December 26, 2007

Goodbye Ushuaia

We awoke to a cloudy day with rain clouds over the mountains towards which we will be heading. Oh well, we can’t really complain about the weather we’ve had so far on our trip.


By the time we left town it had started to drizzle. When we reached the pass it was only 4 degrees with fresh snow on the mountain tops. Luckily this time there was no snow on the road. It continued raining lightly all day.

In Tolhuin, about 100 kms from Ushuaia, we stopped to warm up. While we were in the café, 2 bikes pulled up with a dad and mom on 1 bike and their teenage son and daughter on the other. They were not wearing proper raingear, and were drenched and chilled to the bone.

The family was going to Buenos Aires for vacation and planned to ride to Rio Gallegos today. That is about 500 kms from Ushuaia, with 2 border crossings and a ferry, and the only town worth an overnight stop in between is Rio Grande. Although Rio Gallegos was our original plan too, we realized we wouldn’t make it that far due to the cold, wet conditions.

We wished them a safe trip and carried on our way to Rio Grande, about another 120 kms, suspecting we might see the family there later as well. As it turned out we didn’t see them until the next morning when we ran into them at the first border crossing. They had called it quits in Rio Grande – a wise move.



They make strange pizzas in South America. This evening we had one with anchovies and pimentos on it. We’ve had others with eggs and pickles, but none are thick and cheesy like the ones at home.