I am planning a trip to Antarctica with my wife. I would love to hire an adventure bike and ride down to Ushuaia on the West coast, hop on a boat, visit the Antarctic and return up the east coast of Argentina.

-Any ideas when the best time to do this?
-How long should I plan for the ride down and up?
-Are the best adventure bike rental deals in Buenos Aires?
-What are my other options?

I don't know about rentals, whether in Argentina or Chile, but you'll be crossing borders at least a couple of times, so make sure that's possible with your rental.

The trip is ~3000 km (along the very boring east coast) to ~5000 km (via the much more interesting routes east and west of the Andes) each way. You could probably do the east coast in three days if you hustled--long summer days and pretty good roads. You could easily spend three weeks or more exploring the Andes routes, especially if feeling adventurous--spectacular scenery, remote outposts, unparalleled hiking in word-class parks, etc. etc. etc. I suppose it's worth mentioning the winds, which have ended more than a few motorcycle trips, so worth thinking about.

Best time to do this is clearly summer. This is so obvious I'm not entirely sure why you're asking, or whether I misunderstood you. Late spring or early fall are possible, but can be fraught. The cruise ship schedules give an accurate picture; when they're not running, conditions are not very good for riding either. Besides, if you're booking a cruise in advance you'll see that timing has a lot to do with both price and what you'll be seeing. This, in turn, will drive choices about when to go within the season.

It's not out of the question to pick up a last-minute discounted ticket once in Ushuaia. There were four or five who'd done this on my boat (including me), and prices were about a third what the advance reservations cost. This might work for you, or not.

Hope that's helpful.

Mark

Thanks Mark for the useful information. We have a windy season here in Cape Town South Africa bit tapers off in Autumn. Is this true for Argentina?


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Yer welcome, but....

You're going to be best researching this on your own, at least to start--there've been plenty of reports by riders. I clocked the wind at 60+ mph/100+ kph, and that wasn't an unusually windy day. People fall a lot, crash a lot, and get ridiculously high fuel consumption. Tents collapse, and sometimes it's hard to walk or pump fuel. More like that.

Same with almost anything you want to know: research first, then ask; a suggestion, not a directive.

Mark

Average weather pattern since 2012 in Ushuaia


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