23rd December Rio Galligos – Rio Grande 231 miles, 2 border crossings and a ferry

We wake up to peace and calm in the morning and pack up and leave at a reasonable time. We have a 70 mile trip to the border with Chile and now experience an internal border crossing.
First we have to check out of Argentina and then travel 500 metres to the Chilean border and check in there. The process goes quite smoothly having to go to migration first get us approved as individuals and then customes to export or import the bikes. The whole process takes about an hour, which is fantastic, we thought that we could be there for some considerable time.
A mention here of the fruit police, on our travel down we have been stopped and at one stage searched, this is probably an exaggeration, we opened our full panniers and he said ‘claro’, OK in English. We asked the chap at the border in Chile, SAG they have on their jackets, which is something Agriculture something, helpful and informative I know, why they were interested in whether we had food and particularily fruit on us. His answer was that Argentina have some bugs on fruit that they do not have and do not want in Chile. We explained that we had been stopped in Argentina for the same reason and he explained that they have a Northern and a Southern region and again do not want to transmit anything from one to the other. So Martin and I have now nicknamed them the fruit police.
Once in Chile the first thing you notice are the roads, now constructed out of concrete and billiard table smooth and well marked. Still vast distances between towns and any form of civilisation.
We are trucking through Chile as it is a separator between mainland Argentina and the island that is Tierra del Fuego, a bit like having to travel through Canada to get to Alaska (American soil).
It is amasing that you can travel through a country and not buy anything, we did try to buy gas but they did not seem to have any. Now it would seem that the Chileans do not want you to go to Tierra del Fuego because to get there, having travelled on fantastic roads, we now have 70 miles of ripio. Some of it is not too bad but other parts is like travelling on a washboard, also there are lots of lorrys and some are very polite and even stop as we approach, but 3 in particular steam past us in the opposite direction at about 60mph with a dust cloud out the back which is nye impossible to through, so you just point and hope as they go past, one, two, three.
About half way along this ripio route we are flagged down by a Brazilian rider who is distressed as he only has about a litre of fuel left. Now this guy is on a 250 or so and is midway between fuel stops, why has he only got a litre of fuel? Anyway we donate the fuel from both of our stoves, about 1.5 litres and he is happy and goes merrily on his way.
We get to San Sebastian, a possible stop as time is moving on, well talk about blink and you miss it. We suddenly arrive at the border, time to get back into Argentina.
Same process as before, we check out of Chile and jump on our bikes to go the 500 nor so metres to the Argentinean bit. I just stuck my helmet on my head and did not fasten it, we stop 2 miles later and belt and buckle up deciding that you didn’t need to check into this bit as ther was only one way out. Well 10 miles later we came across the Argentinean border control, thats a lot of no mans lands, but hey they have plenty.
Same process as before and reasonably simple bar internet problems which delay things about 15 minutes or so.
Now the ripio had vibrated Martins rear mudguard off snapping a bolt and he was not impressed having had BMW put a new final drive on before we left. He managed to get some bits for it having removed mine and taken some dimentions of the spacer required etc. Long story short, on the ripio his vibrated loose and he had to remove it, well now mine has done the same snapping a bolt in the process, we are both carrying them as spare luggage now.
Having cleared the border we are now on pavement again and so make good progress to Rio Grande. We make a B line for the camping area listed on the Sat Nav, it is now raining and blowing a hooly. The lady comes out of the office and signals martin to go down there but when he keeps going she gesticulates, no just ther, Martin cannot see this but I can, she disappears and then this door opens and I am beconned in, on the bike. There is a kitchen area, a table tennis table, a climbing wall and well you get the picture. I ride the bike around the table tennis table a stop sort of in the corner, is this OK, si si. Martin returns from his excursion around the back and joins me.
We can camp or they have a dorm, which is an upstairs DoJo, wooden floor, multi gym in the corner and a bunch of single mattresses stacked in the corner. Martin did say, ’you know I really enjoy camping’, but seemed to need little persuasion to use the dorm. The only thing was it was boiling, goodness only knows what her fuel bill is like.
Having gone downstairs again and joined the throng, ther is the manageress Norma, a Spanish couplewho are travelling from Ushuia to Alaska called Rodrigos and Mar and Normas Son and his girlfriend. Now this is where it gets interesting, Norma only speaks Spanish, her Son does a few words on English, Rodrigos speaks Spanish and a bit of French and we speak English a bit of Spanish and a bit of French. It was incredible conversing using 3 languages in one sentence with quite a bit of gesticulation.
We thought they asked what we wanted to do for dinner, but in fact the y invited us to stay for dinner, they were having fish. It transpired that Rodrigos had caught a fish in the river earlier on. We were concerned that we may be taking their food but it turned out that he he ahd caught a 7 kilo brown trout in the river at 5 pm and was preparing to cook it on the BBQ. The BBQ is built into the building, a large waist high heath with a canopy over and a metal grid that can be raised or lowered with chains and a large canopy to remove the smoke. Here we used ‘carbon’, charcoal to us, instead of wood but used the same process of getting it hot and then moving it under the grid. Some while later 7 of us sat down to eat this fish with some potatoes and we barely got through half of it, but it was fantastic and we had a great evening.
We compaired notes with Rodrigos and Mar as they had just come from Ushuia. He also showed me his fishing rod which was a line rolled up with a float and a fly hook which took the space of half a frisby.
Off to bed and it was baking, I slept outside my sleeping bag, just in my silk liner, however I woke in the night feeling quite cold and assumed the heating had gone off and climbed into my sleeping bag, no problem. In the morning I found out that Martin had woken up and could not breath so got up and cracked a couple of windows on opposite sides of the room to get some airflow.