How many miles of driving would I have from Santiago, Chile or Mendoza Argentina back to the U.S.? How long would the trip realistically take? And can the dangerous areas of Columbia be avoided? Finally, would it be faster to do the trip in a car or in a boat (assuming coast to coast in the boat)?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: Here’s a web site of someone who drove from California to the Tierra del Fuego and back, a total of 31,000 miles http://www.well.com/~dreyer/ . I guess divide by 2, then subtract a little since you’re not going quite that far, and I guess in the range of 12-14,000 miles. They had to go by ferry from Panama to Columbia since the roads apparently don’t go through. They did it in 4 months and a week, so I guess one-way just from Santiago or Mendoza might be 6-8 weeks to be safe, although I don’t know how much sightseeing they did on the way. This web site addresses dangerous places (e.g., don’t camp out). Here’s a web forum you might want to look at: http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum/
Boats go slower than cars, don’t they? Although it depends on the boat and the quality of the highway. The kind the drug runners use probably go pretty fast. Neither Santiago nor Mendoza, however, is on the coast.