South America has real appeal for road trippers willing to cover serious distance, with some of its best drives stretching across entire regions rather than a single afternoon.
Argentina's stretch of Patagonia offers some of the country's most memorable driving, with long, empty highways running along the base of the Andes through desert, vineyards and windswept steppe for hundreds of miles at a time. Chile's Carretera Austral offers a similarly epic scale, cutting through Patagonia's forests, glaciers and fjords on a route that still includes unpaved stretches in places. Peru's roads through the Sacred Valley take a shorter, more accessible approach, winding past Andean villages and terraced hillsides within a single day. Road conditions vary a lot across the continent, so a well maintained rental and a flexible schedule both help.
The destinations on our list for South America reflect that same range, from epic multi day routes to shorter mountain drives.
