Land of fire? Land of wind is more like it...

After kicking around in the quaint town of Ushuaia for a couple of days it was time to start our journey north through Tierra del Fuego. It started with us doing our first hill of the trip (not counting the "undulations" in Uruguay), climbing up over the 400m Paso Garibaldi.




It snowed as we got about half way up, and with us ladies freezing our fingers off we stopped in at a roadside restaurant to eat our lunch. After some inappropriate drying off techniques in front of the fire we continued up and over the pass and cruised down the other side to camp next to Lake Fagnano, and also next to a horse skeleton. The next day we had overcast weather and undulations into the town of Tolhuin where we indulged our sweet tooths at the local bakery for a couple of hours before pushing on for about 10km to camp behind some bushes for the night. So far so good, as we had yet to encounter the infamous winds of Tierra del Fuego.


The next day was a different story, when after about 20km we got hit with them and took relative solace behind some bushes for lunch. Well, at least it wasn't raining! The after lunch diagonal head-cross winds were trying, so when we found a spot by Rio Ewan Norte we grabbed it (even thought it was about 1pm and in full view of the road) and set up camp. The next day the wind was a little better but it got really cold, so after some emergency cup-a-soups on the side of the road we were very glad to come across a strange restaurant/function centre in the middle of nowhere. The very kind proprietor gave us free coffees and let us warm up and eat our food inside. We decided to camp just out of Rio Grande for the night to give ourselves a near-full half day off the next day.


As we left Rio Grande, the sun was shining and spirits were high, so after fooling around (somewhat historically insensitively) at a Falklands War memorial we cruised out of town for a nice 15km or so until the storm rolled in, causing us to hunker in a ditch for a bit. But it passed and we continued until another, more fearful hail-laden storm came by. This prompted us to break into the ceiling spaceof an empty building to eat lunch and debate how long until hypothermia set in. We decided we had to hitch hike out, or we would possibly die of cold. After an hour or so with no luck with a ride (except for the nice truck driver who offered to strap our bikes under his truck on top of the spare tyre) the weather cleared up and the hypothermia fears dies down a bit so we carried on. We had the closest thing to a tail wind we had had so far, so going was good for a while, but our poor cold bodies forced us to stop soon enough and we camped in a ditch on the side of the road.


The next day we finally had a good run on the wind and cruised into the Argentinian immigration at San Sebastian just before the rain came. Another 10km to the Chilean immigration on our first gravel roads was not too bad and we were pretty happy eating lunch (OK, second lunch) at the cafe at Chilean San Sebastian. We reckoned we had 43 km left to go until the junction to Onaisin so thought we should go like crazy with the lack of wind on the notoriously windy westward stretch of road. The wind found us eventually so we stopped at about 8pm in an even more dubious ditch to batten down our tents and fear the next day.


Sure enough, the next day the wind was the worst that we had seen so far, and blowing right into our faces (as well as throwing us some dirt and grit too). After cycling a whopping 5km in an hour we found a small refugio (hut) where we made the crucial decision that with about 100 km to go until Porvenir there was no way we could make it, with the lack of water and fearful winds. So we mulled over the possibilities, bike back to San Sebastian and catch a bus, sleep in the refugio for the night and deal with it in the morning, or hitch. After about half an hour of this contemplation a ute rolled down the rolled which we ran to, frantically waving our arms and beggin for solace. Turns out he was headed to Porvenir so we strapped the bikes on the back and cruised the hell out of Tierra del Fuego and were in Punta Arenas by nightfall.