February 27, 2016

After seven months of heading south, I am finally heading north again.

The weather was beautiful as I left Ushuaia; a bit cool — in the upper 30s Fahrenheit — but sunny and almost no wind.

View from my hostel on my last morning in Ushuaia. If you zoom in, and look past the airport runway, between there and the big mountains in the background, lies Isla Martinez. There you go, Zeke.

Some of the locals obviously have a sense of humor about their location.

As I crossed over Paso Garibaldi, the weather changed on the other side. The rest of the day was complete cloud cover, with occasional drizzle, and it seemed to be getting colder.

After just a few hours of riding, I turned off Ruta 3 about 15km north of Rio Grande, and drove down a dirt road and out to the beach. There were some small sand dunes here and I set up camp.

The best kind of camping….free. And not a bad location either.

Daniel and Joey were delayed leaving Punta Arenas, and they were headed this way, so we agreed to meet at this spot for the night. They pulled in a few hours later, and as usual, Joey fixed us all a great dinner.

The wind picked up overnight, and the rain started. By morning it was still raining, but the wind was slowing down a bit. We enjoyed a leisurely morning and a late breakfast, and by a little after noon the rain let up and we packed up and went our separate ways.

Camping made better by dinner and breakfast with great people. While I tend to be a bit more minimalist with my gear, I have to admit I’m a bit jealous at times when Daniel and Joey pull out this extra tarp for rain protection and set up the kitchen for a great meal. They’re headed south to Ushuaia, then north. I’m hoping to meet up with them again in Buenos Aires.

I was getting a late start, but still planned to do a bit over two hundred miles, including two border crossings and a ferry crossing. In order to get from this part of Tierra del Fuego, which is in Argentina, to mainland Argentina, you have to cross through Chile. So I crossed back into Chile at San Sebastian, which is also the end of the pavement for 34 miles. After that, a beautiful new concrete road is being built, but only a portion of it is open, so there was another eight to ten miles of gravel road before the pavement took hold permanently and took me to the Punta Delgada ferry crossing and then back into Argentina for the final time.

A series of “lasts”: after finishing the last unpaved road, the last ferry crossing for this continent.

Last border crossing for this continent (on the bike, at least).

I rode into Rio Gallegos just after dark. Unfortunately, the campground where I had planned to stay isn’t really a “campground” in the usual way that those of us from the States think of them. In Argentina, many campgrounds — especially the municipal campgrounds — are places where local families can go to relax, BBQ, enjoy their weekend with the family, and maybe even sleep in a tent. The campground in Rio Gallegos fits all of those things. Except no vehicles of any kind are allowed in the campground. Since everyone shows up in the family car, rather than a camper, trailer, or motorcycle, the car is parked on the street, and then you walk through a small gate into a large walled compound. A side street not visible from the campground wasn’t exactly where I wanted to leave my motorcycle. Since it was nearly 10pm, I decided to find a hotel in town rather than spend more time searching for another place to camp. I’ll make up for it over the next ten nights or so of camping on the way north.