Patty Upton : Jeep Overland, Crossing the Darien Gap and Circumnavigating the World.

Join us on an extraordinary adventure as we delve into the remarkable journey of Patty and Loren Upton. For more than five years, they embarked on an overland expedition, circumnavigating the world entirely in their trusty Jeep, The "Sand Ship Discovery". Their story is a testament to the indomitable human spirit, the power of determination, incredible self-reliance, and the wonders of exploration.

An Independent Spirit and Simple Mission

It was a dream of Patty's late husband, Loren Upton, to circumnavigate the world in an American-built vehicle.  These were the foundational principles of the excursion.    From Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Punta Arenas, Chile,  then a cargo ship ride to the African continent (this was the only part that the Jeep was transported on water), from Cape Agulhas, South Africa they ended the 5 year odyssey in Gamvik, Norway

The Darien Gap Challenge:

One of the most jaw-dropping chapters of their journey was undoubtedly their conquest of the Darien Gap, between Panama and Columbia. This dense and forbidding rainforest region had thwarted countless adventurers before them,.  There were no roads and this 125-mile strectch took them 741 days to complete.    Share in their triumph as they navigate treacherous terrain, forge wild rivers, and overcome the many challenges of this untamed wilderness.   This excursion landed them in the Guinness Book of World Records, as the first overland crossing of the Darien Gap.

Global Encounters and Cultural Experiences:

As they crisscrossed continents, Patty and Loren found that an unshakable commitment to the dream, unwavering self-reliance and help from good people around the globe was the reason for the success.

These connections with people in every corner of the world show the good nature of strangers.    Gain insights into their encounters with people from all walks of life and how these interactions enriched their expedition experience.

Resilience and Adversity

What is most inspiring and noteworthy is how their daily resilience was tested daily for over 5 years.   The Jeep would break axles, springs, brakes, and other mechanical problems could not stop them.  Patty had to carry parts in from Panama into Columbia.  Axel replacements were shipped via train, mules, and hand carriers.  

In the most challenging days, the Jeep broke an axel in the vast desert of Sudan.  With nothing and no one around, they found the Nile and floated for 2 and 1/2 days to find a town.    It took 70 days to get the parts and back on the path.  During this time, Loren survived on limited rations in the desert while Patty coordinated getting the parts shipped in from around the world.   A few fortuitous encounters and helpful strangers ultimately made the difference. 

The Jeep That Made History:

Patty and Loren's Jeep, The Sand Ship Discovery, deserves special mention. It became more than just a vehicle; it was their home, protector, and constant companion throughout the journey. Discover the limited modifications and extensive preparations they made to ensure the American-built 1966 CJ-5 Jeep made the entire route.

In this captivating Podcast interview, we explore the incredible adventure of Patty and Loren Upton as they drove their Jeep across continents, completed the daunting Darien Gap crossing, and embraced the world's diversity. This is a tale of human tenacity, environmental stewardship, and the transformative power of following your dreams. Join us on this epic journey!

To contact or support Patty, reach her at outbackofbeyond.com

Episode Transcript

Josh Meeder (00:00):
Welcome to the great things LLC podcast, the
show that celebrates people whoare making an impact on the
world, people creating consciousbusinesses that are in alignment
with their own personal values.
Each episode shares the wisdomexperience and the intentions of
those that are following theirdreams. visionaries who have
chosen a different path, foundtheir purpose, and create join

(00:21):
abundance while helping others.
Whether you're already atrailblazer, or still searching
for your path, the stories willinspire you towards being the
best version of yourself.
So today, I'm excited to welcomePatti Upton and share her
incredible journey and herstory. So Patty, welcome to the

(00:41):
podcast.

Patty Upton (00:43):
Thank you so much for allowing me to be here.

Josh Meeder (00:45):
So Patti, let's dive in. And you've done
something extraordinary. Andyou're sharing your story that
you and Lauren took anincredible adventure. And this
adventure was over 56,000 milesover five years, and share a
little bit with the audience ofjust the overall of the trip,
where it went to and we'll diveinto how you got involved.

Patty Upton (01:07):
I finally got it all down. In a nutshell, we went
around the world and into theGuinness Book of Records. That's
what we did. That

Josh Meeder (01:13):
is the most concise thing I've heard. So. So you did
this in this was Lauren stream.
And he wanted to do all thisoverlanding in a an American
made vehicle, right,

Patty Upton (01:25):
his dream was to take one American made vehicle
around the world on a northsouth course, when you look at a
globe, that's going to be yourmost land, less water. And he
wanted to be able to stayentirely on land, except for the
South Atlantic that was beingthe only legitimate border
barrier. There was. And youagain, look at the globe, you've

(01:47):
got our land route from PrudhoeBay, Alaska to the tip of South
America from the tip of SouthAfrica to the tip of Norway.
However, in between Panama andColombia, there is no road that
links the two countriestogether, there hasn't been a
road, I don't think there'sgoing to be rolling in my
lifetime, probably not in mykids lifetime. It's just a

(02:08):
contentious area, and it'sgotten more contentious. It's
known as the Darien Gap, or ElTopo. And that en, and it's
mountains, jungles and swamps.
And there's been a few vehiclesthat go through there. Most
Well, all of them except us havegone through by using a
combination of trails andtraveling by the rivers because
you ask a native How do I getfrom point A to point B, they

(02:30):
say you get on the boat and youhave dugout and you go up the
river down the river. And that'sit. That was not our option. Our
option was to remain entirely onland.

Josh Meeder (02:40):
Yeah, so that's a pretty big route. So let's start
back at the beginning of thestory. So Lauren had attempted
some of these trips in thepreviously and at that point.
Let's start with you. You wereliving in Panama at that time?
Correct. So you had met Laurenon one of his previous trips,

(03:01):
and let's start with the timethat you heard he was back in
town and how you got involved inthis crazy adventure? Well, he'd

Patty Upton (03:08):
been through or into the Darien Gap through on
three previous attempts to makethis goal of entirely on land.
Those three attempts, didn'twork. One one thing or another.
That didn't work out. It was hisfourth attempt that he began in
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and 84 June15 1984. He was on the Arctic

(03:31):
Ocean at Prudhoe Bay. And hearrived in Panama's I'm gonna
guess sometime in October. And afriend said, Oh, that guy that
was going through the dairy insback and the last time I'd seen
him was probably sometime inearly 78. Mid 70, or spring of

(03:52):
78 was probably the last time Isaw him. I had no idea what he'd
been doing where he was nothing.
He doesn't really write letters.
And as a result, I thought, oh,okay, where is he? And they
said, Well, he's out at the Jeepclub. So I went out to the Jeep
club and he was there with hisjeep. He had a 1966 cj five Jeep

(04:13):
on this trip. He it wasn't it'smade by Kaiser. He kind of was
reluctant to buy a brand newJeep as the past two Jeeps had
been because Renault had a bigcontrolling interest in American
Motors at that time, and hedidn't feel it would be a truly
American made product withReno's name in there so he

(04:34):
decided he'd go with an olderJeep besides it had a great
winch. It had a 9000 poundRamsey power takeoff winch on
there. So that was kind of thebig selling event for sale
selling thing for thatparticular Jeep and I again
helped him organize stuff,places, things, papers, that

(04:57):
sort of thing. Okay,

Josh Meeder (04:59):
and Lauren just To educate everyone was pretty much
a purist and very, how would youdescribe him he was very
particular in his beliefs.

Patty Upton (05:09):
He would have been right at home during the Teddy
Roosevelt era. He, he believedin a man's word was all the man
was worth. And he said he wasgoing to do this trip entirely
on land, and he stuck to hisguns and did it entirely on

(05:30):
land. He was going to do it inone American aid vehicle, not a
series of them, he did it in oneAmerican made vehicle. He's
always been a man that he kindof he doesn't demand your
respect, but his persona kind ofwants you to respect that. And
he's very fair. He's very eventempered. He's not a hot head

(05:54):
and nothing like that. Eventhough he was six foot four,
well, over probably 225 pounds,230 pounds. And he, you know, he
had a commanding presence forsure. And yeah, when he listened
when Pete when he spoke, peoplelistened.

Josh Meeder (06:14):
Okay, and so you met him again here in the mid
80s. And, and he's now inPanama, and he's getting ready
to make his fourth attempt. Andat this point, there was an
offering or an opening for youto join him for that.

Patty Upton (06:27):
He was looking for someone that would help or take
photographs more than anythingelse. He's busy in the vehicle.
He's the one that he's the onlyone that's going to be in this
vehicle. Once we get into thejungle portion. Anyone else is
going to be out walking. Hecontacted his nephew Lawrence,
who lived in the Spokane area atthe time, he was over young 20s.

(06:50):
And he had just gotten out ofthe army. So it was wintertime
in Spokane. So yeah, why not getout of Spokane. So he came down
and was with his uncle. Hehadn't seen his uncle. He
doesn't even remember meetinghis uncle in his lifetime. This
was his really firstrecollection of meeting I mean,
even though that Lauren says no,we met when you were about five
years old. So he had his nephewwith him. So that was really

(07:13):
good because it takes a takestwo good English speaking people
that can communicate with eachother when you've got the winch
going. And you've got someone inthe vehicle, someone's got to be
out there watching to make surethat when to stop spooling
properly, isn't bunching up onone side, snap a cable,
whatever. And Lauren just neverfelt he could really put he

(07:36):
doesn't speak Spanish. Soputting a native out there who
has no clue for correspondedwhen she is let alone what he's
doing. So not having thatcommunication. So he had to have
a gringo out there in front ofthe vehicle. So Lawrence, that
was Lawrence's job. And thatleft me with wanting to do the
photography work as best Icould. It wasn't that I did all

(07:58):
I mean, I did the photographywork. Yes. But I mean, the other
hands were needed for doingrunning cables, hooking cables
on booking cables, you name it.
Everybody did something atcertain times.

Josh Meeder (08:11):
Okay, great. And so what was the what was the offer?
He extended to you? You're inPanama, he's getting ready to
go. So it was a short termoffer? Correct? Right.

Patty Upton (08:22):
We thought at the time, we thought it was gonna be
30 days. I mean, he'd been intothe Darien Gap on three previous
trips. So he actually crossed itin 77 and 49 days, and he did
about 10 miles strapped to tarpto dugout canoes up the Toronto
swamp because the rains were hadcome. So it wasn't an all land

(08:44):
crossing. And that really bumpedup well. Two weeks later, he
lost that one over a cliff andEcuador. So that put an end to
that trip. So yeah, he said, youknow, it may be 30 days, maybe a
little bit longer, we're notsure. And I said okay, I can
arrange to take 30 days off ofwork. Without pay have someone
take care of my job for me, thebookkeeper come in and do it

(09:06):
full time. Had my daughter takencare of no problems there,
nothing on my social calendar,everything was taken care of.
And I really made sure all thesethings were done before I said,
I can go because I knew I wouldlose a lot of respect from
Lauren, if I said, I want to dothis, I want to go and then when
the day left came to leave, ifmy buck wasn't in the seat,

(09:30):
because of some fluke that cameup that I you know, unless it
was a limb missing, then hemight have forgiven that but I
mean, it was just he's just thattype of person. You don't want
to let down and as a result, Ididn't want to let them down. So
I made sure everything was takencare of had a good camera had my
equipment as far as that goes. Ihad what I needed to take care

(09:51):
of me. And I said I'm going andwe thought we were going to do
it in 30 days. That was a pipedream. Yes.

Josh Meeder (10:00):
So if for clarification, 30 days was the
initial estimate, but tookslightly longer than that. How
long did the actual process takefrom

Patty Upton (10:09):
the end of the road in Panama at the town of U Visa?
till we reach the beginning of aroad in real, the town of
Riosucio Colombia was 741 41,day seven and 41 days, and we
traveled 125 miles. Yeah,

Josh Meeder (10:28):
I can't do the math off top my head, but that's not
a lot of miles per day.

Patty Upton (10:32):
No. And there's two rainy seasons in there where we
didn't move the first rainyseason POTUS at the village of
pooka Rue, and Lauren madearrangements with the chief of
the village that pika camp nearthe village. And he stayed there
in the Jeep for the nine monthsof the rainy season. And as he
termed it, watch the bananasgrow when the rains fall.

Josh Meeder (10:55):
And during this time, so you were with him for a
while, you did return home for abrief stent. But when did you go
back? And when did you rejoinwith Lauren?

Patty Upton (11:04):
Well, when we did the first 3030 days realize we
were not what there's a nationalpark that was created in
Colombia that created a problemto his third expedition. And
that created a problem to thepoint where we portray like he
says it was a poor choice ofwords a Columbian Park official.

(11:25):
Again, a man is as good as hisword the park official said you
need permission from the headoffice in Bogota to go through
the park once it's okay fine. 11days it took him to go by trail
boat larger boat bigger boatbus, another bus into Bogota
walked into their office. Theguy says you here take it you

(11:48):
got permission go no problem.
Repeat that all the way back outthere. Rains are now coming.
It's getting close to rainyseason. Lauren's getting a
little frustrated with all thispolitical nonsense. He can't
find the park official to givehim the letter that has been
signed by the the head officeand he gets back out to the Jeep
and buy two pumps in the morninghe made the guys pull all night

(12:12):
not out there are six o'clock inthe morning got everyone up
we're going we're moving we gotto get up this hill we've got to
get miles go and because therains are coming well Park
official comes up and says Waitwait wait you can't go You can't
go and launch this I've got thepermission here. Let me get to
the top of the hill so longestthe top of the hill and reaches
for the paperwork to give to thepark official and the park

(12:34):
official says no, no, no, no,no. And Lauren then realizes the
guy wants money. And this wasLauren's like you say sometimes
he could get his mouth going hesaid it's going to take more
than you and your gun to stop meor especial said fine. And back
the next day with more men andmore guns. As a result Lauren
saw his point of view in his mengot out Jeep was left to the

(12:58):
jungle. So we knew this nationalpark was there we wanted to see
if we could find a way to skirtaround it as much as possible so
that we could avoid a repeatperformance. Because we couldn't
get permission we tried again toget permission from the park
officials and in Colombia andthey wouldn't give it to us. So
we said okay, then we're goingto when we get to the border

(13:20):
we're going to go in a differentdirection that has never been
before and see if we can getaround the park. And when we got
to pooka roo rains we're goingto be coming rainy season was
fast approaching so Lawrence'swe're going to stay here. I went
back to my job in Panama CityLawrence went back to his job in
Spokane. I'd send supplies downby the missionary pilot that

(13:42):
would fly into the little grasslanding strip every six weeks.
And Lauren stayed there for ninemonths. I worked for nine months
and then I arranged again to goback down there in the beginning
and dry season of 86 and westarted out again. I had my
cousin and his brother in lawwith us. They were with us for
about two and a half weeksbecause they had jobs in Miami

(14:05):
they had to get back to it wasjust kind of a lark spur of the
moment type thing for them. Theyenjoyed it but I still say they
do speak to me so that's a goodthing. But then we were out
again for oh, I think it was 37Maybe maybe close to 40 days
that seconds. dry season inthere. And we both and we both

(14:28):
broke both rear axle shafts. Soat that point we were down and
down hard but we were out at theNational Park or whatever
because we were no longer injust jungle we were in little
farms there were littleindividual farmers there with
with little corn crops and stufflike that. So we ended up taking
out the entire axle house or theentire rear end. The whole axle

(14:54):
housing everything. Put it onmule went out by mule when out
by boat went out by larger boatagain bus to mid 18 where it was
left. We had permission to bringin new axle shafts. And that was
it. So Lauren said, Okay, I'mgonna go back to California and
I'm going to work, get the axleshafts. I was going back to my

(15:14):
job in Panama City. Well, I gotback to my job in Panama City
and found out that they weregoing to phase out my position.
I worked for the USA girlscoutsin Panama. And because of the
treaty with Tony hosts, theCarter Treehouse treaties, they
were going to an all volunteeroffice staff and I said, Well,
you know, volunteering is nice,but that's not what I need to

(15:35):
do. I need to have an income. Iwent ahead and oh, I worked till
probably beginning of July, andthen office was closed. And I
said, See you later. I thinkthis is what I want to do. And I
went back to the states andLauren Ben asked me if I wanted
to go full time and I said, youknow, like not yes, but hell
yes. And we went back down inthe dry season at seven and took

(16:00):
in. He brought in the axles fromthe Colombian side, I hiked
through from the Panamanianside, I'd flown down to Panama,
with some other parts I had, oh,driveline gear shift and I don't
know if you have probably acouple of you joints and a few
other things. And then I hikedthrough with natives to where

(16:20):
the Jeep was and left everythingI had there met him in the town
of turbo and Columbia, picked upgas and a new battery and went
back out there he had the axleshafts already in the housing
and fired her up and sheprobably ran on five of our six
cylinders, but she started rightup

Josh Meeder (16:44):
That's amazing.
Yeah, carry carrying the partsin like in this country, we're
so used to the convenience ofbeing able to get parts and
being an American made vehiclethey probably didn't have many
there's no part store. There'sno auto parts stores. So you
literally carry that theremainder of the parts that
Yeah, so you're up and running.
And from this point now, whereare you and what what's

(17:06):
happening next year getting intoSouth America at this point? Oh,

Patty Upton (17:09):
yeah, we we went out on mule actually, before we
started the Jeep that one beforewe started moving the Jeep that
third dry season in there in 87.
We went on out on mules to kindof scout out because we're now
in an area that's known as thetribal swamp. And this area when
you look at a map, sure enough,it's indicated as a swamp. But
it's only a swamp during themajor rains of the season. I

(17:33):
mean, so you want to get theretowards the end of the rainy
season to attend to the end ofthe dry season because it didn't
leeches out because we wentthrough there and mules and
there was 18 inches of waterstanding in some places. And
when we got there with the Jeep,it was like 18 inches of mud,
but it wasn't with waterstanding over it. So it was a it
was a different. What do youcall it? The curveball thrown at

(17:56):
us with having to deal with moremud and flatter terrain for
sure. And which also was not thebest because sometimes there
weren't a lot of trees aroundwinch too. So yeah, it was a
little bit again, a slow goingfollowing some logging roads
that they were punching throughwith big pieces of equipment.
But if you've ever been on anytype of a trail, that's mud

(18:19):
that's now dried, that was putin there when it was wet by
those big pieces of equipment,you're talking ruts, two and
three feet deep. So it wasalmost better if we weren't
following the roads that thesepieces of equipment put through
there because they were so roughand so hard to travel on.

Josh Meeder (18:37):
Right, you can get hung up on those and and there
were previous expeditions thathad tried that part of the swamp
and and I believe you said thatthey were You were told that
like you can't get through it.
And they were there in the rainyseason. Two

Patty Upton (18:52):
slugs grew. Yeah, we were told by members of one
expedition that went through in79. And with I think it was four
or five jeeps and AmericanMotors sponsored that one. They
came from south to north, andwhich which of Colombia, Panama
and I say South to North.
Because if you look at a map,it's actually east and west. So
yeah, you have to really knowyour geography but most people

(19:14):
think okay, South America South.
Well, at that point, it'sactually east but so south to
north from Colombia, Panama. Andthey got their course at the
beginning of the dry season. Sothe swamp was still full of
water. I mean, there was no realdry land for them to travel on.
So they said there is no dryland route through the a Toronto

(19:35):
Well, yeah, there is we foundone but we went from the other
direction, finding it at thetail end of that price season.
So we were very fortunate to dothat. We were able to find that
route. We had good guides, wehad been working for us. We
didn't know where we were wewere lost the whole time. If it
wasn't for our guides, thenyeah, we'd still be down there
going in circles. Now mid 80s

Josh Meeder (19:56):
There's no GPS you know, they're the maps are
probably out dated and, andthere's no markers or roadside
and so you weren't completelyout maps were

Patty Upton (20:05):
totally useless.
The ones from the the Panamaniangovernment put out it had, they
figured, well, we don't knowreally where the town of
bizarrely is. So we'll put it onboth sides of the, between the
river that way one of them willbe, within reason, probably
where they were, but they justput us all on both sides of the
river. So then there were somemaps that Lauren had gotten from
the military, they were mapsused by pilots. And there were

(20:26):
just blank spaces. I mean, justwhite, you know, there were two
epigraphical maps, which wasgreat. But then there was just
these blank white spaces inthere, like they had no idea was
there, I just kind of put alittle sticky note there. And I
said, there be dragons. No way.

(20:47):
They were airmail from pilotspoint of view. And they had no
idea was actually there.

Josh Meeder (20:53):
Wow. So starting in Colombia, let's go through the
trip of South America becausethere's there's some great
experiences that you shared inthere. But what was the rest of
the route? Like, from Colombiasouth,

Patty Upton (21:06):
it was reasonably good. It was good roads. When I
say good roads, good roads byyou know, South American
standards. So we're not talkingroads here in the states by any
stretch of the imagination. Um,but yeah, so we stayed on the
Pan American highway most of thetime, we got off an occasion on
on side trips and stuff. So

Josh Meeder (21:25):
you're ready to go you're sitting back out from
Columbia. And the rest of thetrip, you'll you mentioned we'll
probably be on some some roads,share what happened in the share
what happened going on furthersouth in South America, other

Patty Upton (21:42):
than being a wonderful experience with the
country and the people andfinding places to camp and
meeting people farmers thatwould you know, we'd find a
farmer and say, you know, can wecamp on the on your your farm
tonight for just so that we'resafe. And you know, they always
give us permission. And then wehad one time the farmer came out

(22:05):
with the next morning, we weregetting ready to leave, he had a
bag of green beans to pick. Andhe's giving us a bag of green
means and I mean, these peopleare literally, you know,
subsistence farmers. We've gotmore right there in the jeep
than they probably have, butthey're giving to us. And it was
just so heartwarming to meetthese people and talk with these
people. That to me, that's whatmade the trip was the people

(22:27):
that we met. brakes went out inSantiago, Chile, we just got
Santiago no further up. Oh, Ican't remember the name of the
town. Further up from inSantiago, still in the desert
portion of Chile. And that notcompletely out. Just we knew we
were having problems with them.
And Lauren just happened to pullinto the right little hole in

(22:48):
the wall. Fixit shop, young manin there spoke no English. He
said yeah, you can fix them. Andhe worked for several hours. And
finally his wife came down tothe shop to find out why he
wasn't home for dinner yet. Andrealized that we were still in
the process of bleeding thebrakes. I was inside pumping,
and he was underneath doing thethe bleeding part. Again, not

(23:10):
really speaking Spanish thatwell, it was kind of a difficult
situation. She says here, let mehelp and she gets in and she
gets in the jeep and she pumpsand he's bleeding the race. They
didn't want anything they didnot want he worked for probably
three or four hours on the Gdidn't want pay. He just wanted
to be a part of the trip.
Because we you know, again, wecan talk to them. Our Spanish is

(23:33):
not perfect. We can talk to themand tell them what we're doing.
We have a world map that we'vepainted on the rear side
windows, both sides of the Jeep.
So we could we've started with ared line through the yellow map
showing where we've been so far.
So he just wanted to be a partof something. And we got to
Santiago, Chile and had to holdup because we needed to find

(23:58):
transportation across theAtlantic we were looking at a
huge probably close to $6,000Bill to get across the Atlantic
Ocean for the jeep and the twoof us, plus we're going to be
without our house for 30 days.
Again, you just turned down theright road at the right time and
big farms just north ofSantiago. And this farmer was
growing seeds that he sells tothe states and he said I've got

(24:21):
an old house on the on the onthe farm that my workers aren't
using anymore. You're welcome tothat. We didn't have running
water but had a well. We saidGreat well we'll take it so we
stayed in this little concretehouse one bedroom bathroom type
thing with with a well and itwas cold it was wintertime we

(24:44):
were getting close to wintertimeso we did get a big bottle of
propane so that we could run ourlittle stove in the house and
cook and heat it a little bit.
And I started knocking on doorsof shipping agencies in in
Santiago. And finally they said,Well, we found one that was

(25:04):
called the in tailor shippingagency. He said, well call us
back in a few weeks and we'lllet you know. So we went ahead
and took off for further south.
went as far south in Chile as wecould go at that time. Now
there's roads, way further southin Chile. We crossed over a
barrel, low j into Argentina,and then down through Argentina,
and to arrive at whoosh. WIAA ison the island of Tierra del

(25:31):
Fuego while we were on bothokayness There we go, whoever it
is. That's as far south Well,that's the town. But we found
out that the Pope had beenthere, I don't know several
weeks before and visited a BoyScout camp. That was a little
bit further south. So we tookoff and we just kind of asked
questions I saw Yeah, you candrive and we kept driving

(25:53):
finally came to a point wherethere was no more road and we
were literally on the streetsand Magellan there. And that's
what we considered the end ofthe road on the South American
continent. It was about 27 milessouth of Pennsylvania's Chile.
We had called the Ian Tayloragency, and they said, Well,
we've got free transportationfor you, Lauren and the Jeep

(26:15):
across the Atlantic. And thatwas just like the biggest relief
at that point. Lauren was afraidwe were going to have to go to
ground once we got to SouthAfrica and then go to work
somewhere. So by having thisthis opportunity of having them
foot the bill for us to getacross the Atlantic, it was just
a lifesaver. So while I saidWell, most people consider the

(26:37):
island of Tierra del Fuego, thetip of South America and whoosh,
WIAA. The southern Well, it isthe southernmost town. But you
can't drive there, at least whenwe were there. I don't know that
there's a bridge yet know whenbecause it's over the Straits of
Magellan. So you have to take aferry across the Straits of
Magellan border barrier. Butsince we already achieved the
goal of remaining entirely onland, going to South Dakota

(27:00):
veinous. We went ahead andsplurged and went to as far
south as we quit on the islandto do Tierra del Fuego. The
roads down there were prettyrough. It was cold. It was
wintertime, we hit some snow.
Yeah, we had some really roughdirt roads that were just
potholes, filled with water.
They were little, we actuallythe rear bumper started the well

(27:23):
and started to break and wefound a place in Santiago when
we got back up there that wouldrepair it for us.

Josh Meeder (27:31):
What's really amazing about this story is is
how radically self reliant thatyou all were, you know, today we
have GPS, we have maps, we haveall the conveniences but back
then and undertaking a trip ofthis magnitude. There. You can't
really plan for this, you youhave to show you showed up every

(27:53):
day and figured out what was infront of you for the next mile
or the next two miles, right.
Like that. Part of the story isit's just really inspiring to
me. Now, you said, moving on toSouth America. The other part of
the story is you you guys didn'tundertake this with massive
corporate sponsorship, you wouldwork as your pay your way this

(28:13):
was almost entirely self funded,right?

Patty Upton (28:18):
My husband was a carpenter worked heavy duty
heavy construction, started outbuilding houses and that sort of
thing eventually worked onfreeway overpasses, but he you
know, he was a car he was inthat he was not an engineer and
he was not a supervisor. He wasout there with his tool belt on
just like all the other guys hemay have had to accrue under

(28:38):
him. But he was out there withhis tool belt on. I was a
secretary. So yeah, this is whatI try to tell people is you have
to prioritize, prioritize thethings you want in your life. It
doesn't take massive amounts ofmoney and store houses full of
equipment and that sort of thingto do something like this. All

(29:02):
it takes is something in hereand something in here. You get
those two working, and you canmake it work. Yeah, that's all
it takes. We've always saiddetermination, patience, and a
little bit of money go a longway.

Josh Meeder (29:15):
And good people along the way. Certainly make
make the drill magical and so soyou you happen to find through
your efforts and knocking on thedoors. You got passage to South
Africa. So take us across theocean and into South Africa. The

Patty Upton (29:32):
trip across the ocean was not without its
interesting parts. We hit towhat they call Force Nine
storms. I think they only go to11 on the Beaufort scale. So
nines pretty much up there ifit's Yeah, I don't ever want to
go to see in a ship any smallerthan that freighter that we were
in for sure. And it was by nomeans a small ship. But yeah, it

(29:56):
was not it was not fun for ohprobably Good day and a half,
two days when the first stormhit that hit at night. And Laura
and the Jeep was actually loadedon board and tied down to a
cargo hole, cargo hatch up onthe bow of the ship. And there
were some containers tied downnext to it. And he went up to

(30:18):
the bridge, and he says, Youguys turn on lights out there. I
want to see if the Jeep is stillout there. Because they had told
us that every now and then whenthey do hit some of these
storms, these containers can bejust washed overboard. So cables
just snap and wash themoverboard. So they've turned on
the floodlights, and they're theJeep was still sitting there,
tied down as tight as she couldbe. And second storm was also

(30:43):
Oh, it was several days later,further out. And they had told
us that the South Atlantic inAugust was the roughest. And
yeah, it is. I don't know whatit is any other time. But it
certainly was pretty rough whenwe crossed and it was 30 days.
From the time we left. Taco oneOh, I believe was the name of
the port in Chile, where weloaded and went down through the

(31:05):
Straits of Magellan and acrossto South Africa, and got to
South Africa. And it was nice,because we're now in a country
that at least English was spokenmore widely, because it was
still under the apartheidgovernment. So the offer cots,
and they were in power. So theoffer constant language was
still the government language.
So but anything else, it wasmostly English, which was at

(31:29):
least something for us that wecan deal with a little easier.
Getting through customs andimmigrations there was I don't
think it took us too long at alljust a few hours to get the Jeep
off, loaded and out off the dockand everything. took her to a
place that we could get a steamcleaned and steamed clean the
heck out of her because she justswallowed. I don't know how much

(31:54):
salt water. And then we made aphone call and to a acquaintance
of my sisters from many yearsprior to this. She had met a
South African man backpackingthrough the Mediterranean when
she was backpacking through theMediterranean. And they had kept
in touch. And he said, Well, youknow, I'm married. Now I got a

(32:15):
family. But you know, I'm yoursister Call me when they get
here. So I called and his wifeanswered, she says, we're
expecting you. My sister'sexpecting you. You're going to
stay there that night. Thenyou're going to come here and
you're going to stay here. We'vegot the bed made up, you've got
a sales room, and just went on.
And it's like I knew her all mylife. I don't know who this
person is. Yet these people.
They opened their house to us.

(32:40):
We were there three or fourdays. They says, Oh, we have to
go away this weekend. Do youmind feeding the goats and the
chickens and pigeons and theSilkworms and I forget whether
they're animals there were thatwe had a fee. We're just gonna
be gone for the weekend. Theywalked off and left you know the
house with complete strangers.
But no, it was just it wasfamily. I

Josh Meeder (32:59):
bet you were very welcoming to a big unsteady land
in a restful bed at that point.
Yes,

Patty Upton (33:06):
we were very much so it was nice to not have
something moving under us.
Because yeah, that Yeah. Not nota sailor. I can remember years
ago, I read Rob Robin Graham, Ithink was the author of was at
that time, I think the youngestsolo sailor around the world.
This was back in the 60s. Iwanted to do that. Wow. Wait, am
I glad I didn't follow thatteam.

Josh Meeder (33:31):
Great. So what did you stay in South Africa there
long? Or did you get on the roadpretty quickly.

Patty Upton (33:37):
We were on in South Africa for about six months. I'm
traveling in South Africa, wehad some actual problems. Again,
we've gone to free floatingaxles in the Darien Gap. But
we've taken a Jeep that's madefor two people in life just to
go out for a weekend. And wecarry spare parts we carry
everything including the kitchensink. I mean, you know, granted,

(34:01):
it's not like we carry a lot offrivolous stuff. Everything did
double duty. I mean, the dishpans or the dish pans, the
bathtubs, you lined them with aplastic bag, you drink the oil
in them. I mean, you did justmultiple things had to be used
that way because you don't havethe room. But all that adds up.
And we were extremely heavy. Andyeah, we broke another we have

(34:23):
actual problems there in SouthAfrica had hadn't fixed Adam new
incentive and we had new hubswant a hub flange on them. And
it was actually the hub flangewas stripping out. The axles
weren't breaking but this hubflange was like a weakened
metal. And if it started to sliptoo much than that hub flange
would the tongue and groove orwouldn't be on call. It's not

(34:46):
tongue and groove. That'sCarpenter, the split line up. So
yeah, it would strip it out. Sowe actually had new hubs that
had flanges sent and we had themtaken to a place in South Africa
and the heat treated of coursemake them a little harder. So
that helped. Then we traveledover into Southwest Africa,
Namibia, into the Kalahari. Wewent through Kimberley, we just

(35:10):
did a lot of sightseeing becausewe had saved money coming across
the country and we weren'tspending that much money there.
It was fairly inexpensivetravel. So we just thought we're
not going to get back to thispart of the world. We're going
to take advantage of it. Andyeah, we spent six months yeah,
traveling through game park overin the Etosha pan to see the

(35:31):
animals Kalahari, also some ofthe big animals and really,
really enjoyed it went throughthe mining the gold mining
district up outsideJohannesburg, kind of west of
Johannesburg, at a tour of notthe deepest mine. There was
still more we were down a mileinto the earth. And there was
still another mine that wasbelow where we were these mines,

(35:56):
you know, it's not acres on thetop of the surface of the earth.
It's cubic volume type stuff. Soyeah, we were down a mile in
this, this coal mine, and therewas still another Goldmine
deeper than we were.

Josh Meeder (36:10):
What didn't experience moving up through
there, there is a place becauseyou were going towards where
were you looking to do the landcrossing at

Patty Upton (36:21):
Egypt, there's only you can only cross it Egypt
everywhere else. I mean, that'sthe only place that African
touches the science while andactually it's the Suez Canal is
there, but there's a tunnelunder the Suez Canal. We didn't
know if it was a tunnel or abridge, we knew that we could
get across the Suez Canal atsome point without having to

(36:42):
take a ferry boat. Most peoplethat travel overland at that
time, they were all Europeans.
And they were coming from thesouth. So they are coming from
the north going into Africa. Andthey go down to Spain, and then
they cross it through Gibraltarand into Morocco, or over to
Tunisia, and ferry boats arerunning there all the time.
Well, that's a water barrierthat isn't legitimate. Only

(37:03):
Egypt was where we could go.

Josh Meeder (37:07):
So leaving South Africa during the apartheid,
there were definitely somepolitical things that were a
surprise to you. And there weretravel restrictions. So moving
north, on your trip leavingSouth Africa, what did you run
into?

Patty Upton (37:21):
Having been in South Africa under the apartheid
government, we couldn't come upthrough what East Africa
Tanzania Kenya area because oftheir the apartheid government
in South Africa. So we were kindof regulated, we had to go
through the center of Africa. Wewent into Botswana and Zambia.
Both of those countries haverelations with South Africa. So

(37:42):
we had no problems there. Whenwe got into Zambia, we went to
the US Embassy and had to getpassport, new passports from the
US Embassy there, because of thestamps that were in our passport
entering South Africa. So we gotfresh passports in Zambia. And

(38:02):
then from Zambia. It was intoZaire. And Zaire was a real eye
opener because it was just itwas a sad, sad state. I mean, it
really was I mean, the Buddhasays the Seiko was in power. And
he was one of the richest men inAfrica in this country was one
of the poorest. And it was itwas really sad. And when we went

(38:25):
to Lubumbashi to the USconsulate there, we walked into
the US Consulate, and we talkedto them, we said, look, we've
got these us passports that weneed to send back to the States.
They said, well, we can't dothat. We said, we mean you can't
do that. We've we've done thatbefore throughout the US. And
while we can't do that, we saidokay, then we'll have to take
them down to the Luma Bashi postoffice and send them through the

(38:46):
local mail back. Well, you can'tdo that. We said, we're not
going to go through the rest ofAfrica with us passports on us
that have South African stamps.
So what are we going to do andwe went back and forth and they
wouldn't budge. And we literallyturned around, walked out and in
the way they were we're havingan alarm probably got a little
loud. There was an Air ForceColonel out there. He said given
to me, I'll put them in my pouchand send them back. And sure

(39:07):
enough, he did. I mean, it wasjust again, people are just
fabulous. And some of themaren't but it are frustrating
but especially those ingovernment positions. That

Josh Meeder (39:20):
might be the one universal truth that you've
discovered is all governmentbureaucracies are not fun to
deal with.

Patty Upton (39:26):
Wow. Yeah. So yeah, for sure. And so then it was
serious. I Air and Air was apretty it was all four wheel
drive. There were no real roads,everything was there were no
bridges. Bridges had all been Imean, there were logs across
where there had been bridges,because there were concrete
abutments and everything elseand they just have logs now

(39:48):
laying on top of them. Or therewere no bridges and you said
afford the river. It was a redclay mud, terrible, terrible
stuff. And it was too is to justkeep on plugging we are again
overloaded. So we had a tendencyto break springs a lot. And I
think we Lauren got real good atchanging springs fairly quickly.

(40:12):
But he was replacing him withsomeone else's discard, you
know, we find a town go to thetown dump and he goes through
the discards there and find thebest ones that he could find
that might fit the jeep. Andthat was what we we used. And
from Zaire, it was into theCentral African Republic. And
that's where most people thenwould continue north through the

(40:35):
Sahara towards Morocco, orAlgeria. Well, because we have
our goal to get to Egypt, we hadto go through the Sudan. So we
turned east and went into theSudan, and went through North
northern part of Sudan, andagain, another extremely sad
country, because they were atwar when we were there, and

(40:56):
they're still at war. And wewere there in 1980 87, late 80s,
late early 88 Night, yeah. 1988.
So that's really sad.

Josh Meeder (41:09):
And somewhere along this path, it this is to the
point where you got sick on thetrip for a little bit and got
taken down with with malaria.
Yeah,

Patty Upton (41:17):
um, I think it was probably we had run out again,
it was taking us longer to getthrough Africa than we had
anticipated. It was true. Yeah,Africa. Once we left South
Africa, it was a total of sixmonths from the time we left
South Africa for the time wereached Cairo. And it was just a
little bit longer trip than wehad anticipated, and our malaria

(41:38):
anti malarial pills had run outseveral weeks prior. And I came
down with malaria and amoebicdysentery which I didn't know
what I had, I just knew that Iwas very, very sick. And we
stopped at one littleconstruction. It was a Greek
construction camp of some sort.
And they put us up for a fewdays, I drank lots of water,

(42:01):
they actually took me down tothe clinic in town, and they
gave me leader of flu IV stayedwith them at the camp for
several for a day or two, andthen I felt better. And I said,
Well, let's go. And we took offand it was like, a day and a
half later, and my fever cameback and I was just pretty much
out of it. I don't I don't havea lot of recollection of what

(42:24):
happened. I had to read Lauren'sjournals to find out what was
going on. The Jeep is made up.
We can make the inside of theJeep up for us to sleep in. I
don't go going through theDarien Gap. I slept in the jeep
every night. I mean, that wasthat was the Taj Mahal as far as
I was concerned. It was hadmosquito netting and everything

(42:44):
while he could make the bed upfor me to sleep in while he was
driving. So that's what he did.
Because again, we're doing thisit's summer, June, late May. So
it was pretty hot. And when weleft the Greek construction
camp, they gave him a businesscard of their head office in

(43:05):
Khartoum. So when he got toKhartoum, he parked he found a
park city park town park, insome shade left the Jeep opened
and got a taxi and said, Take meto this place and gave him the
business card and he says okay,now you wait here for me,
because I don't know where theJeep is. So you got to stay
right there. And the guy said,okay, so he went up and talk to

(43:27):
the people in the office. Theysaid, Okay, well, let's go get
her. So they came down andfollow the taxi back to where
the Jeep was. And then they tookme to a small clinic, not the
hospital, small clinic inKhartoum. And that's where I was
visited. And then the testshowed that it was malaria and

(43:47):
amoebic dysentery. And I wasthere for I think three days
while they gave me the it's justan overdose of the anti malarial
pills for the malaria. And thenwe just started making our
preparations for going norththrough Sudan at that point,
because now we're in Khartoum.

(44:08):
So now we're headed north toEgypt. And that's another whole

Josh Meeder (44:13):
Yeah, this part of the story is what really just
blew my mind. So you had I don'tknow if it's even fair to call
it an adventure. But you thiswas an interesting part of the
trip. You said this was one ofthe harder parts. Yeah, this

Patty Upton (44:27):
is the one that it was the trouble of life
threatening situations asthey're anti climactic because
you've lived through them. Butthis was truly the really what I
would consider the only lifethreatening situation that we
were ever faced. We had takenoff out of Khartoum. Again,
looking at a map, the Nile makesa big loop. And you cut across

(44:51):
this part of the desert, fromCartoon up to I think it's the
town of Dongola, which is on theriver so you avoid this big
loop. And it's a weld traveledroute. There's tea houses along
the way buses trucks dongle is abig town. So there's a lot of
traffic along there not aproblem. We had to check in with
the police and dongle on most ofthese third world countries, you

(45:13):
always had to check in and outwith the security police of just
about every town you wentthrough, did that. And then we
started up the west side of theNile River. And we had no GPS
that was not something that wasavailable. In fact, the only
compass we had no longer worked.
So we knew that the Nile River,we had to keep the Nile River to

(45:33):
our right to our east because weknew that that was our water
source. Because again, this islate June, we got to have water.
And it was also our direction totravel. We knew it was going to
go to Egypt. And that's where wewere going all we have to do is
follow the river we just andwhen you look at it by this
time, it's not making any ofthese big loops, but it's not
perfectly straight either. Andwe were doing really well. It

(45:56):
was hot. Very hot. We in fact,at one point, I think he turned
the heater on to pull some heataway from the engine. But we
were several days out andDongola and we broke an axle
shaft with the terrain hadgotten real rocky and had come
right down to therepresentative. So we had to

(46:19):
swing around this big rockyoutcropping to get around it
because there was no way to gobetween the river and in this
rocky outcropping. Well, when weswung around, we got into some
really soft sand and we broke anaxle shaft. And we had already
used the spare shaft that we hadwith us. So we knew we were down
and down bad because at thatpoint, the last human we'd seen

(46:41):
was 45 miles back and it waslike a 10 year old kid with
goats or something. And so wehad and we had no idea where we
were, we didn't know where theNile River was, because we had
made this big swing to the west.
And so we just were that firstnight was probably one of the

(47:04):
roughest nights I can everremember because I was a total
basket case. And Lauren beingthe person he is says, Okay,
what we need to do is we need tosit down and we need to make a
list of everything we need totake out of the Jeep and take
with us, we don't know how we'releaving yet, but we know we are
going to be leaving the jeep. SoI need you to make a list of

(47:26):
everything you think we need totake from pencils, to papers, to
journals to passports,everything. So he said, we're
not going to talk about it, youjust make your list. I'll make
my list. And then when we'redone, we'll compare our list and
see what we got. So we did that.
And I know now that that wasjust a calming effect that he
was having and putting my mindout of taking it out of the

(47:50):
negative space that it was inand putting it into a
constructive, void apart and getit working. And when we compare
the list, I think the only thinghe had that I didn't have was
the inside rear view mirror. Hewas going to pop that off and
take that as a signaling device.
So now we have our lists. Sothings were pretty calm. And he

(48:13):
says I'll hike up to that.
Mountaintop that rock rockyoutcropping and I'll see what I
can see tomorrow. So he didfound out the Nile River was
probably about a mile from wherewe broke down. There wasn't a
person, anything that evenindicated a person had ever been
out there. There was nothingthere was nothing like a rock
hut, house, a farm nothing. Itwas just desert and a big river.

(48:34):
And then he hiked down to theriver and found that it had a
current so we knew we weren'tfar enough north to be on Lake
Nasser. So we knew that we werestill in Sudan, and that there
was still occurred. And we alsoknew that the village of Wadi
Hoffa snore. And we knew fromMali Hoffa, we could get a train
back to Khartoum. So our goalwas to get from where we were to

(48:55):
what he how far we had no ideahow far it was. He said Well,
the river is going to be ourbest mode of transportation. So
he secured the Jeep into somebrush that was there. And using
a tin drawer that's in the backof the Jeep that's probably 32
inches long by 11 inches highand 17 inches wide. He sealed
the seams. And then he used sometamarisk branches he caught and

(49:19):
then the we had a bunch of jerrycans, plastic jerry cans to
carry extra gas He put all thegas in the tank so the cheat
turned the jerry cans upsidedown lashed him to this so we
had an outrigger and either sideand then all of our supplies
went into this tin box it wasyou know the cooking pot the
food, the water, the watercontainer, the halogen pills to

(49:39):
purify the water. Everythingimportant papers, clothing,
whatever we could fit in a 32inch by 17 inch by 11 inch box.
And then he inflated the sparetire inner tube that we had
which I'm going to take a littleside trapped right here, because
so many people nowadays thinkWell, that's no big deal.

(50:02):
Because everyone's gotcompressors nowadays. No, not
everybody had compressors. Whatwe had was old school, of
course, you remove the sparkplug, you screw this into the
spark plug socket, and then youput it on your tire and turn
your engine on and the aircompression pump fire up. That
was our, our method for pumpingtires, we're still have it still

(50:25):
works. It's one of those thingsthat I mean, duct tape will fix
it if it breaks. So there'snothing there's nothing much to
go wrong. But anyway, blew upthe inner tube, tied that with a
long rope to the raft we got inthe river, we held on to the
inner tube or the raft, we werenot above the water. And we
floated down the river, the restof that day, got out that night

(50:48):
made camp, cook beans, cookedrice, boiled water for drinking,
and you'd lay there at night andyou'd listen you'd almost strain
your ears to see if you couldhear a dog bark or chicken or a
baby cry.

Josh Meeder (51:05):
No, nothing, just the total isolation

Patty Upton (51:09):
total. And not even he did virtually nothing out
there. I mean, there may be afew birds, but there was no
wildlife. There was novegetation. I mean, it was all
just wrong. Really, it was justkind of gravelly rock. And it
was not a it's not it wasn't apretty desert as far as deserts
go. The next day it got in theriver started out again, we got

(51:30):
in a little early, we thoughtwell, we'll get an early start
found out that you can get getclose to getting hypothermia
when it's 128 when the airtemperature is 120 degrees. And
that river is so cold. And thewater was moving so fast that I
got to the point that I said Ican't do it. I got to get out. I
am shaking so hard. I couldn'tfocus my eyes were no longer

(51:51):
focusing my hands were goingnumb, my feet were tingling. I
had to get out. Get out, webuild a fire with hot tea. Warm
up, get back in the river, goanother few hours. And then
that's it. Gotta get out. I'vegot to warm up, get out, build a
fire, have some hot tea, and doit. And I mean did hypothermia
did 120 degree temperatures. Butyeah,

Josh Meeder (52:14):
close to it doesn't take much cold water to chill
the body just those few degrees.
No,

Patty Upton (52:19):
and it was and you're in it and you're
completely submerged. The onlypart of your body that's not in
the water is really your handsmay be in your head. Everything
else is in the water. And watersucks the oils out of your skin
like nothing. And it was thethird day. Halfway through the
third day we saw white contenton the east bank, we made our

(52:40):
way over there. And throughbroken English and sign language
we found out that this guy'sproduce was going to be picked
up that night by a truck andtaken into YT alpha, which was
maybe about an hour or so byrode away. We said can we get a
ride? They said sure. So westayed there and waited for this
truck to come in. And then got aride into what alpha. And from

(53:02):
there we knew we could get thattrain back to Khartoum and got
back to Khartoum. And, again,nothing is easy. Nothing is
simple. You can't just pick upthe phone and make a long
distance call. You don't haveone in your pocket you can pull
out. Oh, the only place you canmake an international call in
Khartoum was at the HiltonHotel. So we went down to the

(53:24):
Hilton hotel called my mothergot her answering machine. No,
we do and it took several timesfor them to try to get the call
to go through. Finally heranswering machine answered. And
I was able to get a message onthe answering machine that we
will call you tomorrow night atthis time, that your time this
time. Whatever time it is inSeattle right now. That's what

(53:45):
time we're going to calltomorrow or begin calling. And
we will continue to begincalling or try calling for two
hours. And she's we left thatmessage on there and prayed that
she got it. Next night we gotthere, tried to place the call
and it took several it tookabout almost that full two hours
before that call finally wentthrough. And my mother answered.

(54:08):
And we said we're doing good. Noproblems didn't go into a lot of
details. No sense in doing that.
Lauren found out at that pointthat he was a grandfather. His
granddaughter had been born inlate March and this is now late
June. And so that was a bigsurprise and then you welcome
surprise and told my motherokay, this is what we need. This

(54:31):
is who you call, this is thelength. This is the number of
splines This is the number ofgrooves, you know, when you get
on we had made contact with aguy in the US Embassy there in
Khartoum. First of all, the oneof the counselors, he wasn't
going to help us can't haveanything mailed to the to the US
Embassy. And we'd alreadychecked with Sudanese customs

(54:54):
and we either actually a letterfrom the Sudanese customs saying
to have it so To the embassy, itwould be a lot easier and
cheaper if it went right to theembassy, then through Sudanese
customs, and this guy wouldn'teven look at it and launch this.
I'm gonna speak to your boss. Sowe were taken upstairs to see
his boss. His boss says here,here's my name, Here's my
address. Just make sure it'sonly my name on the box. I'll

(55:15):
know it's for you. Have it sentto me. I said, Fine. I told my
mother the address andeverything. And the next day
Lauren said, you know, I don'tlike the Jeep sitting out there
all by herself. She's come toofar. And she means too much. To
just be sitting there all byherself. I can't, I can't bear
to have something happened toher at this point. He said, I'm

(55:36):
gonna buy supplies, and I'mgonna go back out. So he bought
about six weeks worth ofsupplies, took the train back to
YT alpha and hired a local thereto take him up river to where
the Jeep was. And that's wherehe stayed that I mean, I that's
what happened. I don't knowother than reading his journals,
but you know, because once heleft, I had no idea. I had no

(55:57):
communications with him. And Iwas staying with an American
family there in Khartoum. 11days after my mother posted
those axle shafts, I had them inmy hand. However, the blue and
the White Nile converge atKhartoum. There were rains in
the highlands of Ethiopia, rainsin the south of Sudan. And both

(56:17):
the Blue and White Nile wentinto flood stage was the highest
the river had been since like1940 something and the railroad
tracks North Khartoum or NorthSwati house that had been washed
out. So now I'm stuck in thecity with no way out. I started
knocking on doors I started withyou know, businessman. Well,

(56:38):
first of all, I started with therailroad they kept leading me on
like it was going to be fixedright away. And I go down every
day. And every day they tell meno, well, then, after three or
four or five days of this, Ifinally said, Well, when is it
going to be fair? I've got totalk to somebody. So they
finally let me talk to somebody.
And like I said, this is notlate June. He says, oh, probably
sometime near December. I saidokay, good to know. I am be

(57:05):
okay. No. And I started knockingon doors, government offices. US
Government tried them. Theyweren't much help United Nations
programs that were helping outwith relief supplies. And then
after about, oh, I'm gonna guessgood two weeks of doing this. I

(57:27):
was put in touch with the UnitedNations Development Program that
was doing work there. And theysaid they had the use of a
Belgium C 130. Hercules that wasgoing to fly to Whitehall for
the next morning with reliefsupplies, and I could be on
board. They should be out onthis corner here, these two
streets at seven o'clock in themorning. And I was out there at

(57:48):
you know, six o'clock in themorning, and was flown up to
Whitey Hoffa and in a C 130. Andwhen I got off the plane, there
was a man there. He was theshell agent for the show Gask
because of the ferries that runbetween Egypt and mighty alpha.
And he had a letter from Lauren,he'd learned gotten a letter out

(58:11):
to him address to me and he wasthere. He knew His plane was
coming and he was there to giveit to the pilot to take back.
See if they could get it to me.
He was that what was going on?
Why was it taking so long? ButLauren said he kind of suspected
something was amiss, because hecould see the river had changed.
The river was now literallylike, you know, milk is thicker

(58:32):
than water. Yes, that's aboutwhat the river looked like. And
just that consistency of beingthat thick. And that color of
chocolate milk. And that'sthat's what the river looked
like. So what an

Josh Meeder (58:46):
amazing amount of trust for Lauren with you,
knowing that he had prepared forsix weeks, but there's no
communication. It's eitheryou're coming back or you're not
or he's got to repeat the trip.
Right and the the serendipity ofhim having the forethought to
send a letter to you because heheard of the transport and you

(59:06):
happen to run into the guy whenyou land to get that letter is
amazing. Yeah.

Patty Upton (59:13):
And so yeah, I hired Mubarak was the name of
the shell agent. I hiredsomebody through him to take me
back up river to where Laurenwas. Got there. The next day
extended stay the night inWhitey Hoffa got there the next
day. Lauren had lost probably 30pounds. I mean, he looked like a
greatest great suntan, but justpractically just bones. Because

(59:39):
he cut back on his food. He wasjust getting concerned with his
food that he wasn't going tobecause he didn't know what was
going on. So he had foodrations.

Josh Meeder (59:47):
How long how many weeks was this between when you
separated to getting back? I

Patty Upton (59:52):
don't remember exactly. I just know from the
time we broke down to the timewe were repaired and moving was
seven The days so just over twomonths, so most of that time was
him out there by himself. Imean, it was, you know, we had
Yeah, it was, it was a long timeand like he said it was changing

(01:00:16):
the, what do you call it, thefree floating axles union check
that the Jeep up, you just undothose six bolts, take that home
flange, I'll take the axle shaftoff, put the new one in, put put
the same hand flange on and puta new flange on tighten up six
bolts, you're good to go. Wewere down for 70 days for that
for that job. And it was 36miles and four and a half hours
later we were on a tarred Roadin Egypt and Egypt, we'd be on a

(01:00:40):
road.

Josh Meeder (01:00:42):
But even getting on the tarred roads, not half the
battle because Egypt had you hadsomething with the title or
this, you called it a packagegetting into Egypt, there was
documentation there's a

Patty Upton (01:00:54):
lot of foreign countries require a bond be
posted in order for you to bringa car or a vehicle into their
country because they want tomake sure they get their their
fair share of taxes if youdecide to sell the car there. So
what they developed was thisthing called a corne. I don't
know, years ago, you could getit from the from AAA. And you

(01:01:15):
posted X amount of dollars ofwhat your vehicle was worth in a
bank account. And that was thenpayable to AAA and to Lauren.
And that way, if you neverexported your car out of a
country, Britain, AAA would becontacted. And then they would
send the money to that countryand say here's your money for

(01:01:35):
taxes because obviously the carwasn't exported because it
doesn't show up on thepaperwork. So Lauren had a corne
for the jeep. And in big redletters, and I'm talking a stamp
as big as a silver dollar ormore on all over the front page
and every page inside in big redletters not valid in Egypt.

(01:01:58):
Egypt required a 3000 or 300%deposit. And he was not going to
post that much. He needed themoney for the trip, not for the
deposit. So this was not validin Egypt. And so when we got to
Egypt, you know, we're we'retotally ignorant. We're not
going to say a word, mom's theword as far as we're concerned.

(01:02:22):
And when we because we weren'tshipped into the country legally
until we got to Aswan, which wasI don't know how many miles
further up into the countrybecause that's where the the
ferry boat leaves to go to Wadihalfa. So there's nothing down
below for tourists. It's alljust you know, you can go down

(01:02:43):
to Abu Simbel and visit thetemple, but there's no offices
there. So we didn't get checkedinto we got to Aswan. And we
were going through the rigmaroleand we showed up at the place
and we handed over this, butit's a big book. It's like a 711
by 1711 by 14, I guess pages arebig. And it's a book and you

(01:03:05):
handed it to him. And we're justsaying, Okay, please, please,
please, please, please, please.
And he takes it and I don't knowthey do something. And he says,
and they speak relatively goodEnglish. He says, Well, you're
going to have to come backtomorrow. We can't finish this.
It's too late today. Okay, so wecome back tomorrow, and they
verify the VIN number and this,that and the other thing and

(01:03:27):
then they stamp our current dayand they give us our current a
they give us a license platethat you provide that we have a
Gyptian license plate, and weget a license plate for the jeep
and we are legally in thecountry even though it says not
valid. They could speak English,but they couldn't read English.
Oh, that one was so that was atough, tough one for us. We held
our breath a lot on that one.

Josh Meeder (01:03:50):
Yeah. And so Egypt is a relatively easier to travel
through. And you're going nownow. Yeah, Egypt was

Patty Upton (01:03:58):
good. I mean, it was I think it was hard. Yeah,
it was hard road the whole way.
We went up to the Red Sea roadinstead of following the Nile
because there's so many townsalong the Nile River, and the
road that follows the Nile thatit would just be one town after
another. So we went over to theRed Sea and it was much more
scenic and peaceful and easierto camp and that sort of thing.
And we went over towards the RedSea and followed the Red Sea up

(01:04:20):
and then cut across to Cairo,which no, that may have not been
the best thing because you hadwe had to almost go through all
the way through Cairo. Cairo wasI think, 15 million people when
we were there. And every singleone of them drove something. It
could have been a bus. It couldhave been a truck. It could have
been a garbage truck. It couldhave been a bicycle. It could
have been an oxcart, buteverybody drove something. Oh,

(01:04:41):
traffic was horrendous. And ofcourse the pyramids are on the
West Bank, and you have to getover onto the west side of the
Nile and we stay there was abeautiful campground out by the
pyramids that we stayed at. Andbefore we got out there we went
into Do a little shop there inCairo and I went into one store

(01:05:01):
with lights lectricityrefrigeration, I was able to buy
hot and cold stuff, fresh stuff,price stuff, everything all in
one little tiny little shop. Oh,this is I mean heaven. You know
this is great because I'm not inthe market marketplace bartering
with everybody not knowingexactly or how fresh things are.
And that night after we maincamp, there was a overland truck

(01:05:24):
that came in from England. Well,the truck is based there in
Cairo. They fly the clienteleinto Cairo, this overland truck
that holds 20 People goes topick up and then they take them
down to assemble. And then theyput them on the ferry and or no,
they fly them then they bring itback to Aspen and they fly him
to Kenya, or Tanzania, Kenyafirst, I guess. And there's

(01:05:49):
another truck that meets himdown there. And then they go
down through Kenya and Tanzania,and then eventually down into
South Africa. Whereas thetrumpets in Egypt just stays
there. Well, anyway, they hadtheir 20 clientele and they said
we were camped right next time.
They said do you want to go intothe city for us with us for

(01:06:10):
dinner tonight, we're gonna gointo not a McDonald's, Kentucky
Fried Chicken, a Kentucky FriedChicken. We're gonna go into
Kentucky Fried chicken fordinner tonight be secure. So we
climbed in the back of thetruck. And we're going through
the West Bank, west side of thepyramids in that area over to

(01:06:30):
somewhere to go have for dinner.
And this one young gal, she wasprobably about 19 or 20. And she
was looking at the back of thetruck. So it's so dirty here.
It's so nasty. These people areso poor. This is awful. And I
said, if you think this is bad,you may as well just get back on
the plane and go back to Englandbecause it only this is good.
This is good. This is the thisis the cream of the cream. You

(01:06:53):
know, it's gonna get a lot worsewhen you go from south. And I
said, you know, my thought is,you know, aren't you traveling
to experience these thingsanyway? I mean, isn't this isn't
if it's if it's like home, whyare you leaving? You know, if
you want it to look like yourfront door or your front yard.
Why are you going to leavetoday? Oh, yeah. So yeah. So
anyway, I often wonder how shesurvived her trip to Africa. But

(01:07:15):
yeah, we stayed out there. Andthen it was back across from
Cairo to the Suez Canal andunder the Suez Canal, into the
Sinai through the Sinai and intoEgypt, and now into Israel. And
there, we ran into our firstmajor roadblock that was caused

(01:07:36):
by human nature, not MotherNature. Yeah,

Josh Meeder (01:07:41):
this you said that was probably one of the tougher
parts for Lauren with becauseagain,

Patty Upton (01:07:47):
it was political.
It was all political. The twocountries Israel and Jordan were
technically at war, even thoughthere was no fighting. It was
just something on paper. And wewere told by the Jordanian
people that we spoke to, theysaid, Well, you know, we have to
live in this part of the world.
So that's why we don't have timedon't have relations with

(01:08:08):
Israel. You know, they're anArabic country, and they needed
to maintain their sovereignty.
So they just said, you know,okay, fine, Israel's. We're at
war with them, even though therewas nothing happening. So we
again, we worked at a trying toget the Jeep to Jordan, by land.
The only other option was to gothrough Lebanon. And this was

(01:08:31):
three or five years after theMarine Corps barracks bombing in
Beirut. So we knew driving a bigred Jeep with California license
plates was probably not thewisest move. So we knew that
Jordan was where we needed toget to, and we ended up talking
with UN. What do you call it,the embassy people, tourist

(01:08:53):
agencies that were referred totravel agencies, and the UN, we
said, look, you know, you canpaint it white, like a big blue
blue un on it, you drive itacross the bridge, across the
Jordan River. And we'll getacross some other way we can fly
or go down to go back into Egyptand fly or go back and DJ and

(01:09:15):
take the ferry and then we'llcome up the other side. I said,
we can't even drive ourvehicles, the government
vehicles across the bridge, wehave to go up to we're driven up
to the bridge, we get out. Wewalk across the bridge, and
we're picked up by anothergovernment vehicle. We said
okay, that's not going to work.
So and we knew we needed to moveon because we were headed to
Norway, and it was getting laterin the year. And so that was

(01:09:39):
that was a hard one to leavethat area behind because we had
to go back into Egypt at thatpoint and take a ferry up to aka
Jordan and then continue on. Sothere was that water break in
there of, I don't know a fewhours from new wave of Egypt
into aka by Jordan. And then wewent up and went through Petra.

(01:09:59):
And a few of the other ruinsgoing up and then into Syria,
and Turkey, Bulgaria andRomania. And we were to pick up
our paperwork to enter theSoviet Union because this is now
it's still Soviet Union. And weare pre arranged in Cairo at
their official tourist agency,the the suit the Soviet tourist

(01:10:21):
agencies known as Intourist. Andour paperwork was not there.
They never heard of us it, theone in Romania, and that we
said, okay, fine, we're not andthey said, it'll take about two
weeks, we said, well, we're notgoing to it was this was middle
of October, or getting towardsthe late end of October, we
said, well, we're not going togo, we're not going to wait here
two weeks, and then go up toNorway. And in November, you

(01:10:43):
know, that's just the wrong timeof year to do this. So Lauren
says, we're just going to go toground and we went over, drove
over to England, he was able tofind a, through the Land Rover
club of England get a connectionto a farm where he could park
the Jeep in a building. Andbasically, they had a little
separate room there. And hecould just stay right there in

(01:11:03):
the building and stay on the onthe property. And he stayed
there near Canterbury. I wentback to the states and wrote
letters looking for sponsorship.
We didn't get products. But thatwas about it. And which, you
know, everything helps. And thenin May I flew back, we took back
off across the back to Cali,France. And then we went

(01:11:24):
through, oh, Belgium, theNetherlands. And then at that
time, it was West Germany, EastGermany and Poland and then into
the Soviet Union. And yeah, theSoviet Union was definitely an
eye opener, because when I grewup, it was a world power. You
know, their US and Soviet Unionwere world powers. While we
found out that they have a thirdworld country for the first

(01:11:49):
world army. That was it, therewas so many things that didn't
work there. And you had to turnin your passport and when you
checked in at your campgroundfor the night, and then you had
to get back in the morning. Andif you checked into a motel you
had to check, check yourpassport at hotel desk, and then
you got it back. So yeah, theSoviet Union was definitely an
eye opener, the people without adoubt, super friendly. This is

(01:12:11):
during Gorbachev and Reagan, ofcourse, and of course, having
California plates. They all wantto know if we knew Reagan.
Oranges. Yeah, I had lunch withhim yesterday. So yeah. And
Laura, when we entered theSoviet Union, Lauren, made the
list, not necessarily mistake,but he wanted to get photographs

(01:12:32):
of us entering the Soviet Unionat the border crossing, and they
won't allow photos most mostliberal countries won't allow
you to take a photograph at theborder. And he said he'd like to
get a picture and then said, No,you can't. We'll go ask your
boss. So this young soldier goesin and comes back and he says,
No, you can't, we can't.

(01:12:54):
Florence's will look, we're onthis trip. It's really
important. We're trying todocument it, blah, blah, go ask
your boss again. So I think thethird time that the guy went in
to ask his boss, the bossprobably said, No, you're going
to search them now. So theyactually took us into a separate
building, where we drove over apit, and they got underneath,

(01:13:14):
and they could look ateverything underneath the
vehicle. And then they wentthrough everything in the
vehicle. And they want to knowif we had any firearms. And we
said no, and we're talking withI mean, there's two young
soldiers, they're nice youngmen. And we're talking back and
forth, and they said, nofirearms, and then all of a
sudden, this guy says, oh,pistol, and he pulls out this

(01:13:34):
plastic bag with what looks likea pistol. And Lauren says, No,
it's a timing light. So it opensit up. Sure enough, it's timing
light. For the engine, so yeah,okay. But it was, it was
definitely interesting people,the men again, the people were

(01:13:55):
very friendly. We I'd asked acab driver next to us, we
couldn't find our way out ofMoscow. They don't give you a
city map. They give you quote,unquote, a map of country of the
roads you can drive on. And ifyou're familiar with National
Park maps, it looks a lot like anational park map. Which doesn't
necessarily mean that they'recorrect. Well, anyway, we

(01:14:17):
couldn't find our way out ofMoscow. And so I was asking, and
it's, you know, four and fivelanes wide. And I asked this
taxi driver and he says, yeah,yeah. So as the light turns, he
throws a handful candy in mywindow. So we get up to the next
traffic light and we're stoppednext to each other and I'm
looking through the glovebox tosee what I can pass to him. I

(01:14:37):
found a whole pack of gum and apack of gum in his window and
their thumbs up, you know,Americans we'd have cars, honk
their horns and pass us and thenstop further up the road and
they all be out with cameras totake pictures and down the road.
So yeah, they were very, veryfriendly. We got lost in
Leningrad and the Soviet Navywas there and they helped us

(01:14:59):
find our way out of there, thatwasn't another one. But it was
Ben from Soviet Union, it wasinto Finland. And then I think
we cross a little bit of Swedenand then into Norway, I think
the way the countries arealigned there. And we had no
idea where we were ending,again, no internet to check
where the furthest road northis. And so we're just going

(01:15:23):
north literally following ournoses going north and we'd stop
into town and we check with thepolice station and ask Is there
another zone further north andyou know, next time and finally,
this one little town said, yeah,there's a little fishing village
further north, but the roadisn't really that good. It was
just a dirt road that was moreor less one lane. And then

(01:15:45):
pretty straight, not you're wellabove the Arctic Circle. So
there's not much vegetation, um,with little pullout, so that if
a car is coming, you can pulloff into a pull out and let cars
come. So you had always beenwatching while I had this if
somebody was coming, for sureenough, that's where we took off
again, Vic Norway and got thereand found out that the roadie

(01:16:06):
went a little bit further northin the village to a lighthouse,
just out just a few, probablyhalf a mile north of the
village. And that's where weofficially ended the trip, was
at the Gam pick might house onthe Fourth of July, Lawrence is
finished and we're going tofinish on a good old American
holiday, we've taken oneAmerican made vehicle around the

(01:16:27):
world, we're going to do it onan American holiday. So we
actually held up for a day sothat we could do this on the
Fourth of July. Then because wehad gone to Tierra del Fuego in
South America, we went ahead andsplurged and spent the money and
went to the island and NorthCape in Norway, which now has a
bridge to it. But it is furthernorth and where Gambit lies. But

(01:16:50):
again, it's an island. So it wasyou had to take a ferry to get
there when we were there. And wewent as far north on the island
that we could go. And what were

Josh Meeder (01:16:59):
your emotions at that time? What was the emotion
getting to that lighthouse? Likeyou've been on this trip for
years now? What were theemotional?

Patty Upton (01:17:08):
I remember writing in my journal, Lauren was like a
five year old on Christmasmorning. You know, he just he
was just full of excitement,just full, full, full of
excitement that he was just hejust couldn't couldn't contain
himself that he was finally donewith it, and then leave it but
But Israel, Jordan was stillthere that what we call the

(01:17:28):
final mile was still there. Andthat one took us until 2018.
Before we finally were able toship the Jeep back and drive
from Israel from a roadway runin Israel to the road we were on
in Jordan, turn around and comeback into Israel with the jeep
with the San Juan Sanchez. Idon't even think I mentioned her

(01:17:50):
name. Her name is the sand shipdiscovery. So she's now had all
four wheels on TerraForm aroundthe world except for the South
Atlantic. Wow,

Josh Meeder (01:18:01):
Patti, that's absolutely amazing. And, and
while we're wrapping up here,there's just so much that has
happened and to condense it intoa small time is is really
difficult. But looking back onyour experience, if you had any
advice to give anyone oranything you'd like to share
that you've learned from thisexperience, what would it be?

Patty Upton (01:18:21):
Open the door and get out there? Just go see
what's there. Don't be afraid.
Somebody was on Facebook theother day they want to go along
the Camino del Diablo The whichis right along the Arizona
border, or Juma and they have tosign a waiver and they're really
worried they have to sign thiswaiver to do this. Well, they

(01:18:42):
have to sign the waiver becauseit's a US bombing range. That's
why they have to sign thewaiver. That's the you know,
it's not because it's along theMexican border, and it's a
heavily patrolled area by the USgovernment. We've been through
there we've been buzzed by thehelicopters to make sure that we
were legit. So yeah, it's it's abar as I'm concerned to say very
I don't I don't know. I justdon't like letting things stop

(01:19:05):
me if it's something I want todo. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, You
prioritize what you want inlife. You figure out what that
is, you work towards it, yousave your money for that you
build things for that. Andthat's what you go for. And
that's, that's what life's aboutis to enjoy it. Yeah.

Josh Meeder (01:19:28):
Now I know. So just to bring everyone up to speed
now. So unfortunately, Laurenpassed a few years ago. Yes, it
was a year ago this past Augustyear ago this past August and
what's next for the SSdiscovery? What what's looking
forward here you're getting yourstory out there and

Patty Upton (01:19:48):
right trying to get her story out there as much as
possible. And I traveled thispast summer to five overland
shows, overland expos and Jeepfast across the US, again,
getting her story out there. Somany people have heard of other
expeditions, the five or fiveJeeps that went through in 79.

(01:20:10):
They all think that that we werepart of that and we weren't.
Because they only saw the movieon YouTube. No, that wasn't us.
Sorry. And so yeah, it's it'sjust getting this story out
there. So many people have neverheard of it, which Yeah, we
haven't done that much with it.
And I want to get her story outthere. I want to get the Jeep
out there. I want to showcaseher. Give slideshows to

(01:20:32):
advertise what we've done, whatyou can do, just don't let
things hold you back. I mean,you got to be smart, but you
don't have to be absolutelyparanoid. And this summer, I've
got another whole summerplanned. I'll be doing I think a
total of 10 maybe events fromBritish Columbia, all the way

(01:20:53):
over to Arrington, Virginia andback. So I'll be towing the jeep
and setting her up at variousvarious overland rallies,
overland expos, that sort ofthing. And then I am going to, I
have a what do you call itinvitation to put her in a
museum in Manhattan, Kansas. Andthat may be for maybe six

(01:21:19):
months, we'll see how it doesand go from there. Because
again, I want her story outthere where people can see her
and read about her.

Josh Meeder (01:21:29):
Well, thank you for your sharing your story Patty in
the podcast here, I'll leave allyour contact information. So if
you'd like to be a part of thisstory, and continue to keep this
amazing trip alive, please checkout the comments you can contact
and support Patty there. AndPatti, thank you so much for
your time. Yeah,

Patty Upton (01:21:51):
thank you very much.

Josh Meeder (01:21:52):
All right. Best wishes to you and take care.

Patty Upton (01:21:55):
Thank you so much.

Josh Meeder (01:21:58):
I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the
great things, LLC podcast. Ifyou did, be sure to share the
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(01:22:20):
others to find their purpose,dream, collaborate and create
their own success story. Untilnext time, this is Josh Meeder
your host signing off