I wish for pleasant sunny days; not too warm, nor too cold. In Ushuaia this morning, the sun shone in a clear sky and I had hoped that it would be like this all day; but hoping isn't mush good as the usual clouds soon moved in and whatever hope there was of a good day is gone: replaced by a strong likelihood of rain.

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"You cycle to Punta Arenas?" asks the Puerto Rican guy that looks Korean in the tent next to mine. "It's vare far. Takes long time in bus. How long take it to cycle?" I told him I expected to cycle it in four or five days. "Wow! Four, five days, wow so fast" He returned taken aback.

I didn't wait to talk with him much longer as time was advancing and breaking camp after many days in the same place takes so much longer than when camped for just a single night. I said goodbye to Pradro and Guillaume. It's barely two weeks since I first met them at Club Nautical in Rio Grande; but it seems allot longer and it was good to have other cyclists to talk with that understand cycling things, instead of the usual non-cycling person that I meet to whom cycling long distances is somewhat beyond their comprehension. And answering the usually questions like "how many flats?" or another one that gets a little nauseating "how many kilometres a day?" as if I cycle 100km per day no matter what the terrain or wind and stop on the spot once 100km have been fulfilled. It all becomes boring after a while.

The way out off town is via a busy narrow avenue traversing across the hillside above the city-centre. The surface is rough bumpy concrete which killed any momentum the bike had; coupled by parked cars on the inside and impatient cars speeding closely pass on the outside. Eventually and thankfully, this narrow avenue leads on to a wider road where the cars can give me more space on passing, but where had all the cars gone?; as the road was now empty. It soon transpired why; as ahead there are roadworks where work is being done to a bridge: not sure what, but I was adamant that I wasn't going to descend down to the waterfront only to climb back up to the road on the other side of the bridge. I ride forward and dismount pausing a moment where I see the bridge is structurally intact. One of the workmen sees me and waves me on, so I cross past men that seemed to be doing nothing other than painting the bridge's guard-rails.

The morning sunshine was now a memory, replaced by thick grew cloud that enclosed around the mountain tops of the valley leading away from Ushuaia. I can well imagine on a clear day those same mountains looking impressive, but today it is cold and they look bleak brown and grey walls of rock in the dull light of a day that said it would soon rain. I could also see blue ice hang in the cleft between two rock-faces and enough of the white hill of a glacier above is revealed beneath the grey sky: a reminder that the climate here can get allot harsher. And indeed today as I cycle North it is late in the season and I still have the whole of Patagonia to cross. I cannot help feeling that there's a possibility of cold wintry weather on the cards ahead before I get far enough North.

I past the turn-off for Estancia Harberton which I had wished to detour to, but I decide not to, as I really cannot be losing many days now on side trips. Immediately after the turn-off is the beginning of the climb up to the Garibaldi Pass: the first part of which I had thought on the day I rode down it the other way, the day I arrived in Ushuaia, looked steep and thereby hard, but it was more gradual than it looked on that day descending it and so I rode up it easily. The remainder of the climb though from this side wasn't so easy as there are many false flats which swoop down only to rise up steeply again; coupled to a cold wind which blew down from the pass between the mountains and further hindered progress. I didn't sweat the whole way up and on reaching the summit where there is a viewing platform, where cars stop, there occupants getting out to marvel upon the view of the lake filled valley below and mountains beyond and take photos; it was as much as I could do to quickly pull on my warm Dunn-jacket before starting the descent.

The rain remain off the whole of the afternoon as I cycled North on the now familiar road that I'd cycled South on just over a week earlier. It was raining though, quite heavily by the look of it off to the side on the mountain tops or ahead, but I gladly escaped all with the exception of a little shower before reaching Tolhuin; the end of my first day cycling North.