I strongly recommend Road to Montevideo , a single woman's one-year bicycle adventure in South America 1941-42, by Helen Richardson Coyle. It is privately published by her son, Bill Coyle (wtcoyle@hotmail.com), $11.50 including S&H. I learned about it from a review in the Adventure Cycling mag. Basically, her plan to cycle through all of South America was interrupted in Montevideo, Uraguay; because a single woman cycling was so strange that it was assumed she had to be a spy. In fact, it sounds like she was very lucky to get out with just having her trip ended.