As we cycled northward through Patagonia, there was one road we knew we must ride - the alluring Carretera Austral (‘Southern Highway’ in English). Although the road was ‘completed’ in 2003, much of it remains unpaved, linking tiny villages that still feel rustic and remote. We entered the Carretera Austral from Tortél, a picturesque village on stilts by the sea. Along the way we were surrounded by Andean peaks swathed in snow and ice, which wrung moisture out of the clouds that nourished the temperate rainforests growing thick on the mountain slopes.

As we sailed across the Strait of Magellan, we left Tierra del Fuego behind. But we still had a lot of Patagonia ahead of us. After a quiet Christmas in the City of Red Roofs, we cycled back onto the Patagonian pampas - encountering some of the hemisphere’s biggest birds, and fields bursting with the pinks, yellows and purples of flowers in bloom. Then three days on stormy seas among the fjords of southern Chile brought us to a tiny town in a steep-sided cove, with no regular streets or sidewalks. Instead there were five miles of boardwalks, and the main part of town lay at the top of 20 flights of wooden stairs.

As we cycled further north in Tierra del Fuego, we were enveloped by the treeless expanse of the pampas. Fields of grass that stretched to the horizon fed herds of sheep and smaller bands of guanacos. But the serenity of the vistas stood in sharp contrast to the weather, which buffeted us with strong winds that made bike handling a challenge and slowed our progress to a crawl. After a couple of tough days, we made it to the border and crossed into Chile. There, our hopes for a rest day were dashed by a terrible weather forecast - forcing an overnight cycling marathon to outrun the storm. Our reward, at the end, was a rendezvous with royalty at the King Penguin Nature Reserve.

The Pan-American Highway ends in the south where it reaches the ocean in the city of Ushuaia. But even though Ushuaia is known as The End of the World, it served as a beginning for us. From there, we resumed our Alaska-to-Patagonia bicycle journey, heading back north towards Colombia. After a visit with some penguins, we were back on our bicycles, cycling over the snowy, southern Andes and across the Patagonian steppe. Blown by the wind and drenched by rain, we found shelter where we could - among stunted, gnarly trees and even in the basement of a bakery - eventually arriving in the industrial center of Tierra del Fuego.