I've been living in a motorhome and travelling full-time since January, so I've been on the road for close to a year. I'd originally planned to do this for a year, maybe 18 months, but now that I'm a year into it, I don't see any reason to stop. I'm going to Mexico, and Central and South America next fall and plan to spend all the cold months way down south. When I've done all the driving on the American continent I want to do, I plan to buy a sailboat and keep travelling (buying or renting a van or motorhome when I get to various countries I want to spend some time in).
I highly recommend it. All of it, or any part of it.
Selling and giving away all my accumulated crap was liberating beyond what I could have ever imagined. Getting out of the rut of daily life in one place and going to see lots of new places breeds a zen-like state of peace over the minutiae of everyday life (I guess your comfort zone just expands to be really wide). Living smaller means you can focus on the things that really matter. Cost of living can be as high or low as you want it to; I'm currently parked in an RV park that is home to formerly homeless people who've been placed in RVs by a charity organization, as well as retired couples living in $250,000 rigs, and everything in between.
Living on a sailboat is pretty much the same idea, with a few additional logistical challenges, if you need to keep working (I've been running Virtualmin from the road, and I just had to solve the Internet and power problem; on a boat, the Internet problem is much more expensive to solve). It seems to attract the same sorts of people, and I've met a lot of RVers who have lived on boats in the past, or live on boats some of the time.
A good question. It's pretty tough for 4 wheeled vehicles to get across the Darien gap between Panama and South America. Driving is absolutely not an option - the track has been done I think twice by motorcycles, but that's it. Plenty of guerrillas in the midst of the jungle along with those horrific jungle conditions.
There simply is no easy answer, and plenty of horror stories about boats used to transport drugs using a vehicle as a bit of cover.
I've taken a motorcycle across the gap - the normal way, which means flying the bike from Panama to Quito or Bogota.
I've heard of flying or boating a bike around, but never anything as big as an RV. I imagine any option is going to be really expensive, though I suppose anything is possible.
Boat would be the only option for a rig as big as mine, and "really expensive" is a relative term. The cost of living full-time in a motorhome is highly variable and often has a very different shape than living a more stable life. When I'm doing very long trips, I probably spend more on gas in a month than most people spend on rent and food (I spent about $2000/month on gas during my Alaska trip, totalling about $5k for the whole journey). Spending $1000-$2000 for a ferry or ship to take my motorhome across wouldn't be what I would consider a show-stopping expense, and it's my understanding that that's the ballpark for this particular trip. It's just another thing to budget for. Moving, in a traditional fashion, to South America would probably cost even more, so from that perspective it's a bargain.
It's my understanding it is reasonably easy and cheap (compared to shipping to Europe or similar; $500-$2000 is the range I've heard of people paying), but I haven't actually done the research on the subject yet. I have the additional logistical problem of getting my dog safely through (and she's too old for me to be willing to inflict flying on her, even a short distance), but I'm guessing we can catch a boat, as well.
I highly recommend it. All of it, or any part of it.
Selling and giving away all my accumulated crap was liberating beyond what I could have ever imagined. Getting out of the rut of daily life in one place and going to see lots of new places breeds a zen-like state of peace over the minutiae of everyday life (I guess your comfort zone just expands to be really wide). Living smaller means you can focus on the things that really matter. Cost of living can be as high or low as you want it to; I'm currently parked in an RV park that is home to formerly homeless people who've been placed in RVs by a charity organization, as well as retired couples living in $250,000 rigs, and everything in between.
Living on a sailboat is pretty much the same idea, with a few additional logistical challenges, if you need to keep working (I've been running Virtualmin from the road, and I just had to solve the Internet and power problem; on a boat, the Internet problem is much more expensive to solve). It seems to attract the same sorts of people, and I've met a lot of RVers who have lived on boats in the past, or live on boats some of the time.