We made it to Santiago on different flights. Anders flew from London via São Paulo with Varig (Viação Aérea Rio Grandense) while Michael flew from Paris with Air France. Everything worked as planned and we arrived in Santiago in Chile less than two hours apart. This picture Michael took above the Andes mountains.
	The Pan-American highway system links Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, USA, with Ushuaia in Argentina (with the exception of 160 kilometers of swampland in Panama and Colombia, the Darién Gap). In southern Chile the Pan-Am is a well-maintained toll road and offers excellent driving.
	Chile is a big exporter of fruit, vegetables, timber, fish, copper...
	...and wine.
	Much of it goes across the Pacific to south-east Asia. This is a loading terminal outside Concepción. Japan, China and South Korea were Chile's second, third and fourth largest export markets in 2004.
	Chile has been an economic success story since the early 1990s but a fifth of the population still lived below the poverty line by the time of our RT04. The income distribution (for example as measured by the Gini index) is very uneven in most of South America. These shanty towns south of Concepción right by the Pacific Ocean we passed as we diverged from the Pan-American highway and chose roads less travelled.
	Puerto Montt, the far-away outpost, is a common stop for large ocean liners that travel the Pacific or round Cape Horn.
	We noticed that the weather can change rapidly and frequently in Puerto Montt. This is the town center in bleak afternoon sun shortly after a 20-minute rainstorm swiftly passed by.
	At the bazaar in the Angelmo neighborhood we found a couple of bargains such as warm clothes for the Swedish winter.
	On the road east to the mountains, through the Chilean lake district (Los Lagos) and the Puyehue National Park, we made a stop to buy raspberries from a woman who sold fruit, jam and soft drinks.
	Thick forests on the steep mountainsides, rivers, waterfalls and low clouds lined our way.
	A remote, austere and captivating wooden chapel further up, the Capilla Santa Teresa de Los Andes.
	Over on the Argentinian side north of Lago Nahuel Huapi. In the distance is San Carlos de Bariloche, the gateway to Patagonia.
	Settled primarily by Austrians and Germans in the late 1800s, many buildings in the center of Bariloche are made of stone and timber which gives the place the appearance of an alpine town.
	In the the rain shadow of the Andes, the landscape on the eastern side was dry. From Bariloche we set out across the vast South American steppe.
	Anders showing on the map where exactly in Nowhere we are.
	We stopped for the night in Puelches, a small village in the dry southwestern Pampas region named after the Puelche Indian tribe, now extinct. They were nomadic and lived around the rivers Río Negro and Río Colorado. We were tired after hundreds of kilometers across the plains in the late summer heat. Michael is standing by the open car as the sun was setting and the stars were beginning to come out.
	The morning after we toured the Parque Nacional Lihué Calel, a rich national park right on the 38th latitude south. Between the salmon-colored granite rocks were trees with caracaras, birds of prey...
	...that became increasingly defensive as we came closer.
	As always when we go a bit off the beaten track with our rental cars on our RTs, the road quality is a risk factor.
	All the way along the Argentinian national highway 5 from Santa Rosa to Buenos Aires were parrilla restaurants, grill houses, for lonesome long-distance truck drivers and random rental car tourists passing by. Sometimes we picked up the smell of grilled meat long before.
	After just one night in Buenos Aires we crossed to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. A long peaceful beach by the shallow Río de la Plata gave us a chance to recover...
	...as did refreshments in the old town at a café and grill house by the sea.
	Colonia was founded in 1680 by the Portuguese, and the historical parts are very well preserved an not commercialized, and named by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
	Green bushes and overhangs of roses along an empty side street.
	The cobblestone alleys and squares, the original architecture, the colors...
	...and the calm undisturbed backdrop...
	...with no musts and no urgency. Just peace.
	We imagined it could look like this in Havana (La Habana), for example.
	No shining plastic yellow arches, just carved old signs of oak and a rusty iron chain telling you where the bars and restaurants are.
	The sun was setting over the Silver River.
	Uruguayan teenagers gathering by the sea in the old town of Colonia at nightfall.
	Back in the bustling Buenos Aires on the other side of the bay the following day. Argentina has had five different currencies since the 1960s, and after the peso was let to float in 2002 it lost around 3/4 of its value against the US dollar in just a few months. Just at the time of our visit on RT04, critical negotiations were ongoing between Argentina and IMF regarding 3.1 billion US dollars of loan repayments, and security was extra tight outside banks in the capital.
	Some say Buenos Aires is the Paris of South America. Coincidentally, they are sister cities.
	We walked or took a taxi between sights and places around town. It was restful and relaxing to not drive ourselves for a couple of days.
	In central Buenos Aires, a restaurant with the grilling displayed like this by the front entrance (this one is called La Estancia) means it is a tourist magnet.
	Back on the road westbound on national highway 8 across northern Pampas, there were endless green fields with sirloins and filet mignons on four legs.
	The imposing gateway to the Mendoza province - "La tierra del sol y del buen vino".
	There are 1,200 wineries in Mendoza, but the region also holds significant petroleum reserves and this YPF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales) refinery lies just near Luján de Cuyo.
	Cerro Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the Americas, 6,962 meters. The air was quite thin at the base camp, where helicopters served tourists and mountain rangers. We climbed up to a viewing site (without the car).
	Over on the Chilean side again, in the valleys were vineyards with the lines of grapevines reaching far toward the blue Andean silhouettes.
	The harvest moon was nigh, just a week away.
	Viña del Mar's tall new developments, luxury hotels, decorative lawns, manicured boulevards with palm trees and flower arrangements in roundabouts, restaurants, pools, tennis courts and a casino, had turned the old Pacific fishing village into a new Miami Beach.