Driving Holidays Across South America (part of it anyway).

Ahoy!

Some friends and I are considering a trip to South America around November this year and would like some advice on driving around/across the contintent. Basically at this stage we'd look to fly into Santiago (as possibly attend the Maquinaria rock music festival depending on lineup) and want to know how difficult it would be to hire a car and drive to Uruguay or Buenos Aires over the next 2 - 3 weeks.

Does anyone have any advice on;
- hiring a car in Chile but dropping it off in Argentina or Uruguay?
- getting a hire car across borders
- difficulty of the terrain, especially over the Andes I guess, given the time of year (late Spring)
- ideas of the cost of travelling in this part of the world
- is the lanscape and people we may meet along the way worthy of such a journey?
- highlights people can suggest (I guess the route would take us through Mendoza, near Cordoba and onto somewhere like Rosario)
- anything else which may be of use?

Also, I'd love to get down to Patagonia and/or hike Villarrica in Chile. Can any suggest how one can go about this? Patagonia seems so very far away from everything, maybe the roads are sht, do you have to fly / take a boat?

Well, hope someone out there has done something like this before~! with this many people on the planet I am sure they have...

Sincerly
Bacon.

The problem here is that you are going from one country to another, and maybe through other countries.

I cannot see a car hire company allowing this and I cannot see an insurance company covering you in other countries than their own.

You might try public transport and hire a car as needed, or as possible for days out. There are steep one way penalties for picking a car up in one place and dropping it off in an other as they have to pay someone to drive it back.

Flying is a lot easier and quicker and not too expensive if you book early.