The Americas 2013

Today we left Ushuaia. Our original ride was supposed to be up to Porvenir in Chile where we would catch a ferry to Punta Arenas and then dependant on how we were feeling, would perhaps continue up to Puerto Natales, all in a 730km day. When discussing this route with the old bullet, he complained that with a border crossing, a ferry crossing and 150km of dirt, that it would make the day too long…remember these words as I will come back to this later!!

So anyway, we depart at 8am and it was Frigging cold! The first 150km to Tolhuin through the Garibaldi pass was amazing again and then the rest of the ride to the Argentine/Chile border post at San Sebastian was uneventful. We have now done the Argentine/Chile (or other way round) crossing 3 times in the last 5 days and will have to do it several times more on our route up to Santiago and beyond. The crossing can take anything from 10 minutes to an hour dependant on the queues and today’s crossing was an hour although the system is efficient.

And so we are back in Chile!!

The 150km of dirt ranged from beautiful, hard pack to very soft sand to hectic roadwork’s and it took us about an hour, forty to get to Porvenir. Upon arrival, we realised that we had missed the ferry to Punta Arenas because I had mistakenly assumed that it was a ferry that ran back and forth like the one at Bahia Azul! It wasn’t! Its a once a day Ferry that now meant that the ride to Porvenir was a waste. We debated the various options of staying in Porvenir for the night and catching the next days Ferry at 2pm or leaving Porvenir in the morning and heading up to Bahia Azul and going the long way around to Torres Del Paine or leaving Porvenir right then and making our way up to Puerto Natales making it a 900km day. Ironically, the same old bullet that was whinging earlier about the day being “too long” was now the advocate of the 900km day! Go figure!!

Our 900km day…

And so we headed off along the north part of the peninsula to the 24h Bahia Azul ferry and then down and around to Puerto Natales where we arrived at 10pm after a 13 hour day of borders, dirt, ferries and long roads.

Barren Patagonian cemetery..

Our Ferry at Bahia Azul taken at about 6:30pm.

Puerto Natales is however beautiful and the ride into this place is magnificent. We are spending the night at a beautiful hotel called Hotel Australis Patagonia which is right on the waterfront and where we had a great dinner followed by a huge beer to cap the day!

Puerto Natales view over the water (this is actually ocean and not a lake) from our hotel.

And a great way to cap a long day…BMW Riders!! They’re all the same!

Tomorrow we have a short hop into the Torres del Paine National park where we are spending two nights.