Tour des Ameriques: Tierra del Fuego

March 29th 2011

I left Puerto Natales in the morning and decided to skip Punta Arena and went east to the short free ferry to Tierra del Fuego.

I as get off the ferry I saw a few motocyclists so so I went over to chat. They told me they are going to Alaska in 2 months!!! I saw a truck full of tires. They paid for an organized tour. 2 months is quite unrealistic, it took me 6 months from Canada to get there and it felt to me I had to rush at the end.... I'll keep my comments on that for myself...

Here's Tiera del Fuego.

There are many dirt roads going to San Sebastian, the next "town". I followed my gps to a more unused road. It rained there lately because the road soon became hard to ride, lots of mud.

Then it was nice.

Puerto Natales is in Chile, the ferry is in Chile, I needed to cross a border to Argentina to reach Ushuaia. For some reasons Tiera del Fuego is about half in Chile and half in Argentina.

Past the border, at San Sebastian, the road became paved again. Good thing since the sun went down and it's always safer not ridding dirt at night.

I got in Rio Grande and decided to stay there for the night. I could have made it to Ushuaia but I wanted to arrive during daylight and take pictures and the Ushuaia sign and take my time to find a place to stay.

In Rio Grande there's on one hostel, otherwise everything else was either full or very expensive. Met some cyclist there, nice people, they've met the "crazy" bikers group on their 1st night out.

I received an email from Fernando, when he had problems with his bike on routa 40 a pickup truck picked him up and he went to Rio Turbio, near Puerto Natales. He was waiting for me there but I had no nay of knowing that, anyway he was in Ushuaia and told me where he was.

I had to do about 220km to Ushuaia, not very much, but it was a little cold and was raining.

As you get closer the landscape change, from flat field and deserts to hills, lakes and mountains.

I took a million pictures here at that sign.

I made it!!!!!! Nobody now can take this away from me. I rode my motorcycle from Calgary, Canada, to Ushuaia, Argentina. About 33000 km later.

I met Fernando at the hostel he was. It was his birthdate so we got some good food and wine at a buffet.

We wanted to take a boat and go down the Beagle Canal for a day cruise. There are penguin colonies there, a light house, etc. Due to weather no boat will be leaving that day. We walked around a little instead and took a few pictures. I will be our last day in Ushuaia.

We decided to go to the National Park there. I've let Fernando do the talking so I paid local price. In Argentina they charge much more when you are a tourist VS a Argentinian... The thing is we got there too late, it became dark by the time we reached the end.