The Atlantic Coast from Punta del Este to the Brazillian border...
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| Ben looking like some sort of giant 20 storey high man in Punta del Este |
We eventually left Punta del Este suitably revived and considerably out of pocket, to head north along the coast towards the Brazillian border. Things were looking pretty sweet, towns were considerately placed about 50km apart, the road was quiet and mostly followed the coast, there was little wind and sunny pretty much the whole time. So awesome training for Patagonia then.
Anyway, had out best day yet leaving Punta, biked along the coast through little beach towns, had a collective bike meltdown about an hour into the day which meant some emergency side of the road repairs. These "repairs" are still being repaired now.
There was an unusual bridge for Ben.[photos to come]
We had a really bad luch of stale bread and dulche de leche and then another, better lunch of hamburgers and fries in La Paloma.
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| Typical Beach. Sun, sand, blah blah blah. |
All the campgrounds we closed as its not quite high season yet, we found a family run place on the road just outside of La Paloma. Naturally there was hilarious language difficulties as the guy jabbered away and we understood about one word in 10, he was probably telling us to watch out for all the giant spiders in his property, but we clearly didn´t catch that little titbit of information. There was these small rabbit holes everywhere, about 4-8cm in diameter and obviously freshly dug. As we walked around in jandals we sensed that we didn´t want to stick our fingers down and meet the owners of the holes, but didn´t know what they were. We did our bags up pretty tightly went we went to bed just in case. Internet reseach later revealed they were probably tranchaulas, which was not comforting. not at all.
We biked on to Aguas Duches, literally "sweet water" where the whole town seemed deserted. There was a small flyer in the window of the closed tourist office advertising a hostal that spoke english and because it was hot and we were shitty and didn´t want to bike anymore we went there. Best move ever, as it turned out, they were awesome, let us camp in the backyard, made great coffee and the best breakfast ever. We splashed out and brought cream and butter and made a curry that tasted like a normal meal.
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| Aguas Dulches. |
This is actually not in date order. Somewhere amongst this the road ran out twice at lagoons, with huge detours implied. We had head that there could be a ferry across the lagoons so biked on confidently. the first one had an awesome little barge that was free, we free camped in some trees next to the beach just along from this. The next lagoon we weren´t so lucky, and had to pust our bikes in the sand around the waters edge, which was fun, and then not so fun.
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| Bike pushing around the lagoon. At this stage, still fun. |
The ferry in had waves breaking over the bow and some steady footwork was required to stay still on the deck
Lookout over the Usuaia national park
Anna still managing a smile after a puncture that ended her ride in the park. (maybee it was the cake and hot chocolate at the cafe). I left her to negeotiate her way onto the bus and another hot chocolate while I biked the rest of the way down the road to the end of the world
Largo Rocha
End of the road. Northbound from here
Snow Goose (really me just playing with the zoom on the camera)
The other end of the road sign
Mirrored Usuaia the calmest we ever saw it the whole time we were down there and that only lasted a few hours
Ushuaia
Ushuaia Fin Del Mundo
The top of the first pass the snow had stopped falling but there was still some on the ground
Our second campsite well hidden from the road
Less Hidden
Giving up trying to hide from the road in sight of Rio Grande but the crosswind depicted by the tropical palm in the anything but tropical climate stoped us in our tracks
You could see the storms coming
Guanacos checking out the crazy cyclists
Waiting for our ferry after our rally driving Rancher ute ride to provineer
