Border: North of Rio Grande to beyond San Sebastian.

February 7, 2016

Breakfast is cornflakes and milk which will keep me right, I should think for most of the day. Then break camp and ride out the sandy track, getting on the road for half eight. The morning clear blue sky and calm but, with storm cloud on the horizon. Joining the road just on a sharp left swing that goes diagonally up the hill running out to the shore that provided wind shelter for my tent, climbing for a few kilometres. On cresting the hill, the Rio Chico, the river I was aiming for to camp by the evening before come into view, a channel snaking its way out of the pampa ahead and disappearing behind the hill where it continues to the sea.

Dropping down the road swings right, back toward the coast and crossing the bridge over the river, I look down upon a level grassy riverbank between the water's edge and a perpendicular embankment. There's a track down from the bridge approach providing good assess, so a perfect campsite. This morning there's a four-by-four down there belonging to two men fishing further along the bank.

Beyond the bridge the road swing sharp left by the front of Estancia Violeta, which looks more like a factory than a sheep farm, such a range of large sheds with security fence and guard dogs by the entrance. The couple from Oregon I met in San Sebastian that day on the way south stayed here, at the cladded farmhouse. The elderly owner too glad to meet people and put them up a night, they said.

Onward the steppe is featureless and grim as those clouds increasingly move in from the west creating sunless dull hazy sky over sheep pasture, oil derricks, those big arms that slowly go up and down; also, a natural gas installation. Riding north there's a long steady incline not noticed on the ride south, just as a cold breeze begins blowing from the west, which shortly become a quite inhibiting crosswind.

I reach San Sebastian with petrol station, hospedaje (guesthouse) and border complex. Here route 3 continues north as unpaved ripio, where it can be seen hugging the beach into the distance to eventually, according to the map, come to a deadend because Argentina's part of Terra del Fuego that narrows to a point at the Straits of Magellan, is locked in by the South Atlantic on the right and the Chilean border on the left. So the only way on is through the Chilean part of the island, the road beyond the border complex.

Hey! I see you've got a haircut. "Don't laugh. That barber has only ever sheared sheep."

I sit down to lunch on the sheltered lea of the hospedaje on the last of my cheese on crackers, as I won't be allowed to take it into Chile. And eat my last apple. Then go ahead and get my exit stamp. Just beyond the paved road comes to an abrupt end and I've 15km of loose dusty road into a headwind, the road having swung left, not made better by all these holiday drivers speeding by leaving me in a cloud of dust in their wake.

The sign a sensible cyclist dreads. They usually give fair notice, though, like, "200m Fin de Pavimento" Here, none; it starts rightaway.

The border is a straight stock fence across open plain. The passport stamp goes quickly and outside there's a kiosk where I buy a hamburger to stave off hunger, where there's a racially mixed couple: he European and she Asian and two children: a boy about five and girl seven, a wonderful mix of features. The woman speaks first after looking at my bike, asks me, "is that your bike?" Then the man speaks with an English ascent "we are cyclists too." When I tell them I'm from Ireland, the little girl eating a hotdog with ketchup on her cheeks, speaks up, saying something with mouth full I fail to hear, sounding Sing-something. The woman says "she's telling you we're from Singaphor."

On from the border complex, the Chilean San Sebastian is a shattered village. I stop at a hospedaje, a few hundred metres further where I buy a carton of wine and fill up on four and a half litres of water. Then leaving the village, turn right off the main route upon route Y79, toward Cullan, supposedly a quieter alternative and from the outset, a lot more rideable surface than the terribly corrugated and potholed main route. Its ten minutes until a vehicle passes, an Argentine truck which lumbers by slowly without much dust. Then twenty minutes until the next, another truck. Then, however, the peace is spoiled, an Argentine car come along every few minutes, approaching at speed with a trail of dust in their wake, like they think they're in the Paris Dakar. Some slow and pass with the consideration you'd expect is only polite, but most don't, ripping by, shooting up stones and leaving me in a cloud of dust.

The cloud and rain is closing in ahead and there doesn't seem a lot of place to shelter from the crosswind, all is featureless open steppe, fenced in sheep pasture interspersed with erie dry lagoons. No stream or arroya relief providing sheltered embankments. Though, eventually, I come to an extensive area of waist-high bushes, both beyond the fence and out in the wide road margins, the road about a metre above which together with bushes provide good shelter. I cycle on until I come to a single-track down into the bushes to a clearing along the fence, far enough out of the dust of passing cars and pitch the tent.

The traffic all about stops at eight anyway, just as I'm having a dry polenta supper. No butter or cheese to provide flavour. Then about ten, just as I'm relaxing over a cup of wine, six cars come within a minute of each other, rattling by. What the hell are they travelling this time of evening for.

Today's ride: 107 km (66 miles)
Total: 5,021 km (3,118 miles)

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