We rise and get our washing all sorted and leave the campsite/hostel. On the way in we had noticed a memorial to the conflict in the Falklands, naturally here they are referred to as the Malvenas. There have been various references to the Malvenas in various placdes on the way down iterating that the Islands are Argentinian and called the Malvenas. The memorial was put up in 2007 to mark 25 years since the conflict and there are several plaques, 8 in total with about 80 names on each with other names above, possibly senior military members, so a lot of lives lost sadly.
We head further South to Tolhuin, to find a bakery Rodrigas told us to visit. It is fantastic, similar in lots of respects to a really good large English bakery. We have brunch here and catch up with emails as they have WiFi and finally i make contact on Skype with Jo, Charles and George, fantastic. I even get to speak to Nick and Kate who are round for dinner, my thanks to Nick for looking after George taking him Go Karting and to Twickenham for the big match. It was great to speak to Charles and George and finally to Jo especially today Christmas Eve.
Martin also managed to make contact with Jane albeit without sound and they were writing out messages and holding them up to the camera. We all touched base and that was great.
I know I have made regular mention of the wind which has been strong and constant. Today it is really strong and we go around a left hand bend still leaning right and then half way round adjust to upright and then normal leaning left. The wind is now directly behind us and we feel as though we have just gained another gear and if you put your hand up a gentle breeze is felt even though we are travelling quickly, we reckon that the wind speed is 60 mph. As we travel nearer the mountains the character of the wind changes and it starts to gust and change direction, this is much harder to ride in as it is unpredictable and overtaking is a bit of a lottery, but we survive.
Now off to Ushuia, only about 60 miles away, now this took longer than we thought because the terrain and views changed dramatically. Suddenly we were in an Alps style environment, not the same but similar and totally different to what we were used to. I now became accustomed to doing emergency stops to allow our official photographer, AKA Martin, to take photos, and there were some fantastic opportunities including remnants of a forest that had been devastated by fire some years ago and there was still huge evidence of it.
Talking of photos we have struggled to get the photos on the blog where we want them so we are now going to put them up in separate blogs, so you will have a narrative from me and Martin will put up pictures separately with some captions, he is sorting it now and will hopefully get some up today.
Back to today we enter Ushuia and fill up with gas, get money and then look for the campsite, the one by the rugby ground, yep there it is and there is Patrick who we had met in El Condor.
So pitch the tent in the trees by a river, what a fantastic location, and meet Simon an English guy from Reading who asks if we have food. It is now 7pm on Christmas Eve and all shops are shut for 2 days, OMG that sounds like a nice Christmas lunch. We mount up and truck into the town and find a tiny shop that sells everything, so chicken, closest thing to turkey we are going to find, enough for a couple of days also sausage and eggs for breakfast and back to site.
We had anticipated cooking our Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas day lunch on our little stoves but there is a full kitchen here for the use of anyone who is camping. So chicken cooked on the char grill and the rest on a commercial stove, fab.
We see Christmas in and I sit up til 3 updating the blog surrounded by singing and celebrations.
We are staying here tomorrow evening and may take a ride into the National Park during the day and then we will probably start heading North on Boxing Day.
Merry Christmas all from Martin and I.
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