6. I Made It
DAY 198
I left Puerto Natales in the morning not knowing where I am going to end up today. This is the final push towards Ushuaia. Three or maybe even two days.
It is cloudy but dry. The temperature was in the single digits and the wind is blowing. Luckily, for the next few hundred kilometers, the wind should be in my back. The road is good but it is cold. I turned on my electrically heated jacket and I felt much better. There is not too much to look at. There is less and less trees by each passing kilometer. It is getting boring. There's no town and no gas station for the first 200 km. I can see some rain showers in the distance, but luckily, I managed to avoid all of them. I'm travelling on the north shore of huge body of water, on the other side is island of Tierra del Fuego. All the commercial ships are taking this inside passage to avoid open water of Cape Horn. Traffic is very light and I am gobbling the road very quickly. At this point there are not even trees around me, just grass. And pretty soon I come to the ferry crossing. This ferry crosses the Magellan Straight separating the mainland from the island of Tierra del Fuego. It is a quick crossing, about 30 minutes sailing time. The ferry is already there and there are about two dozen cars ahead of me. There is no dock for the ferry, it just beaches itself towards the ramp. All the cars board quickly and we are underway. I manage to get a nice hot cup of coffee. I have just enough time to drink it and it's time to leave the ferry. The same thing on the other side, drive down the ramp and onto the main road. And this is truly the last section of my route southbound. I stopped for the night in the first town about 50 km south of the ferry. I found a small hotel and lucky for me they had room available for me. It is very basic, but it is clean and it has a hot shower. That's all I need today. It is a very small town, so there is nowhere to go. I found a small restaurant so it is a quick dinner and early bedtime for me. Despite being the middle of the summer here the heaters in hotels are on. It should be around 5° overnight. Interestingly enough, it is exactly the same temp back home where is middle of the winter. Go figure …
DAY 199
I wake up in the morning to cold, but sunny skies. I'm leaving in the morning, not knowing if I should have one more stop or go all the way down. But after riding for a couple of hours through the featureless terrain, I have decided to go all the way. It is a nice ride, and I would be stopping in the middle of the day just for the sake of stopping. It is a boring ride again. The only thing you see is sheep. A lot of them. I think they would give New Zealand run for their money. Also, I’ve seen a few ostriches. I always thought that ostriches like warm climates but these are hardened Patagonia ostriches. Also I have seen few pink flamingoes. The same thing, when you say flamingo, I see Miami not Patagonia. But besides those few distractions, it is all just grass.
And I see sign of the border crossing ahead of me. I'm crossing from Chile to Argentina. This is the seventh crossing between those two countries. Luckily, those crossings are non-events. There is a same process at every border crossing. I know exactly what to do by now and it doesn't take long and I'm through both crossing with my bike. And right behind the Argentinian crossing I can see the shores of the Atlantic ocean. It is pretty cool because I was by the shores of the Pacific only yesterday. I followed the coastline south little bit before I turn inland on the final 150 km push to Ushuaia. There are more trees over here for some reason, and I can see the coastal range ahead of me. I am battling strong crosswinds now, but I don't care that much. I am almost at the end of my trip southbound. It is going to be different story going up with all that headwind. But it's another day. The road is nice and the traffic increased. There are some nice twisties going through the mountains. There are quite a few lakes along the road, but they all look very cold. The temperature during the day got barely above 10° today. I'm still very comfortable in that, thanks to my heated set up. I'm actually riding in the forest now. But the trees are weird and crooked from all the wind they are getting over here. There's also a lot of moss on all of them thanks to excessive moisture for the most of the year. I got lucky again today, there was no rain. Keep looking at my GPS which is counting down kilometres from the end. It was 150 to go, then 70, 20 and there is the gate of the town of Ushuaia. I made it! My odometer is showing 31,600 km since I left. It is a little bit more than my calculated 24,000. But I took many more diversions to get here. I took bunch of customery pictures at the gate and left my sticker on the wall together with everybody else’s.
I have an apartment already booked so I am riding straight over there. It is a nice place on the slopes above the town, overlooking the port, the Beagle Channel and the mountains behind it. Pretty nice setting. It is a two bedroom fully furnished apartment with nice views. I'm staying here for four days so I can relax a little bit and digest the trip.
DAY 200
I woke up in the morning to cloudless sky. It is absolutely beautiful. I get on my bike and head out to finish my southbound portion of the trip. There is still about 25 km to go to the end of the road. Pavement stops right at the edge of the town. The road is incredibly dusty with heavy traffic heading the same way. I'm heading to Tierra del Fuego National Park and so is everybody else in town. I cannot blame them. Sunny weekend is rare occasion over here. I pay my fee and follow the road. There are people everywhere. On top of the locals and visitors, there are buses with cruise ship passengers. I quickly cover the remaining distance and I'm standing truly at the end of the road. This is it, you cannot go any further west or south. This is as far as you can go. Pretty cool. It has been incredible 200 days to get here. Many adventures, many stories, and I've met many incredible people along. It is hard to have any expectations for such a long trip but so far I think it has been way better than I ever could imagine.
I went for a short walk and took customery pictures with the sign depicting the end of the road. It is exactly 3,100 km to Buenos Aires from here, if you go straight up there. Of course I'll be taking quite a few detours so it will be a little bit more for me. It's absolutely beautiful day 18°, sunny, and no wind. It doesn't feel like Patagonia at all. But I take it.
I got some lunch from the food truck nearby and head back home. I finally start realizing that I have come pretty far to get here. But just like climbing the mountain, this is only a half point. I still have to get back home.
Next two days I'm hanging around town, walking around the shoreline, taking pictures or having coffee on the main street. In short, taking it easy. I also went for lunch at the local airport. I guess you cannot get the flying out of me completely.
I also got text from my friend Kathleen. She got into town one day after me. Kathleen and I met at the crossing in Columbia to Ecuador couple months back. We rode together for a bit then we took different routes and crossed our paths many times on our way down. It was pretty cool. She's going to Buenos Aires now and continue to Europe on her round the world trip. Good luck!
DAY 203
What next? Well, heading northbound, more or less. I want to get to Buenos Aires and then to Brazil and the Amazon. This is a big continent, but very few roads. There are basically three ways to get to Buenos Aires. You can take Ruta 3 directly to BA. It is a good road, but absolutely boring as hell. Not to mention windy. Then you can take Ruta 40 which I started to hate. And I came down through there. I have no desire going up the same crappy road. The third option is to take a ferry. It goes from Puerto Natales, which is thousand kilometres from Ushuaia, another thousand kilometres north to Puerto Montt. It is 4 nights and 3 days trip through the inside passages. I'm hoping for nice weather because this trip should be epic. Then it is only a short ride to Osorno where is a BMW dealer. I need to have a big inspection done on my bike. From there, I'll go straight east to Buenos Aires and then into Brazil. That's the plan now.
So this is it for the southbound portion of my trip. The northbound portion of the blog and pictures will be under new banners Blog N and Photos N.
See you there