>>2796619I’ll just say that places in the Americas where I have personally really enjoyed myself include but are not limited to many different parts of Mexico (I like urban areas, personally, but I think van life is probably more suited to beach/coastal areas down there—perhaps consider the Oaxacan coast or the southernmost reaches of Baja California; I have a friend who’s been living a relaxed life in the city of Zihuatenejo for a couple of years now, but some of the resort towns close to there (most obviously Acapulco) are pretty gross); Costa Rica, both coastal and inland (although the capital is awful); and several parts of Nicaragua. Bluefields is weird and interesting, because a large portion of the local population are black, largely Anglophone descendants of shipwrecked/escaped slaves. Not a bad coastline, either, although it’s in large part an industrialized port right in the city itself. Probably the easiest part of Nicaragua to navigate if you don’t speak Spanish. The area around Lake Atitlán in Guatemala gets a lot of free-spirit gringo drifters, but it’s an acquired taste, and a lot of Guatemala is really sketchy. I really liked Flores, another lake town farther north.
The practicality and safety of road-tripping anywhere south of the US border is fiercely debatable. Many places are safer than their reputations (most of Mexico) some the opposite (Costa Rica has experienced declines in public safety over the last decade or so, blamed on Venezuelan migrants, but almost anywhere outside of San Jose remains safer than the Central American average, and San Jose has always been a shithole), some are a mixed bag, with unpredictable pockets of danger. Urban Nicaragua, or at least Managua, isn’t particularly safe, but the countryside is mostly chill. Similar situation in Guatemala.
And aside from criminals, cops are uniformly corrupt down there, which can be annoying for a foreign driver. Do research and be careful.