The Most Direct Route

A co-worker asked me yesterday how long it would take if we were to drive our route without stopping. As expected, the most direct route is still pretty long. Google won’t give you a course from Alaska to Argentina due to the Darien Gap, but it will calculate Alaska to Panama and Colombia to Argentina, and it will provide a measurement across the ocean from Panama to Colombia. Here’s what it comes to:

	Driving Time
Section	Hours	(Days)	Miles	Kilometers
Anchorage – Deadhorse – Puerto de Cartí	163	(6.8)	8,251	13,279
Cartagena – Ushuaia – Buenos Aires	176	(7.3)	8,332	13,409
Sub-total	339	(14.1)	16,583	26,688
Stahlratte*	5	(0.2)	244	393
Total	344	(14.3)	16,827	27,081

*The Stahlratte is the ship that will take us from Panama to Colombia. The trip through the San Blas Islands is estimated at 5 days. I didn’t have a chart of the course, so just estimated the mileage by measuring a direct line from Puerto de Cartí to Cartagena.