Yesterday I found a grocery store and bought some snack-like-things, plus some cheese & biscuits and salami, so we sat in our room and had our traditional Oros “Dinner” and talked a lot of long stories. When Pie, who was stretched out on the floor since the cheese ran out, started snoring too much we called it a night and went to bed.
This morning we took it slow as we wanted the temperature to climb a bit before we climbed onto our bikes. We met a very interesting guy, our age, from Wisconsins, and he is a retired Airline Pilot who gets his kicks now from sailing on a big sail-boat, 77 foot (my spelling of the word I wanted to use, “Yaught” is so far from the correct spelling that my A.I. Friend can’t even give me the correct spelling, it suggests Yoghurt and Caught, and they want to take over the world, ja right, skaap!!!!) Back to the interesting guy, he tells us this is his 3rd crossing to Antartica, and when they get there 3 weeks later they anchor the boat and go onto the Peninsula of Antartica and photograph wild life. Crossing Drakes Passage is not near my Bucket List, I tip my hat to this man. He tells us that you are “4 hours on and 4 hours off.” So not much sleep and lots of hours getting the boat there in one piece.
I was a little sad when I pointed my bike North when we left the hotel. Our bikes has been pointed in the general direction of South since 2019, when we turned them around at Dead Horse, Alaska, and now, 7 years later, we change direction again and head North.
Our 1st stop was for coffee at a little cafe next to a motorbike Museum. It had mainly small Argentinean made motorbikes on display but also had a lots of Adventurer Bike stuffs showing photos and newspaper articles of two famous Adventurers who rode from the top of Alaska to Ushuaia, just like us, but on small 150cc bikes, and mostly on gravel as there was not lots of tar roads in 1960.
Below is a guy who grew up in Japan, then flew to the USA and rode from top of Alaska to Ushuaia, he still stays in Ushuaia and is 83 years old, he never went back to Japan.
Another Adventurer used this bike and rode a similar route as un in the early 60″s
There were other bikes on display as well:
Peens told me he now believes he is finally ready to have children. I explained to him about the little problem he still has, (to 1st get a wife,) and he told me we should all look harder and find him someone to marry, so if any of you have a cousin or aunty, sister or even maybe a brother, please contact me privately, and if this person has a fishing boat, please send us a photo of the boat..
Our Lust For Dust Adiction got its Fix early in today’s ride when we could snort some dust as we took a 60km detour to a fishing village Peens discovered. It was a lovely road, snaking through the Southern Arctic Forrests following a river, the road surface was good for 90% of the way, fast hard gravel, we had lots of fun.
We arrived too early for lunch and decided to ride around and explore the area and found some interesting roads and scenery.
Let’s hope your Wi-Fi is fast, as Pie is also fast when he crosses a stream, click in the IMG 0920 Below and give it a few seconds to download, then push Play. Dont say I don’t make you clever.
They fish with small boats.
Below you can see the ‘Pods” which they bait and drop down for the crabs to climb into:
The Fishing Village was very small and is know for all the King Crabs they catch there, so we had a choice, either eat another few Empanadas from the the kiosk or go next door and taste a King Crap, (I think we called them Spider Craps in South Africa and Europe. )
Our choice, Empanadas, and sitting on beer crates:
Or :
Beautiful, (I meant my bike,) with the little restaurant behind DadAss:
The restaurant was very small, only had seating for 18 people. The lady\owner showed us how to eat the crab, she showed us how to use the Garden Sheers to cut open the crab, t is too hard to break open, so you cut a little “roof” into the legs and remove the “roof” and then eat the crab through the rectangular opening you had cut, (on the underside of the legs and claws, the top is too spiky and hard to cut.)
We ordered 2 crabs, we were lucky they had fresh crabs as the boats were not able to go out to fish for several days now due to the high winds. The crabs were served with a very simple salad (grated carrots, lettuce tomato and grated red cabbage,) with rice.
After lunch Tex discovered he left his bike’s switched on and his battery was flat, luckily Peens’s Mac-Giver, the nick-name we had given this tool that can do everything, just as the character in a TV Series called Macgiver who was a very clever guy who could be locked-up under ground in a coffin, with a bomb next to him, and a lady he had to save, and then, in the dark of the coffin he would discover a hair-pin and some chewing-gum and a teaspoon in his pocket, and before you knew it he had un-locked his hands, disarmed the bomb, dug himself out of the grave with the teaspoon and built another bomb with the chewing-gum, blows up the bad-guys and ends up saving the day by rescuing the lady, just as Peens is here seen saving the day for Tex using his Mac-giver:
Tex will be buying the whiskey tonight.
After lunch we had about 180km to get back to Rio Grande and we headed north to where we stayed at the Gran hotel, (remember, I told you it used to be the GranD Hotel before the “D” fell from there sign taking down with it the only 2 Stars they had,) on our way down to Ushuaia. We are re-tracing our steps and will continue to do so tomorrow with the crossing the border back into Chile, then crossing the same straits of Magellan on the same ferry before turning slightly East and away from our route down, and then crossing back into Argentina before starting our ride up the East coast.
BUT, this is not the end of my story, luister nou mooi (listen.) We were soon out of the mountains and the Forrests and slowly the landscape turned back to Grasslands and flat open fields. And then it happened, the worst wind any of us had ever experienced started to blow us around on the road without warning. You would be leaning into the wind at I guess 25 degrees to keep you going straight and then you would just have a car coming in the opposite direction, and for that split second as you cross past each other, the strong wind disappears as the car blocks that wind, and then you change direction for that split second and head straight for the car, but before you can collide the car has passed you and you are now exposed to the full might of the wind again, that then slaps you into the other direction away from where the car was and sending you to the edge of the road. As I always tell my three kids, “It is a learning Curve my liefie” (my love.) And this learning curve you have to learn very quickly, or meet your maker. So you start to learn to anticipate where the wind will push you to, and when it will do so. But as in life, nothing is just plain, there are many curve balls that comes with it. Like, how does the wind-gust effect you, which happens suddenly and un announced. Then the landscape you are riding through has a major effect on how the wind will be channeled (like a funnel,) to you as you ride into a valley, or go around a corner on a twisty part of the road, or, worst, how the wind “changes direction” if you ride through a section of road that goes through an embankment on both sides as the wind hits the opposite bank and then bounces back, so for a second or two the wind changes direction and then you are leaning in the wrong direction and instead of carrying on straight you change direction, towards where the road ends. And just when you think you have all of this figured out a huge 18 Wheeler Truck comes from the front, and then to make things more interesting the truck is battling with its own problem with the wind we are having, only many times more, so the truck gets blown off the road with its one side driving on the gravel next to the road. So now you have a truck coming towards you, almost out of control, and you can’t see when it will hit you due to all the dust it is making with 9 wheels on the side of the road. But, I am a fast learner, and soon I felt confident to handle the trucks and the wind and everything, until I was introduced to a new curve ball when said truck, a car with stupid driver and I all meet where the road goes through an embankment on both sides of the road, yes, not fun.
But that was not the most dangerous part of my day. When I eventually got to the Gran hotel I had to take a shower, and I had to do it without any Protective Gear, and let me tell you, that was more dangerous than the wind on the road. This shower has a glass panel over an old bath and a slippery surface to stand on in the old bath, with the taps under the shower head and far to reach. lets just say the road was safer.
And that is all folks, tomorrow we ride together again.
XXXXXX
Fleisch
Dis regtig ‘n learning curve my liefie!