The road to dreams.

• Author: Conaway, Janelle
• Position: Candelaria and Herman Zapp, road trip through the Americas, Argentina to Alaska - Brief Article

Candelaria and Herman Zapp set Out from Buenos Aires in January 2000 to fulfill a long-held dream: a road trip through the Americas. They figured it would take them six or eight months to reach Alaska--even chugging along in a 1928 Graham-Paige--but they didn't count on making so many friends along the way.

"The surprise of the trip hasn't been the scenery but the people," says Candelaria, thirty-two. New acquaintances have opened up their homes to them, shared meals, invited them to stay awhile. Sometimes visits planned for a few days have stretched into weeks. "The saddest part is that we're always saying good-bye," Candelaria says.

The couple, who first met as children growing up in Argentina, started out across the Argentine pampas, then drove through Chile's Atacama Desert and into the Andes. They took an extensive river trip from Ecuador to Manaus, Brazil, transporting their vehicle on canoes, barges, and anything else that floated. Along the Amazon, they met indigenous people who had never seen a car before.

They covered other legs of the journey by water, too--from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago; from Colombia to Panama--before wending their way through the Central American countries and Mexico. They crossed into the United States at Laredo, Texas, and headed east.

In June 2002, the Zapps added a passenger; their son, Nahuel Pampa, was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the couple also attended a classic car show.

The Zapps had spent years dreaming about this trip and had saved up some money, but they went through their savings after a few...