Brisbane-born adventurer Lucy Barnard is set to continue on a path trodden by only a handful of men before her, which started while drinking in the broad and open Argentinian landscape on a boring bus ride.
"You start to wonder if you could walk faster," the Australian Geographic Society's 2024 Adventurer of the Year told AAP.
After researching others who have trekked the path, she discovered no women had done so.
"It just got on my nerves, and so I decided to give it a go ... truly, I didn't think it could be that hard," she said.
Setting off on her journey in 2017 at Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina, Ms Barnard aims to reach the tip of Alaska, having already trekked through 12 countries in South and Central America.
She has since encountered lush, green pastures, kayaked though electric blue glaciers alongside penguins and elephant seals, scaled mountainous terrain and hiked through ancient trails.
Ms Barnard has trekked through the extremes of weather conditions, from freezing snowstorms in Argentina to scorching sandstorms in Chile's Atacama Desert.
But trekking though two continents can get lonely, so after making it past Patagonia she enlisted a blue heeler named Wombat to share her journey.
"He's definitely the Batman, and I'm Robin," Ms Barnard said.
The canine companion has been transformative for the adventurer, easing the stress of managing personal safety while forcing her to make better decisions because she has another to think about.
"He actually is built for it," Ms Barnard said of Wombat.
"He's not even classified as doing enough kilometres for the breed that he is."
After a two-year hiatus through the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms Barnard set off to continue her trek, passing into Mexico and seeing the true nature of cartel activity.
"We passed an area that was so dangerous that there's a 10pm curfew in place," she said.
Police escorted the adventurer through dangerous areas using their cars to block street dogs from attacking, and followed her through an area where a territory war was raging after a cartel boss was executed the week she passed through.
She managed to cross the border into the United States, trekking all the way to the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, facing new threats in bears and mountain lions before her visa ran out.
Ms Barnard grew up with an adventure trailblazer mother who in her youth flew gliders when there wasn't much technology to support it, and a supportive father who pushed her to achieve her goals.
Her adventurous spirit may well have been passed down from her great grandfather, a naturalist and explorer who walked from Papua New Guinea to Sydney, collecting and naming new species of moss.
But while people marvel at Ms Barnard's mission to become the first woman to walk the two continents, she hasn't stopped to think about her legacy.
"People think I must have had all of these profound moments, like at the top of a hill with the wind sailing through my hair and hummingbirds flapping around me, but I'm not that profound," she said.
She wants to support and elevate others in the industry, but says her true calling is telling the stories of the marginalised groups she's encountered on her journey.
"Even in the most dangerous places, people live and thrive with love and respect for each other, and ultimately, we're all the hero of our own stories," she said.
The adventurer who returned to Australia briefly while she waited for the US to renew her visa, is expected to resume her journey in mid-February.
With 10,000km left in her journey, she hopes to reach her goal in the next 18 months to two years.
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