The Route

Stage 1: Central America: ‘The Warm Up’
September 26th – October 17th 

With our revised plan we fly into Central America via San Jose in Costa Rica, we plan to cover some 500 + miles in Costa Rica covering all points of the compass seeing both the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean coasts, the Southern Rain forests and through the National Park surrounding the Arenal Volcano.

From Costa Rica it is on to Guatemala, where Frankie Carlow lives. and he is helping us out in Antigua Guatemala with accommodation for a couple of nights and letting us lose in his trusty Range Rover as we head of to the Lake Atitlan region which is surrounded by three very large Volcanoes which hopefully are not as active as Volcano de Fuego was earlier this year which we pass leaving Frankie’s house.

Our route in Guatemala then takes us across to the Rio Dolce on the Caribbean coast a top listed destination for all visitors to Guatemala.With Frankie on board we then head south across the border into El Salvador heading for the area south of the capital city San Salvador and close to the Pacific coast. Having covered over 600 miles in Guatemala and El Salvador we fly south to Panama.

In Panama we meet up with Lois Lebegue who will join us some five weeks later in Bariloche midway down the spine of Argentina to ‘The end of the World’. He is going to give us shelter and showers as he is currently living there.

In Panama we intend to spend time at the canal and look at both coats and some of the national parks. We do not intend [at this stage] to take our hire car across the Darien Gap to Panama but we may be tempted to go to see the start of this stretch of land between Central & Southern America.

Having probably decided not to risk exhaustion, disease and potentially being eaten by Cannibals in the Darien Gap which is effectively 3,000 Sq Miles of Marshland, Swamps and impenetrable rain forest we fly the quick hop from Panama to Cartagena in Colombia.

We rest up in Cartagena, I meet up with Maria, John and Mike head of to Bogota for a couple of days.

Stage 2: ‘Getting Interesting’ – South America Colombia to Peru.
October 23rd – November 4th – 

After our stay in Cartagena Paul joins us and we travel the length of Colombia through infamous cities such as Medellin, Manizales  and Cali. I guess that we really shouldn’t have watched ‘The Real Narcos’ or other of the recent films on Pablo Escobar. Probably good that we also not travelling in a big American registered SUV!

Again not able to take the car cross border we again fly the short hop across to Quito in Ecuador. Doug joins us in Quito as we say farewell to Paul. In Ecuador, we start to skirt the Andean Mountain Range foothills. Our route across Ecuador takes us South West through the central region and is our first real experience of living at Altitude albeit only around 5-9,000 feet at this stage.

We stay in Riobamba (pop 156,000) which is next to Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador. The drive also takes us past Cotapaxi, which is the highest volcano in the world and incidentally is active again. We also plan to take a ride on the infamous Devil’s Nose train trip.

Our Ecuadorian trip finishes South of the Equator in Cuenca, a Unesco Heritage site city . Again we take the easy way out, avoiding major border issues and fly into Lima. our drive in Colombia and Ecuador will clock up another 1200 miles in our tachometer.

Stage 3 ‘The Real Thing’ – South America – Lima Peru to Tupungato, Argentina
November 4th – 23rd
As we stop over in Lima Peru, we are now on day 42 of our trip, over half way. This is probably now the hardest part of the trip.With Lima only being at 500 Ft altitude we start a serious climb which in four days will take us to nearly 16,000 ft.

We also now have our Rentacarpetita fully prepared Nissan 4X4 which we will need for the road conditions we are going to experience as we cross Peru.

We cover over 1000 miles in Peru heading towards Bolivia taking in Lake Titicaca, the Nazca lines [may take a flight over these] and most of this is at heights between 8 and 13,00 feet, it will be interesting to see how we all fair, and how the Nissan does at Altitude.

Our Bolivian route is some 550 miles but again all over 11,000 ft altitude. We go via La Paz, Challapata and Uyuni to the Bolivia / Chile Border.

Stage 4 – ‘The Home Run’ Tupungato to Ushuaia Argentina ‘The end of the World’
26th November – Dec 9th 

John & Mike will have caught up with Karen & Maureen at Finca Ambrosia as they to are on a South America expedition. Doug leaves us but we are joined by Craig and Frankie and as we are now 6 on tour we will now be in two hire vehicles for the rest of the journey.

Our route South is down the spine of South America. We pass through Buta Ranquil a Swiss style resort along an amazing road down to San Martin and Bariloche where Lois joins us.

Bariloche is referred to having a ‘Gnome in the Chocolate shop’ ambiance and is surrounded by Lake District style scenery. We plough on down the Pan American Highway that we have been following for some days and on to Esquel to Perito Moreno and on to the base of the Perito Moreno Glacier as we are truly in the Patagonia region.

Heading further down to Puerto Natales we are going through the Torres Del Paine National Park and have crisscrossed the Chilean / Argentine border. The end is nearly in site as we hit Punta Arenas, the most southerly major town [well 123,000] inhabitants and now only some 400 miles from our destination.

Back into Argentina and our last border crossing, ow many have we done? we have to catch the ferry across the straits to avoid a long road detour and onto our final destination of Ushuaia.

Finally we can get to the official ‘End of the World’ in the Tierra Del Fuego Park which is a short drive from Ushuaia.

After a day of rest, we fly to Buenos Aires and then on to the UK arriving back Tuesday 11th – well that’s the plan but as we have said before ‘The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men’ …………………..

75 Days / 10 countries / 9,000 miles – Job Done