We were in a hurry to leave San Julian.The night was noisy because it seems that the only past time in this town is to supe up your clapped out car with the loudest backfiring exhaust you can buy, pour the left over whisky into your petrol tank and see who can drag race their rust bucket to greater than 60km/h making the greatest noise possible until 3am!
Our ride today was a 525km stretch to Cerro Sombrero on the Chilean side of the border. For those that don’t know the geography of the area, to get to Ushuaia which is on Argentine territory, you have to do the border crossing into Chile including the whole customs process for the bikes, catch a ferry across the straits of Magellan, ride about 150km, and then do the border fandangle again back into Argentina because Chile owns a stretch of the Tierra Del Fuego which disconnects the southern, Argentine owned part of this land mass from the main land of Argentina.
Today was our first experience with the whole border crossing process so it took us about an hour to understand the mechanics but its pretty simple. Whereas in most countries where you are doing a road border crossing, at the exit of country A is a building where you have your passport stamped and then go to the customs counter to get your carnet stamped by customs and you’re out. Country B is the same except its an entry versus an exit. In Argentina and Chile, there is one building for both countries with 3 counters. Counter 1 is the immigration counter and it has 4 people sitting at it with the signs “Paso 1” and “Paso 2”. Paso 1 is for the Argentine exit stamp on your passport.Paso 2 is the Chilean entry stamp. Counter 2 is customs for vehicles and its the same Paso 1, 2 etc and counter 3 is customs but for anything other than vehicles. Simple but not common although tomorrows crossing back into Argentina will be much quicker now that we understand.
Crossing the Chilean border..
The entry onto the ferry to cross the Straits of Magellan as caught by Enrico’s helmet Cam.
The ride today has started to become quite cold because we are at a latitude of approximately 2500km south of Cape Town so although its the middle of summer we can definitely feel the Antarctic chill. The terrain has started to become a little less flat although no less barren as the climate here is HARSH!
We are spending the night at quite a nice little place in a town like what I have described seems to be common coming down the east coast of Argentina. Its ALL function and business and not about aesthetic.
The once upon a time local movie hotspot in Cerro Sombrero..
Looks like an old mining town….because that’s what it is.
Tomorrow we reach the most Southerly point of our ride, Ushuaia, where we WILL be spending at least 2 nights.
