Pan-American Campsite/POI List?

samc

New member
Hi everyone,

Hope I'm posting this in the correct forum.. If not, I apologize and would appreciate if you can direct me to the proper place!

My wife and I are traveling down the pan american highway to Argentina. We have a Garmin GPS device and have loaded an Open Street Map map onto it (we'll see how accurate this is!). I saw that on their website, Garmin has a piece of software "POI Loader":

http://www.garmin.com/us/maps/poiloader

That will allow you to upload custom POIs to the Garmin device. You can basically do this by making a spread sheet with 4 columns: latitude, longitude, name, comment.

As I've looked around the web, other pan-am overlanders have generated some really nice campsite listings.. For example, PanAm notes has a south-american campsite list:

http://panamnotes.com/campsite-listing-south-america/

At the bottom of the page here, panam notes links to several other campsite listings from other overlanders as well:

http://panamnotes.com/resources/

It would really be great if these were all curated in a database, or even in a spreadsheet, so that it would be easy to download them and drop them onto a garmin device (I'm assuming other GPS makers could do this as well).

So, here comes the question.. Does anyone know of a curated database and/or spreadsheet list of Pan-American campsite listings? I'm mostly focused on Mexico & Central and South America, as the resources for USA and Canada are already out there.

thanks,
Sam
 

dare2go

Observer
Jason from Bodeswell.com started such a project over a year ago...
From our experience I have to say that a list of waypoints WITHOUT description has fairly limited use. We had a couple of lists from people with a small SUVs (Landrover, etc.), and half the time our truck camper didn't fit through the entrance. Or some folks can sleep through a heavy metal concert, so they find bliss at a 24-hour truck service station next to a busy highway (I couldn't sleep there at all). Finally there are of course our own "classics": http://www.dare2go.com/campingCA.html (Central America) and http://www.dare2go.com/campingSA.html (South A.)
 

BodesWell

New member
Jason from Bodeswell.com started such a project over a year ago...

Yes - I had high aspirations, but never enough time. I have a giant Excel sheet with many merged lists. It has comments, dates, the source, etc. I was trying to put it on an open/editable google map, but ran into problems (more than 8000 points!). I can send anyone the spreadsheet if they like (and can receive large emails). Whatever you create, it really needs to be openly editable/curated, as many campsites eventually turn into condos ;)

I have compiled my own list for Brazil, which can be used if credited. (http://bodeswell.org/2013/08/27/camping-brazil-with-gps-coodinates2/)

Also, I found that free individual country maps (like Mapear, Venrut, etc) are far more accurate than OpenStreetmaps, are regularly updated, and often have campsites.

Jason | BodesWell
 

samc

New member
Jason,

That spread sheet sounds amazing. I've started a spreadsheet on google drive pulling the campsite list from panam notes. You can check this out here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...FuQnhZRlpRb3ZGd0pDTDNwb2c&usp=drive_web#gid=1

I would be happy to give you access if you could merge your list onto a new sheet(s), or if you just send it to me I will merge it in myself..

Do you know where you merged the list from? I saw dare2go has a pretty good list as well, and white acorn is ok, and brenton from ruined adventures is working on a composite list as well..

thanks!
sam
 

landy89

Observer
I have compiled a very well organized and clean data file of about 5000 camping spots in South America. The data was sourced from a variety of locations, and was also cross referenced with other sources and physically when possible. The database can be loaded directly onto your Garmin device or used in BaseCamp on your computer. The data is categorized into:
1) legitimate campgrounds with services
2) Hotels, or other places, which allow camping and provide services
3) Picnic areas where you can camp with limited services
4) wild camp locations without services
5) Hot springs where you can camp and use the facilities.

It took me a very long time and many hours of tedious computer work to build this database. I built for myself since no such thing existed and no one seemed to be interested in building one as an open source project. If you would like to avoid having to do all the work I did, and also would like to have the database, I will sell you a copy of my database. Visit
www.zebralandy.weebly.com and send me a message. Do not send me a message on this forum or reply to this thread as I do not check it frequently.
 

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