Week 1 - Tierra del Fuego

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We´ve come to the end of our first week in South America and are waiting to catch the ferry over to the mainland this afternoon after crossing the Tierra del Fuego. It´s been 5 days riding and 277 miles to get from Ushuaia to Porvenir where we will be getting the ferry across to Punta Arenas. I´d hoped to make more entries but it seems that internet access is harder to find than we though. There´s plenty of internet cafes in the towns, they´re just never open!

We arrived in Ushuaia Tuesday night and, after looking round, had a nice Argentinian all you can eat buffet (lots of steak!). We spent the next morning putting the bikes back together and buying supplies for the next few days. Some how i managed to get my bike and all the gear flown over without paying any extra so that was a bit of a result! We started riding mid afternoon on the wednesday and faced some decent ascents before camping in the mountains. The area around Ushuaia is really spectacular so was a great introduction to the continent. On the third day we left the mountains and onto the plains where we hit the mother of all headwinds which left us riding at 6mph for 6-7hours. As we got near Rio Grande (largest town in the Tierra del Fuego) the road bent in a U shape so we went from headwind, to crosswind (where we had to get off an push our bikes because we couldn´t stay on the road) to tailwind which took us into town at 22mph without pedalling. Rio Grande itself is very much an industrial town, so not much to see and not particularly nice! Another day of headwinds took us to San Sebastian, on the border of Argentina and Chile where we stayed with an awesome hostel owner who chatted to us for a few hours using our phrasebooks. The next day we woke up hoping for an early start, only to find the hostel empty and locked up as the owner hadn´t got home from his night out yet! We sat in the breakfast room for a while before the owner returned and open up so we could leave and cross into Chile.

As we crossed into Chile we moved onto unpaved roads which were pretty brutal on us and our bikes. The bikes held up amazingly (no punctures/repairs needed) but my arse on the other hand didn´t fare so well! On the second day of unpaved roads we took a route which took us on the old gold miners trail. It was hilly but had some awesome scenery and a great, but bumpy, descent into Porvenir. Porvenir is a strange town as everything seems to be shut all the time (luckily we found an internet cafe open to write this). It took us about 45 mins to find an open place to eat last night and we were the only customers too, something we´ve gotten used to by now! There is a ferry once a day at 2pm so we will be getting that over to Punta Arenas soon where we will start the ride to Torres del Paine which will be our next proper stop to do some hiking.

Overall impressions of Tierra del Fuego; Ushuaia and the surroudning mountainous are amazing and i would recommend visiting them to anyone. Once we left there it was mainly vast plains with very little to see except wilderness so am looking forward to the mainland now.

The spot tracker hasn´t been too successful so far, it seems only some of our entries reached home, despite it saying the messages had been sent ok. We´re still in limited coverage area though so should get better, you can get a rough idea where we are using google maps and the places i´ve described so far. Hopefully it will work better once we reach the mainland.

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Photos

San Sebastian
Jake, the Hostel owner and his friend on the Atlantic coast at San Sebastian.

Comments

[Dan]

the joys of the south american keyboard! if i could remember where the apostrophe is i would tell you. if you ever find the question mark let me know!! haha. sounds like you're having a cracker mate.