The bottom of the world

Having arrived in Ushuaia at almost 10pm the previous evening, it was very hard to get up the following morning. This part of the journey was always going to be tough, as I'd not left myself enough time to spend more than a day on Tierra Del Fuego. Getting onto the island had taken a lot longer than expected, so I wanted to make an early start.

Ushuaia itself was not actually the end of the road, although the southernmost city in the world. Ruta 3 left the city and went a little further south, almost immediately becoming a gravel road. In a kind of mirror of Alaska's Dalton Highway, the last few kilometers of the road are in Tierra Del Fuego National Park, so you have to pay a fee if you want to get to the very end. However I was happier paying a fee to the Park service rather than oil companies :) The park was nice, with snow capped peaks and many small lakes, although it was windswept, cold and rather desolate. The road got narrower with tighter bends and a few rickety looking wooden bridges that I worried might puncture a tyre.

Finally, after just over four and a half months on the road, I rounded a bend and saw two signs marking the very end of Ruta 3, and the end of my journey from Prudhoe Bay. There was a small turning circle and a car park with two empty cars. Other than that it was deserted and the only noise was the wind. My odometer read 23,307 miles, and when I left Prudhoe Bay back in August it had read 2,480. Total distance 20,827 miles. Of course there were still a few more to add :)

I'm not sure if I expected something more (although a welcoming committee or a chequered flag might have been asking a bit much) but I got off the bike and wandered around in a bit of a daze. I knew I should be feeling a sense of accomplishment, or joy, or something, but all I felt was tired. I went down to the water's edge, sadly not the South Atlantic or the Southern Ocean, but a quiet inlet of the Beagle Channel, and stood in the water reflecting on how Jim and I had done the same in the Arctic, all those long miles ago. I went and found a "lucky" pebble again. It just wasn't the same.

And here it kind of hit home that what made the trip, even though I had set out just to see all the geography in North and South America, was the people I had encountered along the way. The pebble I picked up in Alaska and the volcanic rock I was given in Costa Rica made me smile because of the memories attached to them. The pebble I had in my hand on the southern shore of Tierra Del Fuego was, sadly, just a pebble I'd picked up.

I decided to stop being a sadcase and explore a bit around the small, remote peninsula. Along the shore there were so many fragmented shells that the beach had a kind of pink tinge. Two geese of some sort eyed me warily. It was so quiet, when the wind dropped, and I spent a pleasant hour wandering and lost in my trip memories. Eventually a few spots of rain made me think about leaving, and looking at my watch I realised it was almost midday. I had two border crossings and a long stretch of gravel ahead of me... it was going to be a late finish again.

As I headed out of the park, riding north again finally, I realised that I would one day have to return. Ushuaia itself is a lovely city, surrounded by some great scenery, and I would like to see more of Tierra Del Fuego National Park. Only next time I might fly in ;) I made good time to Rio Grande, where again the wind was not as bad as expected and I stopped for a coffee to wake myself up a bit. At San Sebastian the Argentine border crossing took around half an hour, then a few kilometers across the gravel I got a real shock at the size of the queue to get into Chilean Tierra Del Fuego. It was massive. It took a full two hours to get through and although I knew I would be ok with the ferries running until 11pm, my Patagonia guidebook said that Chilean customs closed at 10pm, so the second border crossing, just south of Rio Gallegos back on mainland South America, would be very tight indeed.

I got to the ferry dock and parked in a line of cars as the ferry was out in the Magellan Straits and nowhere in sight. The resident genius in me decided that I should have a cuppa while I was waiting, so I went in the small cafe and came out two minutes later with a coffee and chocolate bar, to see all the cars gone and my bike on it's own in the middle of the road. Argh. The coffee went in the bin after two sips and I rode around the corner to see the ferry docked. I needn't have worried though, none of the cars were allowed on and all the space given to lorries, even some that turned up after me. I sat and fretted... it was 9pm and the next ferry would be 9.30. Twenty minutes to cross and then another thirty to the border, which would be shut by then.

I got the next ferry and stood watching porpoises roll through the water, whilst thinking about the border. I knew the Argentine side was twenty four hours, maybe if the Chilean side was shut but unguarded I could just plow through it? That would cause me issues getting back in but as I was leaving Chile for the last time (on this trip) I could worry about that later. Would it cause problems getting into Argentina though? It was raining, there was an incredibly strong westerly wind and it was almost dark. Camping would be next to impossible. There were no hotels in the area. In the end, as normal, it turned out I was worrying for no reason. My guidebook was wrong, and in summer months both Chile and Argentina borders were open twenty four hours. As I left Chile for the last time I tried to think about why I liked it so much. Stepay had said that Chile is just there, they keep themselves to themselves and no one knows much about the place other than Pinochet. I thought the border crossings in Tierra Del Fuego summarised things nicely - the Argentine side was showing a looped tourist video of Patagonia, whilst the Chilean side had The Simpsons ;)

I made my final entry into Argentina a little before 11pm and found an hotel in Rio Gallegos by simply riding into town, seeing a sign saying "hotel" and stopping there. Despite this method it turned out to be a halfway reasonable place to stay.

There are kilometer markers all the way up Ruta 3 to Buenos Aires. When I left Lapataia at the bottom of the world, I had 3079km to the end of the trip. Only 2650 more to go ;)

Frase.