Stage two on the way to Ushuaia

Date: 01/05
City: Rio Grande, Argentina
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 42342
Street: N/A
Weather: sunny, warm/freezing

After breakfast, Sigrid hopped into a taxi and I finished packing and left as well.

I would have liked to leave earlier, but multiple people warned me about ice on the road, and advised that I should not starting riding before the sun was out. Well, 9:15 seemed to be the right time to me. Just after leaving Rio Gallegos I passed a lake with plenty of flamingos in it. I couldn’t believe it, I thought flamingos like the warmth, maybe these one got trapped when the lake froze ;).
Well the lake didn’t freeze over, even if the ambient temperature suggested that it should.

I continued to the border with my heated liner cranked up. After doing all the paperwork, I got to the agriculture check point (people looking for fruit and other stuff) and it was here that I got caught with my Salami. Salami is not cooked so I can’t bring it into Chile. Back to the paperwork, so I had to tick yes to one question and hand the paperwork over so the officer had paper to put my salami onto :P.
During that time Sigrids bus arrived, they had a slight delay and started a bit later. Sigrid took a picture of my bike from the bus.

The bus got searched by a friendly sniffer dog; Sigrid took some pictures of him. She didn’t have any problems (well I had the SalamiJ)

So after the thing with the salami was solved I couldn’t get my heated gloves on again. They are water tight, and if you pull the hand out too quickly, the inner liner becomes undone and it is a nightmare to get the fingers back in place. I tried for more than 15 minutes to get the gloves on, with no success. I could have sworn that the inner liner had lost one finger… Anyway, after all that frustration I decided to get my not heated gloves out and continue with them instead. At this time of the day it was a bit warmer, so my hands were not too cold when I arrived at the ferry.

Even though it was just a shot ride I wasn’t sure if we would really reach the other side J

After the ferry ride I had finally arrived at Tierra del Fuego. I was excited!

Not long after the tarmac stopped and the gravel started. The road here is shared by trucks, bikes, pedestrians, sheep, Llamas and cows.


The dirt road got better and better and by the end it was nearly as good as tarmec – except for the potholes. I arrived at the second border much earlier than I expected.


The formalities were optimised, so that all border crossings didn’t take longer than 1.5 hours. The tarmac started just after the Argentinian border and I had only 80km to go. The sun started to get lower which allowed for a nice picture of my shadow.

I arrived at the accommodation and settled, and tried to send Sigrid an SMS. Well, that didn’t work, no message could be sent and no call could be made… strange. Around the time that Sigrid should arrive I connected to Skype, and Sigrid was online. She couldn’t SMS either AND she had lost the address of the hotel as well, so she didn’t know where to go…She was sitting in the bus terminal with a cup of tea and was using the WiFi to find the hotel. After I gave her the address, she hopped in a taxi and arrived in the hotel, just before sunset.

Tomorrow we will see how it goes with Sigrid as a pillion passenger, and if we get all our gear onto one bike.

Date: 02/05
City: Rio Grande, Argentina
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 42342
Street: N/A
Weather: sunny, cloudy/raining, stormy, freezing

In the morning I hopped onto my bike to find a Moviestar shop (our telephone service provider) in town. It was fun with my perfect Spanish to explain the problem that we had. In the end I succeeded and to cut the story short, after removing the battery and restarting the phone everything worked again ….hmmm, no comment…
But I also found that there was no petrol available in the whole town! Well, except at one petrol station and the queues there were so long that I had my doubts that there would be petrol left when it was my turn. And, to top it all off, the weather started to get foul, the horizon looked black and we got strong wind blasts. So back at the hotel we decided to stay a day longer .I guess without petrol it wasn’t really a choice 😉
This was the first time that we got trapped. Fellow motorcycle riders had said it before: in Tierra del Fuego, if you see a petrol station, fill up, but did I listen? Noooo…  So I had some time to create a plug for Sigrid’s heated vest for her to use when it gets too cold.

In the evening we had another great sunset.

So if everything works well, we leave for the final destination, Ushuaia, tomorrow.

Date: 03/05
City: Ushuaia, Argentina
Kilometres ridden: 212
Cumulative kilometre: 42554
Street: One land highway
Weather: sunny/cold

Every time I’m amazed that all that stuff fits onto the bike.

I packed the bike slowly, since we only had 200km to go. I also wanted to avoid any ice on the road. So we figured a good time to leave would be around 12:00. I managed to fit everything onto the bike, including Sigrid crutches, and eventually Sigrid as well.

The ride was great and the landscape started to change from plains to a more hilly landscape with lakes and mountains in the distance.



And finally we arrived in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, our destiny.

It took us a while before we found an accommodation; most hostels are closed for renovation. We found something nice and close to the city centre. Tomorrow we will have a look at the end of Ruta 3, which it the most southern point that you reach by road. What a great day, we were so lucky that we didn’t have any rain or strong winds today, hope we stay that lucky 😀

2 comments

  1. AWESOME!!! It’s great to hear you BOTH made it to Ushuaia. I wish you well on the next journey. You guys rock!

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