South America! Home of hyperinflation, death squads and the military strongman, land of the guerilla and generalissimo, haunt of the junta.

Think Andes— the world’s largest mountain range. Think Amazon— the world’s largest river by volume of water, and the world’s largest rainforest. Think Atacama— the driest place on earth outside Antarctica. Think Patagonia— frozen wastes, and the uttermost extremity of human habitation. Think salt flats, desert, tundra, rich pasture, rainforest, stony wasteland. Think towering, thundering waterfalls. Think glaciers. Think volcanoes, and earthquakes— a physical landscape nearly as unstable as the political.

It’s home to some of the world’s most amazing animals— llamas, alpacas, vicuñas, guanacos; condors and anacondas; snakes and tarantulas; pumas and jaguars; iguanas and caiman; capybaras, tapirs and opossums you’re allowed to like; burrowing parakeets and millions upon millions of butterflies.

Some of the earliest of the great human civilisations were South American— the Aymara, the Huari, the Chimu, the Inca, the Nazca. And today, thanks to the extraordinary series of collisions between peoples that created it, Latin America is home to some of the world’s most distinctive culture: think carnival, think samba, think tango, think macarena. OK, try not to think macarena.

Think Argentine steaks and Chilean reds, roast guinea pig and a dozen varieties ofcerveza.

Some of the world’s great cities are in South America: Buenos Aires, La Paz, Santiago, São Paulo. Think contrasts between the rich and poor, the haves and have nots, the powerful, privileged elite and the oppressed, poverty-stricken masses. Think social unrest, drugs, police murders of streetkids, misery.

And linking all this together, think of the roads: Bolivia’s so-called‘World’s Most Dangerous Road’, Argentina’s Ruta 40, Chile’s Carretera Austral, the ruggedripio of Patagonia, the culturedautopista. Think switchbacks on mountain passes and racetracks on desert straights. Think unpopulated backroads, with no other traffic. Think salt flats again.

OK. Stop drooling.

It’s hard to remember exactly when the idea came to us— we’re not getting any younger, after all… Where were we? Oh yeah, the big idea. We think it came to us in Kyrgyzstan. With our family growing up and reaching the point where they were leaving home, we were able to turn to the other love of our life (or in Gareth’s case, the other other love of his life, outside economics): expedition motorcycling. So there we were, slightly more than halfway through our epic 2005 traverse of the Silk Road, following in the footsteps of the great Venetian traveller Marco Polo. We were full of the joys of adventure motorcycling and— if it was indeed Kyrgyzstan— probably a mug of fermented mare’s milk too. The only cloud on our spiritual horizon was the depressing knowledge that this trip of trips would soon end, and that it was likely to be not only the pinnacle of our motorcycling careers but also a highlight of our lives. What could we possibly do next that would compare?

Before the Silk Road, we’d ridden extensively in New Zealand and done rides in the Indian Himalaya, Nepal and the northern Andes. Our preparations for the Silk Road entailed a shakedown trip to the Australian outback. By the end of the Silk Road, we had left the tracks of our knobbly tyres across a decent portion of the world. So why not keep going, we wondered. Why not carry on and do the World By Bi