The road to Bariloche

We leave Santiago heading south (again) on the Routa 5.
Our schedule is pretty tight.
We want to reach Bariloche by Christmas day which means we need to cover 1300 kms in 2 days.

First however we stop briefly at the hotel Colonial in Villa Alegre to drop off a Xmas present and card for our friend Hector.

Pic 1 Back in Villa Alegre with a working bike
We chat for a good hr with Hector’s brother Mauricio, then we press on.
This road section however is not our lucky spot.

Pic 2 We run out of petrol

For over 100 kms between Chillan and Los Angeles there isn’t a single petrol station on our side of the motorway.
Eventually we run out of petrol, only 10 kms from los Angeles.

Luckily Chilean people are always there to help. I immediately get a lift to the nearest petrol station (only 3 kms away) and also a lift back.

Pic 3: filling up
In less than 15 minutes we are back on the road.

South of Los Angeles the motorway finds its way between beautiful woods.

Pic 4: Woods around Osorno
As we reach Osorno we begin to see snow topped volcanoes in the distance and the cloud of ashes caused by the Puyehue volcano which begun its latest eruption back in June when the cloud of ashes was 12 kms high!

As we turn left towards the Puyehue lake the road becomes spectacular.

Pic 5: 2 volcanoes far in the distance
We spend the night at the El Taique lodge, only 90 kms from the Argentinean border.

The setting is magnificent.

Pic 6: the perfect aperitivo at El taique
In spite of a long journey on the bike we go for a nice walk in the hills around.

Pic 7: Walking in the grass

Pic 8: Elena cannot refrain herself

Pic 9: Going organic

Pic 10: Sunset on the lake

Pic 11: Sunset on the volcano
Since we are only 250 kms from Bariloche we take it easy and leave the lodge at 11am.
Today the wind has changed direction, bringing a cloud of ashes above us.

Pic 12: Dusting off volcanic ashes from the bike
After crossing the border the scenery changes quite dramatically.

Pic 13: Road covered in ashes

Pic 14: Forest and ashes
Everything is covered in ashes.

Pic 15: The road can be fairly slippery
We are told that at the height of the eruption the ashes were so thick that over 1.5M fish died in the rio Gol Gol for lack of oxygen.

Pic 16: Green lagune covered in ashes
120 kms from Bariloche the first Argentinean lake appears on the horizon.

Pic 17: Blue lake and ashes
The contrast between the grey ashes and the blue water is brilliant.

Pic 18: a surreal drive
As we drive on the ashes fade away and the surrounding becomes more “real”.

Pic 19: back to normality
We are now back again on the famous Ruta 40, a road that we used few times already while driving Argentina. It looks like you cannot drive in Argentina without bumping once in a while on the Ruta 40.

Pic 20: Ruta 40
It is 2 pm of Xmas day when we enter Bariloche.

Back on the saddle

Back in Ushuaia we didn’t have much time to rest.

We dropped off our rented equipment, said goodbye to Jonathan and Njnke ,

Pic 1 Elena Jonatan and Njnke waiting for the rental shop to open
discovered that the Argentinean banks had stolen roughly £1000 from our bank account (a formal enquiry is currently being carried out by our bank in the UK) and jumped on our 4am bus to Punta Arenas.

The 15 hrs journey started under the pouring rain,

Pic 2 it's 4 am and it rains out there
 which eventually turned into snow.

Pic 3 The Garibaldi Pass, north of Ushuaia, covered in snow
Now, if this is summer over here we wonder how winter must look like.....

After Rio Grande the weather improved massively, however the road turned into gravel.

Pic 4 The border between Chile and Argentina in Tierra del Fuego (San Sebastian)
The border crossing took ages as they had to check all the passengers on the bus (this is when you really miss the bike).

Eventually we reached the Strait of Magellan when the road turned back into asphalt.

Pic 5 Lighthouse at the Magellan Strait
In the meantime they were broadcasting various movies on the bus and we have to say that their choice was to say the least debatable.

They started with Disney cartoons and ended with horror splatters.......

At 7pm we got to Punta Arenas where we grabbed a quick bite, and went straight to bed as the following morning we had another 4am alarm as our flight to Santiago was leaving at 6am.

The view from the plane is stunning as we fly above the Andes and look down at the glaciers.

Back in the Chilean capital at lunch time we are welcomed by 30 degrees in the shade. Only few days ago we were at -10 in the Antarctic sea.

Finally after 6 weeks this was the moment of truth.

We went back at the BMW garage straight away and met the chief mechanic.

Pic 6 The bike with the wrong seat
We were somehow pleased not to see around their head of sales.

That guy had in fact been our point of contact over the last few weeks and yet he failed constantly in replying to our emails and calls and give us any meaningful updates on the state of the bike, to the point that we were still unsure if the bike was ready.

The chief mechanic reassured us immediately and gave us his word that everything was in good shape.

As I inspected the bike carefully I noticed immediately that they had not fixed the scratches on the front suspensions caused by the pick up truck cable but most importantly they had replaced our seat with an older one with different colours!!

I showed a picture of the bike from the mobile to the chief mechanic who could not believe his eyes.

They took the bike back in the garage in search of our seat while we sat on the sofa in the showroom.

At that point the chief of sales showed up.

With a big smile he came straight to say hello and played it friendly.

“Hi, how are you, how was your trip to ALASKA?.......”

...................

ALASKA?!!!!!!

Where do they find these people?

IT’S ANTARCTICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it is only 18,000 kms south of ALASKA.

By the way thank you for not replying to any of our emails. Can you now stop this pointless small talk and go and find our seat?

Eventually they found our seat (or one that at least looks exactly like ours) so that we could leave wishing never to see them again.

It is a great feeling to be back on the saddle after such a long break, now we can finally carry on our trip as it meant to be.

Pic 7 Bike in front of Casa Bonita in a sunny 22nd of December
But before we do that we need to rest a little bit, back for one last night at Casa Bonita.



Pic 8 Elena and Bibi-May next to the Casa Bonita Xmas tree

Antarctic final days

Eventually our good luck run out and our last 2 days in the Antarctic peninsula were characterised by some very poor weather.

The way south was shut by a thick wall of icebergs and a couple of zodiac excursions were cancelled due to the strong winds.

We still managed to take few decent pictures like an heart shaped iceberg or a leopard seal.

A big disappointment was not to be able to set foot on Deception island, famous for its hot volcanic springs.
It would have been nice to end our trip here swimming in the Antarctic sea!
The Ushuaia still managed to sail in this 15 kms volcanic crater filled with sea water and with a small entrance of only 500 meters!

Our last days in Antarctica also marked the end of our Canon camera.
The 12 months old device could no longer cope with the rain, snow and wind of this unwelcoming land and died on us making one last final shot to this white bird on ice. R.I.P.

When eventually the wind ceased to blow we managed to make a couple of final excursions.

The first one was to Paradise bay.

The views of the glacier both from the zodiac and from the top of the hill were absolutely astonishing.

We also enjoyed coming down from the hill sliding down at some serious speed.

The last expedition was at Half Moon Island.

The undisturbed inhabitants of this small island are a big colony of chinstrap penguins renowned for being extremely noisy.

As they say what goes around comes around.

In return of all that bad weather the sun came out on these snowy valleys for a final goodbye.

Most importantly stayed with us during the entire crossing of the Drake passage on the way back to Ushuaia.

It is not very heroic but this will probably go down in history as the easiest and least painful crossing of the Drake!

The sea was so flat that we even threw a party that lasted almost all night....

The following morning there were as many green faces as in the previous crossing, this time due to the level of alcohol in the blood.

Antarctic Day 3

The question in our mind on day 3 is: how are we going to beat day 1 and 2?

The crew on the Ushuaia are doing their best filling the voids with lectures and documentaries on Antarctica but the thrill of course comes mainly with the sighting of the wild life.
We jump on our zodiac for our morning tours of the waters.
The feeling is that this morning won’t be special.
The previous group has just come back from their zodiac tour with “nothing to report”.

We keep positive and take few pictures of some tabular icebergs and a couple of crabeaters.

Suddenly we hit the jackpot again.

Our zodiacs are surrounded by a group of Minke whales.
Minke whales are around 10 meters long and never show their tales when they dive.

But unlike the humpback that we saw briefly in day one these Minke give us the impression to be very curious about us and they hung around for at least half hr showing their backs only inches away from the zodiacs and swimming underneath us.

They play a game coming above water suddenly and disappearing again for few minutes. As they are as dark as the water we spot them using our ears more than our eyes. When they come up in fact they breathe making a very distinctive peaceful sound.

No need to say that our companions on the Ushuaia were very envious of our luck.

In the afternoon we made another landing, this time at port Lockroy the most southern land under HM the Queen.

Unlike Buckingham palace this place is only guarded by penguins.

In the best British tradition there is a small museum, a post office and a gift shop....... yes, finally Elena was able to do some shopping, even in Antarctica!

We spoke briefly to the 4 girls at the British station. They live there with no communication or hot water and in fact they were very happy to come briefly on board to the Ushuaia to take advantage of the boat’s facilities.

During the year there are roughly 1000 people living in the various stations in Antarctica. During summer time with tourists like us coming to visit the population rises to 4000 units.

Beside the close encounter with the Minke whales today was a very special day for another reason.

Exactly 100 years ago, on the 14^th of December 1911, Amundsen reached the South Pole.

What great opportunity to have a party here on the boat.

The cocktails prepared with Antarctic ice are also special for one reason.

This ice is full of air. As it melts in your drink it makes a popping sound like the rice crispies.

This oxygen has been trapped in this ice for hundreds of year and we are now finally liberating it via our Jack Daniels and coke!

It is midnight and we are almost ready to go to bed, when a German lady suggests us to go out on deck for few minutes.

As you would expect at this latitude and 6 days from the winter solstice, there is still a dim light in the sky. There is total peace around us. We would stay longer but we can hardly resist the cold, so we rush inside in our cabin for another Antarctic night.