A one of a kind Pan-American adventure story of daring, persistence, a World War II era amphibious Jeep, and a couple on their honeymoon.

Helen and Frank Schreider's 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. With their German shepherd Dinah along for the ride, they were the first people in history to have made this trip.

La Tortuga, their seagoing and mountain-climbing amphibious jeep, was put to a rugged test during the eighteen thrill-packed months the Schreiders were en route. Of course they couldn'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, and the jungle itself often rears up in an impenetrable wall and the locals 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 pacified Pacific, island-hopped across the reef-ribbed Caribbean, rode out a hurricane at sea, and crawled to almost sixteen thousand feet elevation 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. She was the first "car" that many of the remote islanders had ever seen, and she was the object of many an admiring glance throughout the journey.

Everywhere the Schreiders went; from picnics among Inca ruins to embassy cocktail parties, life among the San Blas Indians to gay Christmas holidays as guests of a Patagonian sheep rancher, they were confronted with new exciting sights and sounds and smells and a fresh challenge to their adaptability and clear thinking in the face of danger. Many of the sights are preserved here in Frank's striking photographs and Helen's handsome drawings. The rest is preserved in the wonderful writing of its young authors in 20,000 Miles South. Here is a book filled with the happy glow of discovery, charm, determination, and the fascinations and romance of faraway places.