I sometimes wonder if the principal object of reality shows isn’t to melodramatise the mundane.
In the latest series of Celebrity Race Across The World (RATW), four pairs of television personalities compete to travel from the mouth of the Amazon to the southern Andes. The celebrity version of the race is now in its second series. For the uninitiated, contestants are not allowed to take flights, or to use smartphones or payment cards. They are given a frugal amount of cash to help them reach the finish line, with the option to take on temporary work to boost their budget.
Three decades ago, this would have been a fairly typical holiday for twentysomethings and ageing hippies doing a variation on the South America backpacker trail.
A journey from the jungle to the mountains is very doable, for anyone. I’ve visited all 12 countries (and one French territory) on the continent – admittedly, over decades, rather than six hours of telly.
While doing so, I have liberally used buses, boats, trains, trucks, shared taxis, bikes, horses and Shanks’s pony to get me from A to B and even quite close to the Lost City of Z.
Here, then, is my suggested, affordable, eminently viable itinerary from tropical north-east Brazil to Chile’s temperate lake district – where the show starts and ends. (There are caveats: hitch-hiking and shared taxis won’t suit everyone, but this is an adventure). My route is bespoke – and aimed at being a pleasure, rather than an obstacle course.
Belém to Manaus
At the mouth of the Amazon, Belém is a sultry, somewhat shabby city with a busy, Unesco-listed market, the Ver-o-Peso, where traders sell river fish and exotic (for Britons) fruit, plates of superfood açai and “natural Viagra” potions. There’s also a dock district (Estação das Docas) with al fresco restaurants and craft ale bars. TAP flies Lisbon to Belém direct (9.5 hours). London–Belém starts at around £615.
Catch a riverboat (“navio gaiola” in Portuguese, or “cage boat”) to Manaus. It takes about six days and, as well as the jungle views, chilled beers, piped music and non-privacy of your space on the hammock deck, you’ll gain a true sense of scale of the mega-river. £70 will get you a square metre to sway in – or, for £200, you can secure a cabin.
Manaus to Cuiaba
The capital of the Amazon is an even sultrier city, with a rather opulent opera house – the Teatro Amazonas. It’s a good base for trips into the Rio Negro, where you’ve a very good chance of seeing river dolphins, piranha, monkeys, capybara, otter and lots of birdlife. Buses go from Manaus to Porto Velho (£63) on the east bank of the Madeira river. Another bus (£43) takes you to Cuiaba – the gateway for the Panatanal, the world’s largest wetland, where jaguar sightings are not uncommon. (There’s also the option of a riverboat to Puerto Velho, and then a bus to Cuiaba).
Cuiaba to La Paz
A train used to connect the Pantanal to Bolivia’s lowlands – the so-called “Train of Death” from the Brazil/Bolivia border to Santa Cruz de la Sierra. The origin of the ghoulish nickname is obscure; a few drug traffickers used it, but so did local people – and some animals. An improved road killed off train services in both Brazil and Bolivia, and now road travel is the only way.
This stage of the journey is arguably the most thrilling as you really do go from the jungle to the Andes and on to the Altiplano (high plain). If you speed all the way you can do the trip in a day and a half, but there are too many reasons to stop en route. Take a bus to Cáceres (£11) – where you can get an exit stamp at the police station (Avenida Getúlio Vargas, 2325). Cáceres is overlooked but has been called the “Princess of the Paraguai River”. From here, catch a local bus (pennies) to the border at Corixa, 60 miles away.
Hop in a shared taxi or walk the 6.5 miles to San Matías in Bolivia to get an entry stamp – RATW would turn this into a ten-minute, oh-my-god panic scene, but it’s just normal border hassle.
From here, you have bus options, but Bolivian truckers are happy to carry gringos for a few dollars. Mix buses and hitching, though bear in mind that as the land rises near Cochabamba, it can get chilly, especially after dark.
La Paz to Cusco
This is an indirect, time-consuming side-trip. Since you’ve come this far, you might as well dip a toe in Cusco, the so-called navel of the Inca world, and catch a train up to Machu Picchu. Only locals can use the standard train, but there’s a bargain-basement bus (£12 return) to a power station below the ruins followed by a short, cheap train ride or a 13-mile hike. Keep things economical by staying in basic hotels in both Cuzco and Aguas Calientes.
Cuzco to Uyuni
Go back into Bolivia to see the salt flat of Uyuni – a great white eye on the Altiplano. The overland trip there, routed via Oruro, Sucre and Potosí is a great way to see three of Bolivia’s most enthralling cities. Sucre is beautiful, with colonial-era houses and grand ecclesiastical buildings, while Potosí grew around the most important silver mine in the world – Cerro Rico – which you can still visit.
A drive around Uyuni is an unearthly experience, with salt as far as the eye can see. There’s even a luxurious salt hotel with salty views though a RATW-style budget might only stretch to a poky B&B in the dusty town.
Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama
The four-wheel drive trip across the high plain and into Chile has become a classic tourist experience. Weird rock formations dot the roadless uplands and, with volcanoes and snowy peaks in the distance, colours change as you drift into the Atacama desert – the driest place on earth outside Antarctica. A full-blown tour-cum-transfer costs £200-plus, but a seat on a small bus is just £30.
San Pedro to Santiago
Doze and daydream your way down the Panamerican Highway as you pass from the arid north to the wine-growing south. The trip is a thousand miles, which isn’t a big deal in Chile, more than two and a half times that length. A restful place to break the journey is the seaside town of La Serena – your first sight of the Pacific – and, just inland from here, the gorgeous green hills of the Elqui Valley, where pisco, the local firewater, is made.
Santiago to Mendoza
Recross the Andes west to east, but this time without the subtle rises of the high plain. The Los Libertadores (aka Cristo Redentor) pass between Chile and Argentina is at 10,499ft and, weather permitting, you should catch sight of Aconcagua – the highest peak in the Americas. The descent into the sun-blessed rain shadow of Mendoza, where the malbec grape is a prized crop, is exhilarating. The eight-hour journey costs just shy of £20. Note: the pass can close in winter – but there are alternative ways to go south via Chile, using buses and lower passes. The latest pass info is here and a map of them here.
Mendoza to Bariloche
Ride an Argentinian bus down the Ruta 40 – the country’s longest and most iconic road – all the way to the edge of Patagonia. This is a road-trip Argentinians wax lyrical about, but there’s no need for special preparation or a rugged pick-up. Ordinary buses now ply the route (18 hours; £54 for a “semi-bed” seat). Bariloche is an ersatz Swiss town beside the huge Nahuel Huapi lake, famed for its chocolate shops.
Bariloche to Frutillar
Catch a bus back into Chile’s Lake District. The TV show wraps up in Frutillar, six hours by bus via Osorno (£27). But, if you have some spare cash, there’s a much pricier (£250) – but vastly more picturesque – route across the lakes inside the Andes by means of three boat trips and short bus transfers, which concludes in Puerto Varas – 17 miles from Frutillar.
The cost of your Amazon to Andes adventure? Flight search engine Opodo has single tickets from Belém to Puerto Montt – the main airport for the Chilean lakes – from £242. No amount of haggling, hitching, fleapit hotels, stinky buses and walking is going to get you across all these miles – an estimated 6,100 miles following my itinerary – for that price. But that’s not really the point is it? Neither time constraints nor tightness of wad should be the main factors when planning a once-in-a-lifetime overland odyssey.
