It was damp leaving Rio Grande. It sounds as though it is a rather nicer place than it actually is. Probably best to say that we stopped there because we had to. As we mentioned before Ushuaia is a one road in, same road out sort of place and from the ferry it's 450km and it's not as though there is anywhere to stay either side of the ferry. That's why we stayed in Rio Grande. It gave us 425km to do in the day including crossing the border on Tierra del Fuego from Argentina to Chile and then the ferry crossing. A relatively long day.
The dampness continued to the border. After the border the winds picked up and there was a good 170km to do until the ferry. The winds were by far the strongest that we had encountered to date. It was quite scary when HGVs passed and also difficult to overtake them.
The ferry has no strict timetable. You turn up and you either wait or drive on. Paul drove on. Francoise walked on over the vehicle access as that's what motorcycle pillions have to do, as otherwise it's probably too dangerous and she was being chivvied along as they wanted to bring the drawbridge up!
Passengers are free on the ferry and the motorbike costs £8 one way. It's the only cheap thing in Chile, but more of that in another post. When paying we asked the man about the current wind speed and he told us it was 70km/h - probably the gust rather than the constant speed.
It wasn't easy to get off the ferry because of the wind. It also wasn't easy for Francoise either to get on the bike or for us to set off because of the crosswind. Later on that day, we heard that the ferry stopped temporarily as the wind speed had gone above 80km/h. We were riding at the time. It wasn't that it was scary. It was downright frightening. This was certainly more than we had bargained for. If there had been anywhere to stop en route to Punta Arenas, we would have stopped and just binned that night's hostel accommodation. But there wasn't anywhere so we had to continue. It was a long ride.
What we found most difficult was when we got to Punta Arenas and had to travel at slow speeds and stop at traffic lights and then move off again. Before checking in at the hostel, we went to a motorbike shop - that served coffee and cake, La Guarida, run by Salvador and his family. Salvador was so helpful in many ways and was also able to provide us with an extra fuel bladder as the one Paul brought with us is probably not going to be enough. And also some little non colour coordinated bags to put at the front of the bike and help redistribute the weight a bit.
When we checked in at the hostel they told us that the wind had been gusting up to 100km/h that afternoon. Who knows whether it was true or not. BBC weather said 56mph which is not far off. We don't want to be doing this again, so will be watching the wind forecast from now on but it is not really detailed enough to cover the small places on our route.
The following day, Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales was calmer but without the previous day's experience we would have classified it as 'very windy'.
Not many photos for obvious reasons.
