Day 388 Thursday 5 February Rio Grande to Ushuaia 235km

9th February 2026 / Johan Fleischer / 1 Comment

Last night after all 7 bikes got new Brake Fluid, on the pavement, the guys sat in the reception of out little Gran Hotel (definitely not that the D fell off from the name sign as nothing was GranD, except the floor tiles which were very shiny and slippery, and ate some Biltong and drank a whisky each while I was finishing off the Blog. Then we walked out into the ice cold evening to get a meal. There was a little town square where some kids were playing soccer, others played Hide & Seek while the older kids all sat drinking their local tea (Mate) from their special cups with those special strainer-straws (which I told you about in the blogs of Leg 22.

Hide & Seek behind Mother Mary:

Some polititian died, so all flags were half-mast, but our waiter told us that he was corrupt and no one was sad that he died.

We were told by our hotel’s receptionist to go to a local Italian Restaurant. Dog gets very “Hangry” (angry when hungry,) and becomes very difficult to deal with. So before we could even order he walked around in the restaurant and told me we should order some Starters, the same that was just served at table number 4, so, me being in charge of almost everything also have the portfolio of “Food.” So I spoke to our waiter, an old man of over 70 years old and explained we wanted starters and pointed to table 4. Well, this is what arrived:

In one of the bowels were Beef Stomach. the rest was fine.

Needless to say we ordered 1 pizza and 2 pastas to share among the 7 of us after this “Starter.”

Peens took this photo of the process of the ferry we took yesterday, note that the price for a motorcycle and a horse is the same:

The Wi-Fi is good at tonights hotel, so you are going to get lots of photos and few words, so get yourself some coffee or a beer and look what I am treating you with in today’s Blog.

Today was a day of many surprises. We knew it was going to be cold and windy, temperature was going to be under 10 degrees all day with wind of 35km per hour, making the temperature about -1 (wind-chill they say.) It was a short day and I was expecting more grass-lands, straight roads and flat terrain. But then there were some trees, funny trees with beards (think it was some type of moss or fungus or even a type of fern-like plant growing on the trees.

See what is on these trees ?????

We rode into the 1st little town 100km from Rio Grande, I doubted we would find coffee, but we stumbled on a bakery with the most amazing pastries, a huge variety. I made Millsy in charge and he returned to our table with…….. yes, some Empanadas. I went back and got us a few Danish Pastries to share and decided never to entrust Millsy with food ever again.

Note the “people” sitting at the table behind us.

And in the other corner this “Doctor.”

Then more surprises, the terrain changed once more and I saw mountains ahead, with Forrests, and mountain passes and rain. And then it became VERY COLD. But I stopped for some photos before the rain and the scenery was spectacular, not how I thought this area would look.

This Ulen is a masculine clown-like spirit from the Selk’nam people’s Hain Initiation ceremony which is the indigionus people of this province of Argentina, called Tierra del Fuego, it was theatrical in its role and was more comic than to scare the people.

This one is just better dressed than the one I sent yesterday.

Ushuaia is situated on the Beagle Channel (240km long and very scenic, it also forms the border between Argentina and another section of Chile. On the other side of this body of water is the famous Beagle Islands (where there are many penguin colonies, and its of Beagle dogs.) Behind the Beagle Islands is the famous Drakes Passage, the stretch of water before you get Antartica which was 1st navigated and charted by Sir Francis Drake. This stretch of water is notoriously very rough with waves up to 10m high. it also runs past the south Shetland Islands (full of ponies,) and it connects the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.

We also crossed with our ferry ride yesterday the Strait of Magellan, it is 570km long and also connects the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean and was a very dangerous shipping route in 1914 before the Panama Channel was opened.

In the mountains today we came across this guy busy with Summer Training for his dogs. He actually helps the dogs by driving the Quad bike as it is too heavy, but the dogs get to run and exercise for when the snow comes and they can pull a sled.

Some of todays photos:

Millsy took this photo below, tells me there were Lamas which he scared away but if I zoom in I would see them???? Liar !!!!!!

And then we arrived at Ushuaia, sadly there was construction happening to the entrance to the town and Dog had to edit out all the road-cones and construction workers, so we ended up with these photos.

The other guys were late and missed out photos as they 1st had to take photos of Peens’s bike, on its side.

This little “Oepsie” (A.I. Changed it to Pepsi 3 times now !!!!!!!!) happened when he was climbing back on the bike after a Coffee Stop, and we suspect the extra weight he put on over Christmas has restricted his movement of his legs in an already tight riding pants and if you can’t open your legs wide it makes getting onto and off the bike difficult, as I have also learnt.

We did eventually meet-up at The Patagonian Brewing Company where we had the celebration Beer together.

We went for a walk at the harbour looking for possible excursions. We realised Dog was missing, when we returned to the bikes he was doing a Photo Session with a bus full of Chinese Tourist.

Look how many boats for tourist excursions:

We let Pie book the hotel on Booking.com and we suspect Tex influenced him as the hotel is better than our normal standard as we needed a place with parking and we discovered that the hotels in Down Town were either full or of very low standard, so we are 7km out of town up on the hill. As I am typing this Blog away I am sure some of my “friends” have nodded off while they were suppose to look at and Book a few excursions for us for tomorrow and Saturday morning before we hit the road again.

Our room had a “Glacier View” but I think they need to change the name to “Where the Glacier used to be room” as it had obviously melted away and only has a little annual normal snow.