Day 4 - Buenos Aires to Maximo Paz

Rolls Royce Phantom across America10.00am. On the road proper today. Or at least we would be if we could only get out of Buenos Aires. The traffic doesn't help, but our map reading is worse, and we lose an hour lapping the airport on the edge of town as we struggle to get to grips with Argentinean road signs (a rare commodity), and our so-called map (having not bought a proper one we're using one we found on a web page). Shame we don’t have the correct disc for the Rolls’ sat-nav.

3.00pm. Much swearing, U-turning and red light running later, we find ourselves rolling into the Villa Maria ranch, our home for the night. Covering over 1500-odd hectares this place is huge. Just driving from the main gate to the house inside takes five minutes, and on the way we pass endless herds of cattle, all expertly herded by gauchos (Argentinean cowboys) on horseback.

3.10pm. Somehow we persuade one of them to help us get some cattle around the car for pictures. He obliges and we get more than we bargained for when he sends a whole field of them (370 in all he later tells us) stampeding around the Phantom. The pictures are great, and miraculously the car remains unmarked. I can just imagine the phonecall to Rolls-Royce, having to explain how £250,000 of Phantom was battered and bruised by beef…



Day 5 - Maximo Paz to Junin

Rolls Royce Across America Day 52pm: After more photos around the ranch all morning and a huge gaucho lunch of steak, steak and more steak, at last there’s a chance to properly stretch the Phantom’s legs as we tool across several hundred miles of rural flatland to Junin, our next stop.

Out here the madness of city driving is gone, traffic is sparse, and the roads are straight as far as the eye can see. Which in an area so flat it makes Norfolk look positively mountainous, is a very long way indeed.

Above us the shining sky stretches in all directions and the views are breathtaking. The ragged roads out here, although shredded and rough in most places, can barely be felt or heard inside the Phantom’s cabin, and reclining in regal luxury inside our 90mph cruising palace is as effortless as breathing.

8pm: Pulling into Junin, the Rolls works its mojo once more as people all around stare, point, walk into lamp posts and almost crash into each other craning for a better look.

11pm: After dinner (yet more steak) we get our heads down. Tomorrow we’ve got the best part of 600 miles to clear, which on the two-lane strips which pass for motorways out here in the sticks, is going to make for one long day on the road. Surely they’ll reveal some chinks in the Rolls’ armour? So far, apart from its sheer size, value and ostentation, it’s been just about perfect for our south American adventure.

Day 6 - Junin, Argentina to Santiago, Chile

What my co-driver Warren did not tell you is that taking a £250,000 Roller across a South American frontier is as tense as walking through customs at Heathrow with a bar of gold stuffed in your smalls.

Thanks to the diplomatic skills of HM’s embassy in Santiago, the pride of Britain swooshed into the Chilean capital to an almost royal reception. Chile’s press demanded an audience with the British expeditionaries and the Santiago glitterati at the Ritz Carlton tripped over the tassles on their Gucci loafers as the Phantom pulled up outside.

Santiago is the Geneva of South America. Stylish but dull. It’s where you would stash your cash if you had to keep it in Latin America. Thankfully, the flipside is that the city works and is relatively safe. So much so, we dump the Rolls and walk to dinner on foot.



Day 7 - SANTIAGO-LA SERENA

After one night in Santiago, we are history. Almost a week since leaving the Atlantic behind at Buenos Aires, the Pacific beckons. Hiding below the Andes, Santiago is a couple of hours inland from the world’s largest body of water. Five thousand miles of water shoulder charges the Chilean coast, a whopping amount of energy…perfect for surfing.

Surftown South America is La Serena. Mile after mile of west-facing beaches act like a magnet to seawater and surfers. Strapping a longboard to the roof of the Roller, we make for the sand.

Bill Maher is an ex-pat Yank who moved to Chile for the peace and pipeline waves. He is old enough to warrant a bus pass but on a plank of fibreglass he walks the dog and hangs ten. He does not, however, use the word cowabunga.

“This is surf heaven,” he tells us later over a cold glass of Sauvignon Blanc and scallops from a nearby bay at which Daniel Craig has just finished filming Quantum of Solace. “Endless waves, endless summer and hardly anyone to bother you.”