Journey to Ushuaia (Patagonia, Argentina/Chile)

Sixteen nights from Puerto Varas to Ushuaia, guided, the length of Patagonia through Chile and Argentina, with around thirty-eight per cent of the route on gravel.

The finish is the draw. Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world, on the Beagle Channel, and getting there overland from the Chilean lake district means crossing the whole of Patagonia.

Puerto Varas opens it, then the back roads south through wide open country and eroded rock formations, and the Argentine lake district around Bariloche. Mount Fitz Roy follows, a granite spike that is among the hardest climbs of its size anywhere and the easiest mountain in the world to recognise, then the Perito Moreno glacier, which is one of very few still advancing and calves ice into the lake in front of an audience. Torres del Paine comes next in Chile, with its three granite towers, then the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego, and Ushuaia at the end of the road.

The bike hire is included, with a BMW F800GS as standard and R1300GS upgrades available; the full inclusions are not itemised on the operator’s page and are worth confirming at booking. Seventeen days one way means a long flight home from the bottom of the continent, which is worth costing in. The southern summer from November to March is the window, and the Patagonian wind is the thing nobody warns about enough: it blows hard and constantly, and gravel in a crosswind asks for concentration. Thirty-eight per cent unsealed over a fortnight puts this at the harder end of the operator’s range without being an enduro trip, and the distances between fuel stops in southern Patagonia are long enough to plan around.