Ushuaia at last

I´d say both Paul and I would admit that both of us aren´t really all that gone on cities and by the end of the second week in Buenos Aires we were really looking forward to the flight south and getting on the roads on our bikes in the wild.

Patagonia was what interested us and it was only on the flight down that we really felt that the trip had begun proper. Our flight took a stop off in El Calafate where we would later be hiking on glaciers and we could see glacial ice floating on the lake while the plane was on the runway. On the way in to ushuaia the views of the mountain ranges were unbelievable, these were serious hills with a decent layer of snow on all of them.

Ushuaia itself was set with a ring of snow covered mountains sheltering it and the beagle channel coming right up to the port at the edge of town. It was like landing on another planet.

When we checked into hostel freestyle the guy on reception was surprised to see "more cyclists"
The last thing we expected was to be rooming with a guy doing a similar trip. Julien Montoya from Santiago was cycling from Ushuaia to Alaska but the poor fellas knee had given up 50 kms out of town. He was pretty down and it was rough on him to have the two of us getting ready for the road ahead while he was arranging to fly home for keyhole surgery on his knee. He reckoned the road ahead was tough, with a 10km hill over a mountain pass that was still above the snowline.
A failed cyclist and tales of woe from the road ahead is not exactly what you want to hear at the start of and expedition. I guess no map can really do justice to local conditions so we had no real idea what it would be like on the road. Despite having checked the temperatures we knew we were arriving in early spring and werent sure if the weather was going to be baltic cold or not? Would the famed patagonian wind that could rip the door off a car grind us to a halt? Would there be enough towns between big cities so we could at least buy food on the way?

No point dwelling too much on the road ahead, so we just get stuck into the prep.
We settled into the hostel and got stuck into putting our bikes together as we´d not opened the boxes since packing them in Ireland and had no idea if they were damaged in the flight or not.
We assembled the bikes out at the bbq area of the hostel and they seemed ok. Mighty, one thing going right at least.

Two Irish fellas arrive in the southernmost city in the world, on a cycling trip north and what´s the first thing they do? Cycle south. At least if we were going for a cycle the wrong way it was on purpose, we wanted to see the national park and hike to a viewpoint overlooking the mountain ranges. We hit the road which soon turned to gravel with our rucksacks and cycled the 25km out of town to see the amazing views of the national park. Well worth the effort and after a 2 hour hike up a mountain through deciduous forest the view at the top was spectacular. Paul took some photos on the way and even though his camera battery died at the top we didnt mind, the views were like nothing Id ever seen.

To see the famed penguins we took a boat trip the next day on the beagle channel with one of the girls from the hostel Sonia, a story best told by Pauls photos on the right. Some of the wildlife we saw like steamboat ducks, a sea lion colony, gannets and albatrosses were well worth seeing up close.

To prep for the off we went on a mission to the local supermarket. Paul had plan of cooking stew in the hostel so wed have some solid dinner grub for two days before having to go the pasta and sauce route. We estimated it would take 4 to 5 days to reach Rio Grande, the next big town and were not sure of how much food you could get along the way so wed need quite a bit of food just in case. I eat a lot so having enough food was going to be a big issue.

We took an extra day to pack, well worth it in the end as our bikes were looking like overloaded donkeys even with ditching some stuff. Cold was weighing on our minds so wed packed extra warm layers. All we had to do now was cycle..