Broke camp today and get away reasonably early, 11am, as we have a lot of ground to cover. As we go we now leave an empty campsite, the family from Buenos Aires leaving just before us.
Driving out of the town civilisation ends abruptly and we out in the countryside once again with that howling side wind. This wind would be with us most of the day blowing firstly from the side end then straight towards us as a head wind and then again from the side. It is quite strange going round a left hand bend whilst still leaning to the right. With the head wind our fuel consumption goes up and we are getting about ¾ of our normal range. At one point I realised that I was using nearly all of the throttle just to punch this hole for me and the bike.
We pass 1 car in the 70 miles to the main road, about 6 trucks to the next major city, Comodoro Rivadavia, and then hit traffic like you see at Hyde Park Corner in rush hour, it is manic. Gas up and eat part 1 of our packed lunch, sausage in a French style stick, and after a slow trawl through the city and out the other side and a similar situation to that of before we hit the city, of a couple of cars and a few trucks.
After we leave the city we go through a police checkpoint and have to show our papers and they record our passport number, etc. As we are about to leave a Hoda is pulled over and we introduce ourselves, they are a couple on one bike from Brazil and guess what, they are headed for Ushuia.
We encounter various road surfaces, some with the lumps sticking up that we saw before, a patchwork quilt style with no markings at all and a new stretch that is fantastic, still got wind though. We have to slow for various animals in the road, a Guanaco, which is of the Llama family, Rea’s, which are like small Ostriches. A few Guanaco’s have not made it and I assume a lorry or 2 have hit them, anything smaller would have severe damage.
Another gas stop, we do not take any chances now, and part 2 of lunch a boiled egg each that Martin cooked whilst cooking the pasta last night and a coffee. We meet 2 more Brazilian riders, one on a GSA and the other on a Yamaha, also heading for Ushuia, sounds like it will be busy down there. This place is called tres Cerranos or three hills which are over to the left of the road as was pointed out by one of the Brazilian guys.
The Brazilian couple pull in and decide to stay in the hotel at these services as he is shattered.
The final 100 miles and we get to San Julian and start looking for a campsite and suddenly Frank stops and tells us where the campsite is, he arrived and hour ago. On entering the campsite we also see Fred who as he sees us says ‘ya, only one way to Ushuia’.
We set up camp and go out for a meal with Fred, we seem to have lost Frank for the evening.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment