Leg 1 - Buenos Aires to Ushuaia

Route summary: Azul, Carmen de Patagones / Condor, Las Grutas, Peninsula Valdes, Gaimon, Rada Tilly, Puerto San Julian, Rio Gallegos, San Sebastian,Ushuaia
Days: 22
Zero mileage days: 6
Distance (point to point): 2,348km
Distance (driven): 4,418km
Inefficiency factor (Driven/P2P): 1.88Avg. speed: 201km/day

Click here for detail.

tl;dr

The first leg was as far as I'd planned a route, if "head south until you get to Ushuaia" can be called a plan or a route. On asking about roads in Buenos Aires I was warned off Route 3 (for the early section at least) as traffic is bad and there's a lot of lorries / camiones and told that the further south you go the windier it gets, until you may be physically unable to stay on the motorbike...

With this in mind, and the nagging doubt that maybe I wasn't prepared for this, I headed off at lunchtime on the Saturday of Carnaval, as partygoers started to rouse themselves for another day of bacchanalia.

The bike fully loaded on the first day

Apart from going slightly the wrong way, the first day is fairly straightforward and I arrive in the town of Azul around late afternoon. The only thing of note on the route was a diversion around an accident. However, instead of a contraflow the diversion "boxed around" the accident using dirt tracks, during which I was sandwiched between a truck in front, throwing up a huge, impenetrable dust cloud, and a car behind. Given it was the first time on the bike with weight off-road, it was an informative experience [1], and I was only disappointed none of it was on film! In Azul some very friendly people showed me where the campsite was. Got there, set up my tent, had a shower and made supper (I didn't have a gas canister for the stove so siphoned some fuel out of the petrol tank, which although messy, was a useful test of the fuel pump) and started to think that maybe I could do this after all.

Camping

At the campsite there were a number of interesting characters - another motorcyclist (I think in the Argentinian Army) enjoying the long weekend with his wife, a group of Citroen 2CV enthusiasts having an enjoyable night and some guys who were trying to find out if I was a Boca Juniors or Rio Plata fan (I'm still working out how to diplomatically say I don't like football but like rugby in spanish).

Day 2 was a straightforward run south, bypassing Bahia Blanca and trying as far as possible to stay on smaller roads before joining the 3 is unavoidable. Just south of Bahia Blanca cross the Colorado river and enter Patagonia (see right). A quick, early evening visit to Carmen de Patagones, a pretty, old town on the north side of the river, with Viedma [2] on the opposite banks, a larger, more commercial town. A very friendly security guard watched my bike while I had a look around town then went to a very dusty campsite about 20km out of town in a resort area. Not what I had planned but it's too late and too dark to argue about it now.

Day 3 was a learning day [more here], involving the bike being on its side for the first (and second) time, me using two tools I wouldn't have brought with me if it wasn't for the advice I got from Fabrice before I left, but also my first intentional piece of riding on unsealed roads, which was great fun and left me in the Argentinian seaside resort of Las Grutas where I decided I'd stay for two nights in a proper bed to recover and enjoy the last nights of Carnaval surrounded by Argentinian families on holiday.

From Las Grutas on to Puerto Madryn and Peninsula Valdez, which looks deceptively small on a map, but the isthmus is about 80km and the round trip I did the following day (to see Sea Lions, Elephant Seals and Magellan Penguins) was about 180km. On the island I met a number of lovely people, a British couple who'd hired a 4x4 and were blasting their way across Patagonia, another British couple, one of whom had been travelling on his motorbike since 2008 (he had only planned on being away for a year but since leaving the UK has travelling across Europe, Asia and the Americas and was two weeks off finishing and heading home when I met him), and an Argentinian lady who was very keen to make sure that I knew that we were friends [3].

In comparison I'm barely riding to the shops

Then from Peninsula Valdez down to Trelew and Gaiman, which were settled by the Welsh and there are still a significant number of Welsh speakers. I had a great Welsh tea - I didn't know such a thing existed - but it was the best cup - well pot - of tea I've had in Latin America, with a large plateful of different cakes and breads and jams (which I obviously finished).

Welsh Tea - Like a Devon one but without clotted cream

Gaiman and my decision to take a shortcut probably added time as the shorter route was flooded and while taking a track to box round the water feature, dropped the bike. Hot and sweaty and back on the trail, head to Punta Tombo and the largest settlement of Magellan Penguins in the world (more about penguins here).

Magellan or Patagonian penguin

Then, thinking that I can stay on the more "interesting" unpaved roads, head south to Camarones. It's about 5:30 and I'm flowing from turn to turn on gravel and packed mud. The sun is starting to go down and soften the colours of the red/brown landscape. I'm skirting the coast , with the Atlantic on my left and some slight hills and I honestly wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Somewhere I have some helmet cam footage which might give you some indication as to what it was like.

An hour later the bike's on the side of the road, in a number of pieces, having spilled about a litre of oil onto the trail from a cracked crank case and I'm wondering whether the whole adventure has come to an end less than a week before I set off from Buenos Aires [more here].

Camp, try and sleep and get up the next morning and set about getting the bike running again. Eventually get it going around 1 or 2pm (again, thanks to Fabrice) and ride (carefully) to Camarones, about 60km away, refuel (the bike and me) and then head on to Rada Tilly where I eventually find somewhere to sleep, some food and send the "I've dropped my bike" email back home...




Rada Tilly to Puerto San Julian is a cautious but straightforward run down the 3 and a night in a town where signs of the Malvinas are becoming more apparent (100m from the hotel I'm staying in - I'm spending the night in comfort as I'm feeling sorry for myself - is a fighter jet from the conflict on a plinth).

The next day on to Rio Gallegos via Santa Cruz (another smallish, windswept port). As I'm pulling into Rio Gallegos I start to get trouble with the gearbox (or caja de cambio as I now know it's called in spanish), it's sometimes sticking in some gears and can take a couple of attempts to shift up or down which I mention when I take it into a garage to be looked at the next day. The end result is that I'm in Rio Gallegos for four nights while my bike's fixed and I'm given the two teeth from one of the cogs in the gearbox that had sheared off. I don't think I could have left it any later, but am still a little proud that my roadside repairs managed to get it another 1,200km. The upside is a relatively relaxed couple of days in the windy, and although not amazing, far from charmless, city of Rio Gallegos.

This is what the wind does to clouds in Rio Gallegos

From Rio Gallegos and I get my first real experience of the Patagonian wind on the way to the border crossing into Chile and beyond that the Magellan Straits. A 4-5 hour wait for the ferry to start running (it's too windy) enjoyably spent with some LAMAs [4] on their way to a motorcycle meet in Rio Grande. Eventually get on the third ferry, have an amazing trip across the Magellan Straits onto Tierra del Fuego and have a good evening run to Cerro Sombrero where the garage is closed, but chance the extra 100km to San Sebastian and push on. Have an interesting [1] ride in the dark on unpaved roads to the border, another closed petrol station and a hotel with no rooms, so end up camping outside the petrol station, and get my first experience of how cold it can get at night.

Mountains! (After 2,500km of flat pampas it's pretty special)

Over the Garibaldi pass

The next day a fairly straightforward ride to Rio Grande, and then one of the most spectacular rides I'll ever experience to the mountains, over the Garibaldi pass and down into Ushuaia, sat on the northern bank of the Beagle Channel and surrounded by snowcapped mountains. I'd arrived at the end of the world.

Notes:
1. Euphemism for crapping myself.
2. In "Idle Days in Patagonia" by WH Hudson (I read some of it onboard a boat later in the trip) there's an interesting story of the Brazilians trying to take Carmen de Patagones in the mid Nineteenth century, where the outnumbered locals managed to successfully defend the city through various deceptions that led the Brazilians to think that the odds were against them.
3. Afterwards it occurred to me that this was a response / reaction to the Malvinas / Falklands situation. I can honestly say that, as of writing this, I have received nothing but kindness and friendliness from all the Argentinians I've met, and I hope that they would have the same experience in the UK.
4. Latin American Motorcycle Association members.