February 5, 2016
On The Road North: Ushuaia to north of Tolhuin.
Another clear mild day without a puff of wind. I've been sleeping well during my sojourn here, getting to bed well before midnight most nights and not waking the following morning until after seven. But last night, I was working late on the journal, not coming out to the tent until one. Then I'm kept awake by the petrol-heads racing in their noisy cars round the streets. Frank, the seventy-four year-old cyclist from Colorado, told me earlier this goes on every night keeping him awake. Having usually been asleep at this time, I'd always slept sound, not having heard the cars; but now laying down wanting to sleep, I'm forced to listen to other's lack of consideration.
Frank will get a bus to Punta Arenas on Saturday. He still has time and is looking to fill it with more cycling. Before saying goodbye, he was looking at the map and planning to ride route 3 north. He has driven it on a previous trip and speaks fondly on the small towns he stopped in on 3. There is also an Israeli hitchhiker here who travelled the road; brings back memories when I rode it a few years ago. He said he asked to camp in a man's garden in Puerto Deseado. The man invited him in to stay, where he and friends where watching football: their team River Plate, if I recall. The Israeli was asked, and what Argentine team do you like. He replies hesitantly "Aah, River!" And all were happy he'd made the right choice and gave him another beer. I comment "If you said another team, you'd perhaps not come out alive" as Argentine football fans are homicidal toward opposing fans.
Well, the first day back on the road north is a slow start. Up at eight and spend an hour over the all-you-can-eat hostel breakfast; cornflakes, homemade bread and brewed coffee. Then to the La Anomina supermercado, to buy three day's food for the road. Eventually I'm ready. I pay the bill. 600 pesos for six nights. Cheap, seeing that most hostels in town charge 300 a night for a bed in a dorm.
So it is half ten when I set out. And it isn't easy finding the way out of town. I just cycle in the general direction in a street above the bay. Then discover the main route 3, is up on the hillside above and have a ridiculously steep street to climb to reach it. Then, leaving town there's a permanent police check-point. I'm pulled over and have to produce my passport. They fill in the details and ask stupid questions, like where I'm travelling, where in Ushuaia I stayed and even my age. There was a foreign hitchhiker couple subjected to the same threatment just before me, while all Argentine travellers were being waved on. Argentina has great protential for foreign visitors, but they seem to do everything to discourage them, like these police checks. And, charging foreigners more into national parks.
On the road ahead dark clouds descend upon the mountaintops along the narrow valley, with a fair bit of climbing. Shortly the rain which was looking imminent, doesn't come. And the sky lightens up with sunshine. And there isn't any wind, maybe a light southwesterly giving me a bit of a lift up the long climb to the Garibaldi Pass.
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I descend the other side and stop to lunch on bananas and biscuits at a viewpoint, the assess to the old road which assesses the lake below I camped by on the road south. Then read my book, but soon feel drowsy after lack of sleep last night. I sleep. Then on waking it's hard making the effort to go further.
However, riding again I'm feeling well rested and nourished from a week off in Ushuaia. The only problem is the traffic. The trucks running containers up from Ushuaia to Rio Grande, which although on the coast, hasn't a deep water port. It isn't so much the trucks in themselves, it's the amount of Summer holiday cars which box them in so they cannot move out to give me space when passing because there's near enough always a queue of oncoming cars. They can either slow and wait, or pass me precariously close. And I hear them bearing down on me from behind often at a critical moment when the road drops into a blind dip.
I reach Tolhein at seven. There is no other cyclist at La Union bakery today. The place is busy with those Summer car drivers, though. I have my much looked forward to empanadas and factoras (custard and jam pastries) and make tea with the free hot water provided, before leaving. I could stay at the free cyclist hostel at the rear, but, thought it a shame to stay indoors when there's so much good camping possibilities on the road ahead. I cycle on a fair bit with lots of places between the road and fence that would do at a pinch, but I'm fussy and so like to find the best possible place to pitch the tent. Eventually coming to a short drive in off the road to a grassy clearing in trees where people have camped previously. Perhaps the best I could've wished for.
Today's ride: 110 km (68 miles)
Total: 4,800 km (2,981 miles)
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