Saturday, January 19, 2013

What Ushuaia?

We left early from Puerto San Julian headed south to the first border. We had some fuel so we made the mistake of not stopping about 120 km out of town and had to reduce our speed considerably the last 130 km since there were no fuel stations until we reached Rio Gallogas. Once we got fuel we continued on to the border and spent two hours making that crossing.


We then went on to the ferry and crossed the Magellan strait into Tierra del Fuego . We continued for about 40 km until we reached the gravel section which we rode for 107 km until we reached the Chilean side of the border completed our crossing and then another 14 km of gravel until we reached the Argentinean side then we hit the tarmac.


Initially we were headed toward Rio Grande and then continue tomorrow Ushuaia but since we were already having a long day and the road was good we decided to continue on to Ushuaia and spending two nights there.


We ran into the fuel issue again until we reached a station 100 km away form Ushuaia and had dinner there also. We reached Ushuaia around 1:00 am and spent about an hour until we found a hotel with the air of a guy from Rio Grande with the condition that it be only one night since the hotel was booked.


In the morning we got up as late as possible had breakfast, reserved another hotel online, checked out of the current hotel and went looking for possible shipping for our bikes at the tourist information center.


We managed to find the Ushuaia end of the world sign and Ali talked to the biggest shipping company who stated no shipping to Kuwait. We also cam across a tour guide who mentioned that we should go to the end of Routa 3 which ends in a national park and with a sign that mentions the distance to Alaska.


So we checked into the new hotel and on the way met three bikes two of which where on Goldwings from Brazil, We asked how they managed to cross the gravel road, and they mentioned that it was normal riding although they do get banged up from underneath. Tomorrow we go to Punta Arenas in Chile with the hopes of finding shipping there since we didn't want to ride Routa 3 all the way to Buenos Aires.