1. Heading North
DAY 204. Ushuaia to Rio Grande
In this time to start a new chapter. It took 199 days to reach Ushuaia. I have a few days to chill here and I'm heading northbound today. The weather today is overcast, grey, cold, and miserable. Basically, normal day back home at this time of the year. But it is summer here.
I'm not sure how far I am going to make it today. It is supposed to be wet ahead. There are not too many options where to overnight. It is cold, only 8° and I am bundled up and all my heated gear is on. I take one last look at Ushuaia and head for the mountains. Before I reach the mountain pass, it started to rain. It put on all my rain gear and continue into the wetness. There is nowhere to stop here. Riding in the rain is no fun for me. You're just trying to make sure that you stay dry. You pay extra attention to your riding, visibility is limited so there is not too much to see. That defeats the whole purpose of riding a motorbike.
I think I can reach Punta Arenas in two days. The question is where I am going to overnight today. I stopped for gas just before Rio Grande. It was pretty chilly despite all my heated gear. I had a warm coffee and some snacks and I am trying to come up with a plan. I looked at the forecast, and it looks much better for tomorrow. So it is either riding today in the rain or longer day tomorrow in the sunshine. No contest here, I'm staying in Rio Grande.
There is a motorcycle hostel here, which caters mostly to bikers like me. I found it easily on the shore of the Atlantic ocean. It belongs to and is operated by the local motorcycle club. They raise the money for their activities this way. Pretty smart. They have a clubhouse, full kitchen, huge garage where you can store your bike and several rooms to sleep. I got a bunkbed in the hallway. There's also shower with hot water. There are memorabilia all over the place from everybody who's been here. There are number of local riders dropping by. Also more riders are coming in. If you don't like talking about bikes and travelling, don't bother coming here. It is pretty cool place. One of the locals has his entire car plastered with stickers of all people passing through. Both sides of the car, front and back are already full and he's starting put stickers on the roof. And that's where my sticker is. There's not too much to do around here, so it is early bedtime for me.
DAY 205 Penguins
My bed was very comfortable enough so, despite being in a bunkbed, I had a very good night sleep. Out of my window I can see sunshine. Good news. Then I checked the temperature, and it is only 4°. I look at the fresh aviation report from the local airport and it is showing the windchill -0.2°. That's fresh. I don't care how you look at it. I hope that the Sun will warm me up. I quickly eat a toast with jam and cup of coffee. Then I put several layers of clothing on me, plug my jacket into my bike and gloves into my jacket. Few seconds after starting my bike, I can feel both getting nice and warm. The issue with nice weather, which means sunny, is that it will be windy again. And I will have mostly crosswind. Great. I have a long day ahead of me. I want to stop at a penguin colony and also I have a ferry crossing to deal with today.
The weather is fresh to say at least. And battling crosswinds, which is no fun. After one hour of riding, I get to the border again. This will be crossing number eight between Argentina and Chile. And as with all previous border crossings here, it'll take no time or effort to get through. Argentina is super fast and Chile takes “entire” five minutes only because custom guys are chatting with me about my trip. They don’t have a slightest interest of checking my bags and we talk about Canada. They let me through after few minutes. I have one more crossing between those two countries left.
I'm heading to a penguin colony now. Only a 15 km detour. It is on the shore of Magellan Strait. I get there and they ask me if I have a reservation. Of course I don’t. I forgot I am back in Chile, where everything is run like a boot camp. But I'm in luck, there is a spot open in the next group which starts in 20 minutes. Access to Penguins is limited to 15 people per group per hour. I paid only a senior citizens fee. This old age stuff saved me enough money on this trip to pay maybe for a coffee 😉. The Penguins here are king penguins, which are second largest species of penguins. Only the emperor penguins are larger but those live only in Antarctica. I've seen colonies of hundreds of thousands of those when I was working there. We have guides with us to tell us where to go and to make presentation about those penguins here. To my surprise, they also speak English, which makes way easier for me to understand. But most of the facts they are telling me I already know. What can I say, I like penguins. We go to a viewing platform which is about 200 m from the penguins. There are about 110 of them. The population is pretty stable, they tell us. The survival rate is about 30%. Not that great. But consider the brutal climate here and predators like foxes, it is actually not that bad. It keeps the population stable. So I watch the penguins and take hundreds of photographs. It is interesting to watch the interactions among them. They definitely all have different characters. The tour lasted one hour and was pretty cool. I'm glad I came here.
It is time to head for the ferry. I'm joining the road and there are about a dozen big BMW's passing me like I'm standing still. I was doing 120 km an hour. There is no reason to ride crazy fast as we are catching the same ferry. I caught up with them half an hour later. They are a group of Brazilian rider on a motorcycle tour. They have rented brand new BMW 1250. None of them have any bags with them so I asked and they told me they have a support vehicle travelling behind them. Talking about glam riding. As I still have no idea where to go when in Brazil, I was asking many questions. Again, I've got more tips where to go. While waiting for the ferry, a small fox came to see us. She was totally unafraid of humans which is not too good for her. She was getting all the way up to the motorcycle and to the people. Ferry showed up and we all piled up on the deck. I joined the Brazilian group and there was 14 big BMW in two rows on the ship. It looked pretty cool. The ferry ride across the Magellan Strait is only 30’ long. It was nice and sunny so I stayed outside on the deck while most people went inside for a coffee. Then I spotted a group of dolphins playing in kelp by the ship. One of them looked different and came right to the boat and start surfing the bow wave. It was mostly white which totally confused me. If I didn't know any better, I would say it was a small orca, but small orca is much bigger. I will have to look it up on the Internet. I didn't have my Nikon with me, but I took several shots with my iPhone. And one came up quite well. Later I read on the internet it was a Commerson’s dolphin.
And before you know it, the ferry ride was over. It is only two hours from here to Punta Arenas. The ride was quite boring, but the road was nice. It was still partly cloudy and it looks even better ahead. It was definitely a good decision to stop early yesterday and have a longer but dry ride today. The rest of the day was uneventful, and I pulled into my hostel late afternoon. It was good today.
DAY 206 - 209. Punta Arenas
I didn't have too much planned for Punta Arenas. It would largely depend on the weather. The next stop after this is a ride back to Puerto Natales where I'm going to board a big ferry northbound. But I got an email informing me that the ferry is delayed by two days due to a port congestion. Which means I have two extra days. I don't normally book hotels more than one day in advance. But because of the ferry, I get everything planned before departure and the bike maintenance after I get off the ferry. Now I have to rebook all my hotels and the service appointment at the bike dealer. PITA. But this is life. Not such a big deal after all. Staying two extra days in Punta Arenas, chilling, walking around the town and doing a day trip I along the coastline. After all, I am in no hurry. Two days from four was raining, so I was catching up on my website, editing pictures and catching up with everything else. I am leaving for Puerto Natales tomorrow. It is a short ride only about 250 km on a good road. It is not supposed to be raining but I will keep my fingers crossed just to be sure. I have two days there and then I should be on the ferry. I will write more about that trip and the decision to take it while I'm on it.
See you there.