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Published: December 12th 2015
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All at Gerardo's estancia.
A great evening spent on the farm with a lamb off the Parrillia. The Adventure is not over yet!!
We may have reached out destination goal,but now we have to get back to Vina Del Mar and prepare our bikes for the return shipping home.
With the photo formalities done at Fin Deo Mundo , we made a run from Ushuaia to Gerardo's Estancia,just outside Punta Arenas, for our last night of the planned adventure with lamb on the spit, Chilean style,thanks to Gerardo and his farm team for such a great feast.
This was a fairly big day at 611kms fighting the bloody Patagonia wind and our last border crossing into Chile, we arrived around 7.00pm.
The following day, we rode into Punta Arenas to a grand welcome at the central Plaza with TV and the press, along with Gerardo's family and many friends, followed by a lunch and coffee at 'Cafe Gerardo' before we parted and String, Deane and I headed north to Puerto Natales to catch the ferry to Puerto Montt.
Both Geoff,Trevor and Kim were selling their bikes in Punta Arenas and flying home,so it was goodbye to them as Tres Amego's rode north.
Our ride to Puerto Natales was against the bloody wind again, so it made it a
challenging ride again.
We we're intending to ride toTorres del Paine the next day, but first we had to go to the Navimag booking office to confirm and pay for our 3 day ferry trip up to Puerto Montt the next day. Well the girl never got there until just before 10.00am and by the time our ticketing was done it was close to 11.00 am, then we had to go down to main office and check the bikes in, by now it was around 11.30. As we had to check the bikes through ADUANA (Customs) because we are leaving this tax free area of Magallenes, this meant if we did that during the day we were not allowed to remove the bikes from the bond area.
At this point we decided to abandon our ride to Torres del Paine and got a late check out from the hotel and went to lunch, as you do.
Later we repacked our luggage as we would not be able access our bikes during transit.
Around 8.00pm,we rode down to the main office and presented our bikes and got clearance to ship. We were told that we could come back at 9.00 pm
to ride the bikes onto the boat, so to kill another hour, String took us to a boutique Brewer for some beer and a snack board platter with olives,cheese,salami and a selection of dried meats including pork,beef,wild boar and Guanaco.
We finally made it down to the boarding area to be told we couldn't take the bikes on until after 11.00pm,so we walked on and got sorted in our three berth cabin.
Around 11.30 pm we went and got our bikes into position to be tied down by the crew.
As this is a 'dry' ferry we had to secrete my 'cold tea' and the others rum and we were able to celebrate the next phase of our adventure.
We were supposed to set sail around 7.00am,but the Bloody Patagonia wind never let up all night and the next day we were stuck at the wharf all day. Finally around 6.00pm the wind subsided enough to get some action and by 6.45pm we were under way, but now 12 hours behind our schedule. We are now used to the 'Hurry up and Wait' situation over here.
The ferry had to navigate some pretty tight turns and narrow passages,one being only
80 meters wide with the ship at about 25 meters wide there was not a lot of lea-way considering wind and currents, unfortunately darkness came in as we sailed through small islands and snow capped mountains all around us.
After a good feed and another sleep, we woke to clearing sky's, so by now we were fairly relaxed.
Poodle and I had breakfast with a young American couple, Ian and Sydney, from Seattle that are doing a two year stint over here in South America, we chatted in general about our travels.
We had plenty of spare time now, so we rested and grew our hair most of the day, going on deck every now and again to check the ever changing scenery.
We had a couple of lectures about the environment we were sailing through and wildlife we may encounter. We stopped at Puerto Eden to drop supplies to the navy base and the local natives that live there.
We went through many narrow channels until we reached open water as it got dark.
We had a fairly rough night out at sea as the wind and waves were up there and many people were sea sick as a
result.
As we had cows,Bulls and horses on board,the captain got back into the shelter as soon as possible,which also pleased those unstable passengers.
My flu has deepened and I now have a raw cough, I think once you stop,slow down and rest you let your guard down and the flu bug gets ya,and we are in a small three birth cabin,and I hope I don't pass this onto the other two.
So far this has been a very good option for us to take the ferry to and a well earned rest period,with time to share our experience and talk about the highs and lows of our adventure together,things we loved and would do again given the opportunity and things I will never want to see or do again.
Over the next day or so I took advantage of the time and rested up as best I could,sucking vitamin C pills and echinacea which all helped and by the time we reached Puerto Montt I was feeling much better.
We finally arrived at Puerto Montt at 8.00am on Friday,but we didn't get off the ferry until around 11.00am.
We have made it as far North as Salto del Laja
Punta Arenas news paper article.
Many passengers on the ferry had seen this article and recognised me and wanted to know all about our adventure. in Chile and have a cabin for the night.
We are nearly at the end of this amazing ride, so keep the coffee hot until the next blog. Hasta Pronto. Rosco.
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