End of the world, and back to Chile.

A half day in downtown Ushuaia was more than enough for us. The town is quite charming, but it's a matter of shouldering one's way between the mobs of 'other' tourists, who have mostly come by air to join a cruise to Antarctica. Given its popularity with the money-is-no-object end of the tourism spectrum, there are few bargains to be had in town either. Back in camp we read, write, tinker with motorcycle, tent and gear, and relax in our forest by the stream.

Ruta 3 finishes in the Tierra del Fuego National Park, and a photo by the sign marking the end of the road is de rigeur.

So is a visit to the park itself. Emily and I hiked up the Guanaco trail to the top of Cerro Guanaco, just to prove to our legs and bums that there's more to life than sitting on a motorcycle.

They paid us back over the following days, too, but the views, solitude and that wonderful feeling of insignificance in the immensity of nature was worth the debt.

A burly, dark and grumpy storm shooed us down from the peak, though not before we had lunched on the mountain, watching the weather approach.

Four days at the town at the end of the world was enough, sort of. We'd met a new crew, and now feel a part of the overland biking community, we'd heard some yarns and shared some others. We had washed clothes, cooked in a kitchen, and made some repairs to our kit (and others' too - I'm sure Ted is impressed with Emily's sewing skills). Despite this we didn't really feel ready to leave, and may have stayed longer if not for the attractions of Patagonia which beckoned us along the road.

Out of Ushuaia earlyish - about midday! We were in a bit of a hurry, or at least we had a schedule for the first time in a long time. We needed to catch a ferry from Porvenir to Punta Arenas. So we were into it, back up over the Garibaldi Pass, a 230km stint without stopping, our longest ever to date. A pitstop in Rio Grande, then border formalities to cross back into Chile, this time we were able to write that we planned to stay weeks rather than hours as we had on the way down.

Between the border post at San Sebatian and Porvenir ther is about 150 kms of quite smooth gravel road. Undulating along the coast, the road itself offers lots of great views and few difficulties.

Toss in winds of somehwere around 120 km/h at a guess, and ther level of difficulty rises sharply, and time to enjoy the scenery evaporates (for me, andway, I'm sure Em did a bit of rubber-necking). That's just what you expect down this far on the wedge of South America. When we realised the timezone chage from Argentina to Chile had given us an extra hour, we stopped for a photo shoot on a deserted pebbly beach, then again to watch the guanacos.

Porvenir has the charm of these Chilean seaside villages - brightly painted buildings made from corrugated iron, built low as if hunkered down against the wind. Trimmed lawns and hedges give a homely feel, while the rusted motor vehicles and the pace of these towns recall decades past. At Porvenir, a concrete wall seems to mumble the somwehat murky statement that 'To govern is to educate'. The Chilean flag in front of the sign though not yet faded by sun or salt is stretched and frayed by the wind.

The people around here look weahterbeaten and tough but are kind, helpful and gently spoken. Pulling up at the ferry terminal, we park in the lee of a truck and bolt for the cafe. There's plenty on offer, and we tuck into a hearty seafood casserole with loads of bread to mop up the ample juice, and a beer each - the waiter is up for a conversation, and seems unconcerned that the scheduled sailing time for the fery is fast approcaching. This attitude is shared by the ticket office, and the long queue trickles unhurriedly while departure time slips past.

The vessel, ''Melinka'' is brightly painted in red, green and white, though the ochre if rust also features in the colour scheme.

It's a bit of a free-for-all loading - they supply the ropes, you do the tying - and to cross the Straits of Magellan in this gale, I'm not messing around. As the little ship heaves against a solid swell and shrieking wind, we find the lower passenger deck slightly more comfortable. We sling to the horizon with our eyes to stave off the worst of the seasickness and both manage the three hour crossing with our seafood casserole intact. It's dark when we dock at Punta Arenas, and we have to ruffle ingloriously around in the town for an hour or so to find a hostel.

Getting to the end of the world - part two

... cont. We're still at the House of Ceasar in Comodoro Rivadavia.

While we were at his place, Cesar also showed me an impressive collection of arrowheads belonging to the decimated indigenous population, along with fossils and whalebones collected from this rich coastline. He also promised to catch and clean a sealion of oil (a promise on which he duly delivered though we had to wonder how much benefit this offered the animal). When we returned to la Franja after our second day as volunteers, a scene of impassioned bizarreness awaited us - Cesar on his knees, digging with his hands while directing the rest of his posse as to how the pool for the sealion was to be constructed from the available sand and plastic. Listening, I also learned rather more heavy words of the Spanish language than I can imagine ever needing to use.

Later in the evening, the boss also offered his views on Che Guevara, complaining that Guevara though Argentine fought for freedom for other Latin Americans and was killed in Bolivia. He also gave a monologue on the Malvinas (Falklands) war, opining that this was the government's method of ridding itself of leftist rebels after the world started watching what was going on during Argentina's dirty war (to which I have referred elsewhere in this blog). There might be something in this last claim, who knows, but for me the version of Che Guevara that Cesar has seems pretty holey.

We tried to leave Comodoro Rivadavia early, hoping to take advantage of the northerly winds we'd encountered on the beach the previous day, and which could have carried us away even without the help of our huge yellow coveralls, but neither plan came off. The north wind would have made a great difference to our travels as a tailwind, but it was not to be. We didn't see Cesar in the morning, but still only managed a midday departure after talking with some of our new volunteer mates, fueling and the like.



We still banged out more than 600 km on the bike though, including a stop for a roadhouse dinner at a place called Comandante Luis Piedra Buena, an odd little town on yet another Rio Grande, or Big River. After dinner we kept going until almost dusk, at about ten thirty, then set up camp on the edge of a salt lake, just marginally protected from the wind by the road embankment. We were 50-odd metres from the road, and it seemed all drivers honked and waved as they passed.


Windy at night, windy in the morning. After such an early night and an earlier start than ever before, we headed out with the end of this seemingly limitless stretch of Patagonia in sight. During the day we crossed into Chile for the first time, then shortly afterwards got onto our first longer stretches of dirt road, or ripio as it's called hereabouts.


The border crossing was quite uneventful, but took about two hours in total. They confiscated our pumpkin, which would otherwise have made us a nice dhal, and this we seem to have taken as a sign to eat 'paty' and mash at the ferry terminal. Mmmm, frozen hamburger patty. Fair enough to confiscate the pumpkin though - an import like that could no doubt do untold damage to the Tierra del Fuego pumpkin crop.

Onto the famous ''Land of Fires'' by a few dozen miles, we camped up at a place called Cerro Sombrero, as uninspiring as its name (Hat Hill in English). A comfortable night in recently-installed portable changerooms on the football field - try as we might we could not avoid scaring off the kids that came down to play futbol.


On Tierra del Fuego, on to the end of the world. Back across the Chilean - Argentine border, the formalities are easy but a pool of oil beneath the bike tells us the rear shock absorber has not enjoyed the first decent ride on dirt. See how it goes without oil, then - there's not much chance of a roadside repair - and in the first twently km or so there appears to be little effect on the way the bike rides. Em buys chocolates at the border and then we eat enough of it to get sugar-grumpy. Hmmmph. Pizza at Rio Grande, then on, on down the road.

Signs and bumper stickers claiming that ''The Falklands are Argentine'' are all over the place - seem to me like preaching to the converted, and the signs emphasise the heavy military presence in the town. Skies are appropriately grey as we refuel and head out of Rio Grande for the last stint to Ushuaia. There's drizzle as there has been all day but this is a welcome change from the wind. There also seems to be more chance that the drizzle clearing than of the wind abating.

Tierra del Fuego changes vastly in the last 100km before Ushuaia. Gone are the flat, green-tinged ''pampas'', and the steep little hills of river pebbles too. These are replaced by the Cordillera Martial, jagged, dark and snowcapped, its ridges fall to forested slopes separating valleys rounded by glaciers, many of these filled by crystalline lakes. The Andes in miniature, as we are to discover later. The brooding sky showed hints of blue as the drizzle cleared. And the newish asphalt road snakes its way through these peaks, over Paso Garibaldi and southwards.



''Sinuosa'' is how the warning signs describe the road, warning against incautious antics. Here and there, patches of missing tar leave the underlying river pebbles strewn over the surface to underline the warnings. USHUAIA The sign at the Ushuaia city limit bids ''Welcome to the Southernmost City in the World''. The view over the town, the Beagle Channel and the Chilean islands beyond is a more spectacular greeting. The police stay in their little cabin, disinterested. It's tourist season, after all, and plenty of motorcyclists, drivers and motorhomers make the trek down here in the summer.

We are greeted by motorcyclists as we roll up at the Rio Pipo campground, and have a quick chat before setting up camp in the forest on the riverbank. Our first paid camping in months, and it looks great. We celebrated with a bottle of local cerveza.

Later we join Margaret, Mick, Ted, Tobias, Uschi and Arthur (just think of the King...) for a yarn by the fire - the sort of easy yarn that comes up between those who start from a point of understanding, often shared by those who choose two wheels. It's pretty easy to lose a couple of days at the end of the world, and camping at Rio Pipo helped that along. Hot showers, a well appointed kitchen, pot belly stoves and a huge parilla (BBQ) indoors. Beer and wine are cheap and good, and with good company and late sunsets it's easy to yarn until all hours, then sleep all morning.

On our way to the end of the world

We saw in new year 2008 just shortly after sunset, camped up just the two of us on the cliffs of the Peninsula Valdez. The first morning of the year we spent naked, paddling around in the rockpools, stuffing our faces with grapes to celebrate the new year, then languidly striking camp.

Later we watched sealions cavorting in their way on rocks below the cliffs, mating in a way that seemed so human as to have us averting our eyes!

Back on the road after spending most of the day just hanging around, we stopped first in Puerto Madryn for gelati then in Trelew for toasted sandwiches, thus sampling two of the major items on the typical Argentine menu as we went. The sandwiches became dinner as we realised it was eight in the evening while we ate them, then we got back on the road in what seemed the early afternoon. We covered another couple of hundred km of beautiful though featureless plains after supper, then started looking for a good place to pitch a tent in this windswept corner of the world.

A disused gravel pit served the purpose well, offering shelter from the wind and a smooth surface where once a tank or machinery would have been. With broad, cloudless skies above, we felt no need to pitch the tent and instead spent a restful night under the southern stars. After a long morning and then more than 600km on the road, we slept like the dead.



We're very impressed with this vast southern land and its friendly people. On the last day of the year we camped on the northern bank of Rio Colorado on a nice mown block with running water and Eucalypts on tap. With Patagonia starting on the other side of the river, it seemed quite apt that we should camp in a place that felt so familiar to us.


It's a long way to Tierra del Fuego, so it's good to take big bites at the distance.



We aimed for breakfast in Comodoro Rivadavia, about 150km or so, but somehow managed to get there in the early afternoon. We tried for a hot shower at a caravan park, but were naked as well as bummed out when we realised that the promised 'hot' was missing from the water. We ended up showering at the truckstop in town, and that was a pearler after the earlier disappointment and with a few days' grime.

We had read of an oilspill in the south of Argentina while we waited the final few minutes before getting the bike out of customs in Buenos Aires, and after asking around we found out it was just a few miles north of Comodoro. Volunteers were still needed to help rescuing, feeding and caring for affected birdlife, so we headed for Caleta Cordova, the site of the spill, and walked into the headquarters of the rescue operation.



They gave us protective clothing, including goggles to protect against the beaks of stressed birds, and we were into it. First we paired gloves, then up the chain a bit to feed and hydrate the birds, this latter by means of syringe and tube down their throats.




This involved quite a degree of handling the birds (which included cormorants, magellanic penguins, ducks and other species). There were a couple of dozen volunteers and the whole show was very well organised by a group called SOS Maritimo. On our second day as volunteers we also went out to the beaches to catch oil-stained penguins, coming back with two individuals after walking several kilometres on huge, wide beaches in a howling north wind.

We asked around for a place to pitch our tent and Marcelo, the boss bloke, directed us to a house where such was on offer. La Franja de Cesar - translatable as Cesar's Strip, just like Gaza, as Cesar himself pointed out. This experience is probably worth another blog entry in itself, as rather a lot happens when Cesar is around, especially on his own turf.

A bit of a nutter, a passionate and good-hearted man and a fisherman whose livelihood had just been destroyed by the oilspill (this beach is his front yard), he had some stories to tell.



He also had plenty of paper clippings to show, telling the saga of his battle with the authorities and the oil company, this brought about by his habit of documenting smaller spills and reporting them to the Prefectura, or Coast Guard. Seems he'd been jailed for several months for his insistence.

From Cesar's tale, and from the unfolding of events after this latest and largest oilspill, it seems rather clear that whomever pays the larger bribe calls the shots. We have heard quite a lot about this aspect of life in Argentina, and of course corruption knows no international boundaries. Oil companies have plenty of dough, too.

Back to the oilspill, and due to a change of wind from on- to offshore, the stain has moved from the ten-odd kilometres of coast it killed, out to sea. It now occupies an area of about 8x16 km. According to Cesar and other sources, there was a window of opportunity of about 24-hours in which barriers to prevent the spill from going out to sea in the event of a change could have been deployed. This action, though accounted for in the contingency plans of both the Prefectura and the oil company, was not implemented. Now that the spill is out in open seas, it will possibly be sunk with sand. Out of sight, out of mind.

Hola España

Before we get too far into our Patagonia adventures, I will write of our visit to our final (but by no means least-memorable) European destination - northern Spain.

Because we had stretched our visit in the rest of Europe, by the time we got there it was chilly mid-November, and we were certainly glad for our new Swiss outdoor-gear.

After a glorious ride through the winding coastal roads of Catalonia and lunch in the deserted beach town of Tossa, we made our way into Barcelona. What a charming city! Full of cobblestones, colour, interesting-looking people and Gaudi touches everywhere.

A serendipidous meeting with a friend who treated us to a home-style Italian meal above the central market and inspired us with stories of her recent travels to South America, an evening visit to the Gaudi park (where we felt very welcome)

and (after a quick tyre-pressure check - see my spunky boyfriend below), we were on our way north again.

At times riding can be cold, it can be wet, and frankly, it can be damn uncomfortable. However, it can also be absolutely thrilling, and this was definately how I'd describe our ride through the Pyrenees Mountains. The road wound around dry, high rocky mountains jutting above the bare plains.

The wind whipped around us, and we stopped for lunch and to warm our limbs in smoky tapas bars in stone villages that looked as if they'd grown out of the rock.

Our final nights camping were our chilliest yet. One morning (pictured) we woke to the task of scraping ice from INSIDE the tent! The locals later told us it has been minus 7 degrees!

So much fun to be out there doing it though. Here we had to walk to the bottom of the gorge and across thick mud plains to to filter our drinking water from the river that hadn't flowed properly since it had been dammed downstream (in one of those wise decisions made on behalf of modern industry).

The Pyrenees gave way to the fertile hills of the Basque country

and those to the surrounding villages of the port-town, Bilbao. While I played tourist

Andy spent his days negotiating the bureaucracy of shipping our bike, in his fifth language ('jaula' is the Spanish word for crate if anyone is trying the same), and doing a brilliant job of it.

After three days, the bike was crated, the papers were finalised, and Andy had created such a relationship with the (rather glamourous) agent that she was prepared to take the bike in their container dependent on customs clearance the next morning!

Phew, the bike was gone, and all that was left to do was to get ourselves to Madrid to catch our last-minute booked flight to Buenos Aires.

Ahh Madrid. Another city of colour, cobblestone streets, groovy eateries and (Swiss outdoor gear aside) the most interesting clothes shops I had seen yet (I'm not sure Andy was of the same mind).

Not to mention hospitality. Patrick and Orlando showed us their Madrid: their neighbourhood, their soon-to-be-opened resturant (http://www.ilevn.com/)

their cats (who we had an interesting effect on, Sole couldn't get enough of Andy, and Tom took to darting about when I came into the room, and peering at me from under the fishtank ... rather neurotic) and took us on what was to be our last excursion to a historical European town - Toledo.

A visit to one more outlandishly decorated Catholic church, and my thoughts on the imagary of Christianity were cemented. What a strange set of images to base a religion on - a skinny man in rags bleeding from his limbs, a woman with a constant tear on her cheek, and a bunch of fat babies with wings.

One last photo (proving that other tourists aren't as good at taking them as we are - that is the bear and the tree, the symbol of Madrid, behind us)

and before we knew it we were about to leave, and Patrick was marvelling at out apparent lack of organisation. It's easy to appear that way when travelling to another continent involves nothing more than handwashing one set of underwear, transferring photos from card to disk and packing our shoulderbags!

So after a final wave and a tear at the airport, we took each other by the hand and went to see what we could get to eat for our last 5 euros (which wasn't much, of course).

Patagonia!

Wow, here we are. This place is vast and beautiful. We are nearly at the end of the world, about to cross into Chile and onto Tierra del Fuego. Too much to tell! It's been a long haul down here, and we have had a blast. A few cut-and-pastes from emails written in the last half hour will give an idea, but we will tell more later too...

... Now far down in Patagonia and battling strong, strong winds on the bike. Crosswinds of course. Like, wind all day long blowing as hard as i have ever seen i reckon but at least it is consistent and does not gust much. Taking time out of wind in internet cafe in Rio Gallegos at the moment, about to cross into Chile for the first time...

... pretty mad, we've just ridden 3000 ks to get here ... at times in wind like you wouldn't believe. Andy is a legend at the wheel, so we are here safe. we have seen some mad wildlife - sealions, huge birds of prey, things that look like llamas everywhere, and also (strangely) birds i swear are emus. The land is endless flat plains, rather like australia.

... happy new year. we awoke to 2008 on peninsula valdéz ...

... our NY was quiet, right by ourselves, camping on the edge of the world. We rode down sanddunes (Andy really is magic with that bike) to our lone campsite - windswept coastline and azure sea - at about 11pm, just in time for sunset. Dinner for 12, amongst fireworks from the nearest campgrounds, then flopped into bed. We woke to no wind (mercifully) and explored the rockpools and coastlines of the southern atlantic.

... we hung with sealions and in the next days went volunteering to help care for penguins and other birds affected by an oil spill near windswept place called Comodoro Rivadavia.

... just when i was thinking ''there can't be too many cities with eight-syllable names,'' we came to Comandante Luis Piedra Buena...

... Pretty sad, there were about 500 birds, mostly penguins. I saw one having it's stomach pumped of oil. They had oil all over their bodies, and were too sick to eat or drink. One of our jobs was to give water to Macaes, a bit smaller than cormorants, with long necks and beaks. I held them while Andy fed a tube down their throats to feed them a syringe of water. The spill has affected about 10 km of coast, totally wiping out the beautiful littoral life - shells, crabs, rocks, seaweed, pippis, mussels etc all dead and choked with oil.

... Patagonia beautiful, in some ways reminds of central aust as no trees and quite flat. No roos but plenty of guanacos, also red and look a bit similar from a distance. More road sense, to judge from lack of road kill ...

... We have mainly been camping again, and it's great to be back in the tent after so long in Buenos Aires. just the feeling of freedom this gives is brilliant. also stayed with some people while we did the volunteer thing - another eye-opener as regards ways of life ...

... we are now on our way to Ushuaia, at the bottom of the continent. So close to Antarctica I'm going to sneeze and see if it lands there!

E&A