20,000 Miles South

A Pan American Adventure

Helen and Frank Schreider were true adventurers.

Their dream was to drive the length of the Americas, from the town of Circle, Alaska (just outside the Arctic Circle), to the world’s southernmost town, Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego. Dinah, their German shepherd, went with them. They are the first people in history to have made this trip. They came back with a whale of a story.

The seagoing and mountain-climbing abilities of their amphibious jeep, La Tortuga, were put to a rugged test during the eighteen thrill-packed months the Schreiders were under way. They didn’t just drive from Circle to Ushuaia—much of the way there are no roads. Many of the rivers that slice through the jungle are unbridged; the jungle itself often rears up in an impenetrable wall, and the natives just shake their heads and say, “Turn back.”

Undaunted, the Schreiders hacked their way with machetes through the steaming jungles of southern Mexico, were forced to put out through the monstrous surf into the far from pacific Pacific, island-hopped across the reef-ribbed Caribbean, rode out a hurricane at sea, and crawled to almost sixteen thousand feet in the Peruvian Andes. They are the first to have reached South America in a wheeled vehicle under its own power.

La Tortuga served them well and came away with her share of honors: she’s the first “ship” ever to have been weighed in on dry land for passage through the Panama Canal and to have driven up to the port captain’s door to pick up her pilot.

20,000 MILES SOUTH is a book filled with the happy glow of discovery, the ease, charm, and determination of its young authors, and the fascinations and romance of faraway places.