Headed North to Punta Arenas

Well what an epic trip so far! Now north again to the Careterra Austral! But first lets get out of Ushuaia! Today we headed back 215 km to Rio Grande for the night.

The next day we went the very windy 80 km to the border at San Sebastian. Here we gassed up on the cheap Argentine gas and met up with Dave (Prairies to Penguins).

We headed over the first 14 km of dirt to the Chile border. No one maintains this section so it is full of Potholes. Dave said “ I don’t remember it being that rough.” We were lucky this time at both crossings as we were the only people there. When we were just about to leave Dan noticed Dave had a completely flat rear tire. Since we had just 140 km to go to Porvenir we stayed to help him. The funny or not so funny part was after 45 minutes of trying to set the bead on the Heidenau the woman watching us from the food truck says she has a compressor. We had already asked the border guys who denied there was any air available here!!!

We were entertained by the fruit sniffer dogs for sure.

Now off road to the ferry dock at Porvenir.

This is a wind swept little town.

In the morning we headed to the dock at 1130 for the 2 pm sailing and were of course first in line, except for those with reservations. “You can make reservations!!??” we all said since this is not listed anywhere online.

In the end there were 12 bikes… Us, Orvar from Sweden, Trevor from Calgary, Tony from Spain, Bart and Renata from Holland, Eran from Isreal, Faizel, Madie, and Zamri from Malaysia, and Argentinean couple.

The 90 min crossing took over 3 hours with salt spray and waves crashing over the bikes and us at times.

Arriving in Punta Arenas we headed first to the shop of Alejandro, who is a great mechanic! We needed oil changes and he did a one over and adjusted and fixed several things on both bikes. Thanks so much! I don’t think our bikes have been this clean since new.

There is a very impressive cemetery here and a nice waterfront as well.