Suggested Itinerary
 

My wife & I are arriving in South America & are looking for a rough plan (we know nothing about South America:innocent:) Maybe start in Buenos Aires (we are flying bikes over from South Africa) we will be there for 5/6 months & must take in Ushuaia, the date we will arrive is 1st June 15. Out thought was to head north then back down south about Oct/Nov. We want to be back in OZ early Dec & will return to the bikes in Feb to continue our RTW.:D

Cheers
paul

June/July/August, I would aim for ruta 40 north, cross into Bolivia, and make sure you do the Chiquitos Loop, before maybe either taking the low road to Cochabama, or take the back jungle road to La Paz via a stop at Rurrenabaque. Then maybe loop around via Peru, if you have time or the fancy for it, seeing Machu Pichu, then south to Colca Canon (or more of Peru if you have time), I'd take the high road and get in a couple of the nat. parks in North Chile and then cross into Bolivia, there you could take the Salt flat route via Salinas de Garcia Mondoza, head south then east to Uyuni, before tackling the South-West circuit, where you would then end up back in Chile and could either go down the Ruta 40 via Paso Jama if you missed any of it, or just blast down the Ruta 5.

Sth America
 

I will get the map out & start planning & plotting the course you suggested,
do you think we have enough time in 5/6 months otherwise we may just explore the middle & do Patagonia in Feb when we return.

Thanks
Paulbier

Depends, what bike and sort of trip do you have in mind? You can cover a lot of ground in Argentina and Chile, but less so in Bolivia. But then sticking to main routes in Bolivia perhaps you can get away with 80kph, but then some days on the alitplano routes I was averging less than 80k per day! It really depends how much you want to fit in and if you want to do much off-road stuff. Crossing from Volcan Sajama down across to the salt flat Uyuni took me four days, but getting back to La Paz on the highway took one day. Personally I think 6 months is plenty, even enough too get in a good loop in of Peru without going to far north.