Central / South America early planning advice needed please
 

I feel this question is a bit like "what oil do you use", "what is the best tyre pressure", "what bike should I use".......... so I apologise now!

BUT I do need to tap into your wisdom please.

We are in the very early stages of planning a one year trip in 2024 from Los Angeles to Ushuaia and then back to Santiago (where I hope we can ship the bike back to New Zealand from). This will be a pre retirement trip for me so we will both be quitting our jobs and my wife will then look for work on our return.

From what I can see the best time to reach Ushuaia is around January.

I was thinking if we left LA in say March and headed South, taking say;
One month in Mexico (April)
6 weeks Central America

That would put us in Colombia in mid June so we have six to seven months to get to Ushuaia, then say three months to head to Santiago.

My question is - how does that look weather wise, especially heading south from Colombia in Mid June?

Thanks everyone

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try the internet

Shouldnt be too bad - although Im not an expert at all.

The Andes area of Peru, Bolivia, northern Argentina and northern Chile has a wet/rainy season from December to April that you would like to avoid - so if you intend to ride a bit up into the mountains (and you should because all the interesting and cool stuff is up there such as Cuzco, Macchu Picchu, the Secret Valley, Arequipa, Titicaca lake, La Paz, Sucre, Uyuni salt flats, Salta, Atacame desert and San Pedro de Atacama etc etc) are up there in the Andes.

So according to your schedule you would be in this area in September/October/November spending 1-2 months in Colombia and 3-4 weeks in Equador which should be a good time to visit the Andes area.

I would advise strongly to not ride much of the coastal roads down through Peru as its extremely boring and desert like. By all means visit Lima which is down by the coast and maybe a coastal place or two more like for example Trujillo - but its the mountains that are interesting! In northern Chile there are a few charming places on the coast but none of them are really mindblowing.
Then you have a bit of November/the whole of December and a bit of January to travel the south of Chile and Argentina from Santiago/Mendoza and travel Carreterra Austral and or a bit of R40 in Argentina. I would also recommend northern Argentina in stead of northern Chile and then southern Chile in stead of sourthern Argentina until you have to cross over to get to Ushuaia. Southern part of R40 isnt very interesting to be honest - the northern part are very intereting and beautiful.

Very good advice from Snakeboy about timing the weather. In the end, The Americas are so big and so varied that you won’t hit everyplace just right no matter how contorted your planning. In seven months you’ll have time to visit other areas, too, like the Brazilian coast and Amazon basin, Iguazu, even that Guianas if you choose to. And once in Ushuaia, there are (relatively) cheap tickets for Antarctic cruises as well.

Depending on what sorts of transport you find, you may discover it makes sense to buy a bike in the US and sell it onward when you’re done with it, rather than ship both directions. You might also want to include some touring in North America along the way….or not.

Hope that’s helpful.

Mark

Central / South America early planning advice needed please
 

[QUOTE=Young1;631140en say three months to head to Santiago.

My question is - how does that look weather wise, especially heading south from Colombia in Mid June?

Thanks everyone[/QUOTE]

We (wife and I) entered Colombia in early June and reached Ushuaia Feb 2, and was perfect timing, imo. PM me if you want to discuss details.

Jim.

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Your timing looks good. When we drove from Colombia (left in June) we arrived in Ushuaia in November and this worked well for us. Note that we live in Colombia so the first part was just getting to Ecuador; we also know much of Argentina, and have since returned several times for a variety of reasons, and have "filled in some blanks" in the sense of spending time in bits of Patagonia which we either didn't visit on the "big trip" or where we wanted to spend more time. Let us know with specific questions and we can offer thoughts.