended up spending his birthday at his house with his family and friends.. It was a cold, wet day, and the best shelter was the warmth of that home and the people“, account.
Social networks are also very useful for contact with other travelersmany of whom have already made a similar trip or are doing so now, and are informing themselves, giving advice and sharing contacts.
The World Cup in Cuenca
In all these days, weeks, months and thousands of km traveled, Pablo did not have any serious problem, other than some breakdown of the motorcycle that he repaired along the way, often with the help of other travelers or mechanics happy to collaborate with his project.
And it added, of course, thousands of anecdotes. Like when his stay time in Peru expired and to extend it he had to leave the country, but the motorcycle was broken. Then he sent her to Ecuador, he traveled by plane and then returned to Peru. “I traveled half the country one way and another half the country to return, because I wanted to go through Machu Picchu again”, he clarifies.
Or the Qatar World Cupwhat ended up watching entirely in Cuenca, Ecuador. “I saw the first two games in a kind of neighborhood restaurant that was close to where I was staying; I became friends with the lady who cooked and we saw them there. Afterwards I wanted to continue the trip but my motorcycle broke down and I had to return. And until I was able to get the spare parts and fix it, it took almost a month, so I ended up watching all the games in Cuenca; From the third onwards, in the hostel, where we meet Argentinians, Colombians, Brazilians, Ecuadorians; It was incredible,” he says.
And with the cup that Messi and company raised came the change of look, because Pablo had promised that if Argentina became champion, he would fight. “So the boys took the machine and They beat me right there, as soon as the game ended. Since then I always hair my hair.”
Waves complications to avoid the Darién Gap, that dense jungle that stands in the way between Colombia and Panama, and that forces you to go from port to port and long waits. Crossing from one country to the other took him no less than 27 days.
Or the day one grabbed him electrical storm in the Puna of Jujuy and he had a terrible scare on the completely muddy road towards El Angosto, the northernmost town in Argentina, a journey that involved fording rivers and climbing in a zig zag along an impossible path. run by lightning and thunderuntil he arrived in town and was invited to spend the night in the community hall.
A place that surprised you? “The Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, where I lived for a few days with the Huaorani tribe, near the city of Puyo, which still lives ‘wild’, isolated, fishing and hunting. It was very interesting”.
What would you say to someone who is thinking about taking a trip like this? “I don’t like to give advice because each person is different. What I can say is that the decision to change my life was the best decision I could have made“, he says without hesitation.
And he adds: “Until I was 27 I lived one life, and from then on I started another, from scratch. It totally changed everything for me; what he did, how he lived and how he thoughtbecause the fact of being at different points means that one has to adapt and change permanently.”