Overland route guides
Ruta 40 stretches, Andean crossings, and the long bus legs between Argentine cities. Written for people driving or riding with a small dog, not for a weekend itinerary.
The blog is organized around the things that come up on a long overland trip with a dog and kids: routes, lodging that says yes to pets, paperwork at the border, and money that has to last. Below is what each strand covers and where to start reading.
Ruta 40 stretches, Andean crossings, and the long bus legs between Argentine cities. Written for people driving or riding with a small dog, not for a weekend itinerary.
How to read a rental listing when the pet policy is vague, what to confirm in writing before a deposit, and the difference between a departamento temporario and a traditional lease.
The animal health certificate, how recently it needs to be issued, and the order we present documents at the Paso Internacional Los Libertadores crossing.
How a six-week stay gets structured so the last week is not the tight one. Base city versus side trip, first week booked ahead, the rest left open.
Layering for kids in Patagonian wind, keeping a small dog warm in a cold car, and city walks that work when a planned hike gets cancelled by gusts.
Testing internet speed before booking a month, which cafes in Córdoba, Rosario and Salta hold up for a workday, and why a backup hotspot travels with us.
Behind every route guide or cost breakdown there is a short internal routine. It keeps the details honest, especially when a post mixes a vet receipt, a bus policy and a rental contract in the same week. Here is the order we work in.
Step 01
Reader questions, notes from the road and half-finished drafts land in one shared list. Anything that needs a document, a receipt or a phone call gets flagged before it moves forward.
Step 02
We decide what the post is actually about: a cost breakdown, a border checklist, a rental search method. The format follows from that, not the other way around.
Step 03
Drafts are built around what we have on hand: clinic bills, ticket stubs, screenshots of listings, weather notes scribbled in a notebook. No filler sections to pad the length.
Step 04
A second pass confirms names, route numbers, document validity and any figure that could mislead a reader. If something cannot be verified, it gets cut or clearly marked as our own experience.
Step 05
The finished post goes live and joins the archive by theme, so the Patagonia notes and the border paperwork sit next to each other instead of drifting apart.
Step 06
Once published, the post is passed to the newsletter queue and to the route guides it belongs to, so readers arriving from a checklist can find the longer story behind it.
Every route guide, packing list and border checklist on this blog starts as a working note from an actual trip. Before a post goes live we agree on what it should answer, check the details against our own receipts and documents, and mark the parts that are still open. If something changes on the road, we go back and correct it rather than leave an old version standing.
Before writing, we decide which question the post answers: a vet bill in Mendoza, a rental search in Bariloche, a bus policy on a specific route. If the topic needs a document we do not have yet, the post waits.
Costs, clinic names, carrier sizes and certificate validity are read back from receipts, tickets and stamped forms. Where we only have a memory, we say so instead of writing it as a fixed number.
Long-stay posts are split into stages: arrival week, the cheaper base stretch, the side trip, the last week. It keeps the plan notes readable and shows where a plan usually starts to slip.
Bus rules and border requirements move. When a reader writes in with a different experience, or we hit a new rule ourselves, the post gets an update note at the bottom rather than a quiet edit.
No certification, no guarantee that a landlord will accept a dog, no promise that a border officer will read a document the same way twice. We describe what happened to us and what we carried.
Each post ends with the checklist, the questions to ask before paying a deposit, or the order to present papers at the crossing. That is the part meant to be copied into your own notes.
Write to us with the route, the date and what you saw. Corrections from readers are the main reason the border and bus posts stay usable, and they are read before the next monthly round of updates.
The blog is one journal, but it holds a few distinct kinds of material. Some readers come for the route itself, others need paperwork sorted before a border, and plenty just want to know how a long stay holds together week by week. Pick the thread that matches your trip.
Ruta 40 stretches, Andean crossings and the slower secondary roads we have actually driven. Each guide lists the towns worth stopping in, where the road turns rough, and how long a leg realistically takes with a dog and kids in the car.
The animal health certificate is the document that causes the most trouble when it is out of date. We keep a running list of what to carry, how recently it needs to be issued, and what officers ask for at the Chilean side.
Short-term rentals in Bariloche and similar cities hide pet policies behind vague wording. We explain how to read a listing, what to confirm in writing, and why the temporary contract is usually the only realistic option for six weeks.