Deer Park

Lucinda and I had to go back Buenos Aires to prepare for a big flight west. Although you’d think this would be a shorter thing to do from Santiago, Lucinda’s welfare is my top priority. There’s a freight forwarder in BA who has a great reputation for handling bikes well so we went there, despite the additional hassle.

So here’s the route we took, right across South America (and thanks Dan for showing me how to group these tracks)

Not many pictures or story for this very long track. There’s an explanation at the bottom of the post.

The first leg is back over the Christo Redentor pass between Chile and Argentina. We’ve been here before but it’s colder this time.

Out of Santiago we climb into the Andes

This time we climb rather than descend the famous switchbacks. It’s like climbing a wall. Poor contrast in this pic, you’ll probably have to click on it

Serious road engineering. There’s been progress since we were last here

To the border, but there’s a problem. Both countries immigration/aduana are now in the same building. Last time they were miles apart. I need a gap where neither border can see me for a few minutes. This will present difficulties down the road, but nothing that can’t be finessed. I can’t explain what yet, but nothing too weird

Through the equally famous tunnel. It goes the whole way under the mountain ahead

Through smaller tunnels

Through valleys

And across the plains to Mendoza.

I haven’t done a restaurant review before. But I wandered into this small place and had my best meal in 20 months. The food has been not-so-hot for a long time. I’ll explain another time. Three courses and a bottle of Torrontes for 350 pesos, about $37 US. A lot of money here. Stop here at GPS coordinates S32 53.508 W68 50.861

The ride between Mendoza and San Luis was boring. And it rained. I didn’t take a single photo.

Just outside of San Luis there’s the small town of Potrero de los Funes in some hills which appear surprisingly in the great plain of central Argentina. You see that little road here? It’s a racetrack

Lucinda has never been on a track before and wants us to try it. It’ll  be romantic, she says.

The track at Potrero de los Funes looks like this

Stuck in the middle of anywhere, 100’s of miles from anything, the Potrero de los Funes Circuit, a 6.3km track was inaugurated in 2008, and hosts local Formula Renault, TC2000 and FIA GT Championships, among other stuff. So it’s a serious circuit. From above it looks like this

And on race day it looks like this

We get up early the first day

We roll out onto the track. Take a couple of laps warming her tires up.

Start in pole position

Into the first corner nice and easy

Out onto a long stretch

Approaching the next right

Sweeper

A left

Hairpin

Etc etc

Race to the finish

Then on to Cordoba.

Up into cold mountains

Pretty ridge running

A section of track

There were huge Cotoneasters roadside

And a good orange shrub I couldn’t ID

Pampas on the hillsides. Normally they’re on the flats

A small Silene

The summit was a bare rocky plain that ran for a few miles

With small ponds everywhere

And down to rich green pastures

Lucinda poses in the middle of a roundabout

We arrived late into Cordoba and left early so no pictures.

As it happens my Garmin GPS has been a nightmare for the last few days. I do all the tricks I’ve learned over the last 20 months and nothing I can do can bring it back to sanity. I won’t bore you with the details but despite Garmin insisting it’s not a hardware problem I’ll be replacing it down the road. In the interim I have to use it as a map, not a GPS. Here’s an example of it’s routing skills. The road is in red, the purple is the recommended route. Nuts

Or a particularly bad moment. It wants us to follow the purple line! So we ignore it and follow the hard map background, just like stone-age times.

Nothing but grief from this useless thing since it first lost its mind back in Savanna, Georgia. And Garmin support is useless.

The next two days were a fast ride over flat farmland through Rosario to Buenos Aires

This is one of the biggest roads in Argentina. I would never normally ride on such a thing

But truth be told, my mind has moved beyond South America. We’ve been here long enough and we want a change.

So I take this enormous road and let my thoughts wander to wondering where in the world I’ll find my next adventure. Lucinda and I have a much clearer idea about the big picture now. It’s taken me a long time to come to some conclusions about why I’m doing this, but the picture is clearer. I can now see more than just where, I’m beginning to see why and how.

Adding to this clearer picture is the realization that Lucinda and I are riding well together. I haven’t dropped her once in a technical riding situation in South America. I’ve dropped her hitting a traffic barrier outside Lima (I had a similar surprise in Leon, Nicaragua) and we’ve had the standard drop manuevering-at-walking-speed in sand or mud when I’ve put my foot down to find nothing there.

So combined with some new ideas about goals, we’re in a happy place right now.

Or we thought we’d finished here, but a nice thing happened on our way to do a bike/paperwork chore: Uruguay.

Nothing is less fun than backtracking, specially if it’s a big distance. There’s no alternative route back to Natales where we have a date with a boat.

On day 2 of the return, we hid behind this building from the wind on the way back to Porvenir

Hours later we were back on the coast of the Magellan Straight. Lucinda posed for a shot

Wrecked fish boats every few miles

With some time to kill before Porvenir and the wind down we rode down a track to the fishing village. A collection of shacks really

There were 10 or so homes. A man appears from one. We look at his net

And his boat

He’s finished fishing for the day. He can’t believe I’m from Canada and have ridden my bike down. So he insisted he makes me te (tea) in his home. He tells me about the fish (no less than ever) the birds (he loves them) and the sea (he loves it). He’s been here all his life

It was a shame to leave such a gentle soul without hearing more stories. We had one thing in common – something neither of us had

Lucinda likes riding these tracks through the turf and we took a long detour back

The next morning we got the same pretty ferry out of Porvenir. No wind. Sun. Warmish for the first time in days

We roll on and this guy insists on doing the tie-down. He makes a mess of it but is very funny as we go very slightly off-topic

He ends up untying everything, chocking her up and throwing a single line over. I don’t really care as the water is as smooth as glass. Lucinda’s cool with it either way I can tell

Bye Porviner

Then it’s a windless and fast ride back to Punta Arenas. Claudia’s flying in tomorrow and I have to meet her at the micro-airport. It’s taken her 24 hours and three connections to get here from Guatemala.

The next morning we walk the waterfront to see the birds. There are three species of cormorants, two albatross and numerous gulls

We’re not the only ones out birdwatching

It seems to me that birds can show brilliant colors like no other life. So maybe someone could explain why marine bird life, shorebirds, cormorants, penguins, gulls, you name it are nearly all black and white

The industrial buildings on the waterfront are painted with murals. They’re not for the benefit of tourists. They have a strange quality about them

and

Punta Arenas is a great place. My favorite Chilean town except Valpo. But this blog is a road report only, so limited in what I get up to or photograph, so just get down here and see for yourself.

Then there’s a logistical thing. Lucinda hasn’t the room to carry a passenger with the duffel so we put Claudia on a bus and follow/lead it to Puerto Natales. I’ve explained this to her in advance.

Along the way we finally get close to the Rheas we’ve seen off and on. These are maybe 40 or 50 pounds of huge flightlessness, maybe 3 feet tall at the shoulder, 5 feet tall when looking around.

Meanwhile the ride has been mostly like this and freezing

When we get to Natales I can’t believe it. What was a maelstrom a couple of weeks ago is a millpond

Por ejemplo, here it is today

And was two weeks or so ago

Clearly no predators around

This being Chile, the boats are sophisticated

But on the dock is a rope drying. Depth knots in meters? Not fathoms, too close. Why anyone is doing this is another mystery

The water’s clear cold and beautiful

The passport epic worked out. Everything always works out. As the space for stamps got more desperate, the officials looked more carefully at my problem. And they all cooperated. The bad start was because I flirted with the Chilean lady officer thinking that was a slam-dunk winning strategy and she wanted to correct me on that.

So, they had no problem with overlaps. I can’t tell you how grateful I was to all of them

An hour from now it’s going to start blowing a gale. And it’s a hardish dirt ride southwest to the Argentinian border

The day’s track. To the end of the world, the furthest south

For the first hour, nothing except this

We’ve been riding away from the coast for a while, then we turn back through some hills. Plenty of Guanaco around. Every few days you see the dried remains of one that didn’t complete the jump over the endless fence and got hung up

Down to the sea

A lot of road shots recently. I think because it’s been pretty barren since the Carretera and the surface has been more of the adventure. Anyway, here we have a good track to follow despite the wind.

(on that subject I just read that Jeff crashed in the wind approaching Tres Lagos (see the post to Chalten) and came across two Brazilians whose bikes were knocked down simultaneously. So it looks like me and Jerzy were the only people we know who didn’t crash somewhere on Ruta 40. Heroes in our minds, both. Jeff said the wind which Lucinda thought was about 50 mph was more like 70 to 80 for him)

Past a fishing shanty

Blowing but beautiful. Just the road and the sea

Then inland

We have to cross into Argentina yet again. I’ve counted all these crossings in my passport-stamp-space issue. More on that to follow. Anyway, here we are, some outpost in the middle of nowhere. Very quiet, no breeze

But because they’re rich, the Chileans make a show of their border post. It’s efficient, no more than 20 minutes and we’re through. I’m bored by the lack of border buzz in South America and have a hankering for the chaos and corruption of say, El Salvador. No kidding, the worse it is, the more addictive

And so don’t bother with the Argentine crossing photos today. More straight, cold distance killing

Then we start gaining elevation slowly

Through a 100 mile forest of tough low confers

I saw another of the many small foxes here

Then our first view of the southern mountains. I had no idea if the pass was going to be snowed over or not as the only person I know in the area is Jerzy and I’m not sure if he’s on the same stretch. We both decided to do the full 450K to Ushuaia today and not stop at Rio Grande I was to learn later.

I don’t stop for many photos. We’re headed through Paso Garibaldi (really) somewhere ahead

Past a lake. Christ it was cold

A moment of sunshine however

Another lake

The trees

The final climb up to the pass

Nice

A gigantic peak

It had been snowing in the pass. We’d been fighting a big headwind for the last few hours and it was near here that we got hit with a directionless (maybe straight down) gust that was so strong I was momentarily confused and nearly lost Lucinda. I had no idea what direction it came from but it was like we’d had a collision with something

The last hour was a frozen struggle against the breeze. Of the nearly 4000km’s on the Carretera Austral and Ruta 40 since Puerto Montt, already pretty far south, about 2500 has been dirt and 1000 in strong wind. This isn’t much short of the drive from Vancouver to Toronto Google Maps tells me.

We’re here. Ushuaia

Calafate was a good place to hang out before the last days south. We explored the area and rode as far around the lake as the road allowed. One breezy morning on the waterfront we had a big surprise. Flamingoes again!

I suppose my childhood introduction to flamingoes were African photos in National Geographic so I think of them as tropical. Also, for my generation, African shots from National Geographic were our introduction to something else just as spectacular and seared into my memory but anyway. There are three species of flamingo in South America, this is P chilensis and it clearly doesn’t mind the freezing cold.

As well as the flamingoes they’re plenty of horses around. They look too sleek to be wild but there’s never any signs of enclosure

I was walking down the main street and saw a Triumph Tiger parked outside a restaurant. I may have mentioned it before but there’s one universal thing among long-distance riders: Tiger owners love their bikes. Normally I’d be somewhat frightened by anything made in England but there’s no arguing with the riders, the bike seems to do this well. I walk in the restaurant and meet Steve. I borrowed a photo from his Porvenir ferry ride as it’s better than mine

He’s riding from Buenos Aires to Alaska then New York. Being Scottish he drinks and we did. So here’s a story: what would you like to be most if you had to hang out in Guatemala City? A just-retired British Commando with the 29th regiment, with a tattoo of a huge dagger and the word COMMANDO in big letters beside it. Also perfect for the El Salvador/Honduras border crossing. Riding skills? Currently races motocross, showed me a photo of himself about 30 feet in the air. Experience overseas with people trying to rob or kill you? Tours of duty in Afghanistan, Beirut, etc etc. He OK’d me to write this. Steve’s the guy who told me that regarding self-portraits ‘if you don’t pose, nobody knows’. There are only 5 towns from here on down so if there are any riders around, we’re going to meet them, and being a bit off-season they’re likely to be the hardier types. Me, I’m just late.

Off to Puerto Natales. The day’s track on Ruta 40

In the big picture it’s here

The ride out of Calafate takes us up onto a plain

Before a long dirt road ahead we’re greeted by this spooky person at a cattle grid. Click the video to the left (click, click enlarge, click HD). I’ve developed a superstition about ride videos and so no more of those until I get over it

The road’s an unusual packed rock and dirt and fast. There’s not a lot of landscape today, so this is more of a ride report than usual
Another of the many streams that cross the flats

Spectacular riding, changing surface all the time

We think we see something on a pond
Sure enough, more flamingoes

We approach slowly and discover something. Flamingoes don’t fly away, they walk away

We scare off a group of other birds. The wing markings are extraordinary, no idea what they are

They’ve decided to flatten out some of the long dips by pouring a rock road

The surface is lousy. Maybe 50 miles of on-the-pegs lousy

An unusual sight: sheep

Further along something that’s fairly common, a fox. I’m guessing they eat the bird’s eggs. They’re very small, maybe 20 lbs

Back onto great although rocky road. The Ruta 40 has every type of surface. Even sand and mud back in Belen

The road turns crappier than usual and we have to pick lines

We cross marsh and ponds on the elevated road. If you click in this photo, tons of flamingoes

On the other side and up close, these two swan-like birds. They’re huge but have duck bills, not swan bills

We come to crossroads and the end of the dirt. There’s a gas station, closed. No problem, we’ve lots of gas

The windows are covered in traveller’s stickers, including this one

Now we’re racing for the border again through hills

Through a border town, the name escapes me, under various layers of clouds

First out of Argentina again. My passport stamp space is scary and causing me some stress. Photos coming up. The building’s a converted house and quiet. In fact I’m the only one there

I give my speech and they’re brilliant and find a small spot for the stamp. Then off to the Chilean building. I’m in luck and they also find a tiny space for the stamp. I think the harder it gets the more they enjoy this. At least when I give my speech they all look up and listen intently to the gringo with a problem. A small epic is fun for everyone

Downhill and another maybe 50 miles to Puerto Natales. The wind is strong and blowing us across the road again

A panel truck, blown off

Into the town. It’s blowing a gale

Interesting buildings

What look to be Coast Guard boats

Around the corner in the lee, fishing boats

Looking up the sound, here we are at last. Tierra del Fuego