The End of the World
The city at the End of the World
Southward, ever southward the road beckons. From Torres Del Paine we leave the mountains again and return to the endless treeless steppe. Sheep, guanacos and the occasional rhea are our only companions. The road is wide and smooth, the weather clear and chilly as we thunder south to the Magellan Strait where we catch the ferry to Tierra Del Fuego and an overnight stop just before the border at Cerro Sombrero, a gritty industrial town on the edge of nowhere. The oil industry is big here, infact it is possibly the only game in town and oil infrastructure dots the landscape all around us.
We cross another border the next morning into Argentina and the process is becoming routine and seamless. This is our third crossing so far but now the atmosphere in the group is becoming a little more excited. We are approaching the “End of the World”. More snow capped mountains line the horizon where the Andes finally tumble into the ocean and we wind our way past yet another stunning lake to a beautiful lookout.
Another Lake Another Lookout
Ushuaia (Oosh-wire) is the southern most city in the world and at nearly 55 degrees is over 10 degrees and a couple of thousand kilometres further south than Hobart. A short distance away in the Parque Nacionale is the end of Ruta 3, the southern most point it is possible to ride anywhere on earth. (it is technically possible to ride at Puerto Williams, about five km south across the Beagle Chanel in Chile but that requires chartering a boat and doing yet another border crossing where there is no customs office so that process is all but impossible)
Puerto Williams
Getting to the end of the road throws up a new bureaucratic challenge when the park officials decide they won’t allow foreign registered bikes into the park today. Eventually JC negotiates a compromise and four bikes are allowed to enter every 2 hours so the hoped for group photo is a no go! Four bikes take their turn while the rest of the Compass Expeditions crew wait their turn. Argentinian bureaucracy really is the pits.
Later in town we discover some more Argentinian novel bureaucracy when we learn that much of the nations industry has been nationalized in a style reminiscent of the USSR so Ushuaia is a manufacturing hub for white goods and electronics despite being thousands of km from any population centre, raw materials or other resources. In a capitalist world it makes no sense.
We also discover a vibrant tourist city where even the Triumph Dealer is a cafe serving excellent food and playing 60’s and 70’s classics from the likes of Hendrix, The Doors, Led Zepplin, Creedence and all our favourites.
We also take a cruise on the Beagle Chanel, named after the vessel on which Charles Darwin sailed through here on his way to the Galapagos Islands and his epiphany about evolution.
Sea Lions
Lighthouse at the end of the world, not to be confused with the Jules Verne book which was written way before this was built
We have no such epiphany but we do marvel at the wonderous range of aquatic life we find like penguins, seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins and countless birds.
Cute!
Soon it is time to retire for the evening and prepare for the northward journey starting tomorrow. The weather outside looks awful. Let’s hope it improves by morning.
