Patagonia

October & November 2019

Chile on to Argentina’s Ruta 40

As the morning begins, we are set to cross the border into Argentina for the first time and the car is being temperamental and does its best to get me to revisit the decision to push forward into the ‘pampa’ (dry plains of Argentina). It’s running but it’s chewing through fuel at 33 litres/100km (about 7 MPG) and I’m being warned that unburned fuel is pushing through the engine into the catalytic converter and there exists a potential to basically melt it.

Before the border crossing, we go for a quick blast in the wrong direction to see if the issue settles down and it does. So it’s a green light to push on and we fill up with gas on the Chilean side before the cross into Argentina. I have my first accident of the trip when, after refuelling, I reverse from the pump to exit the tightly designed service station. I know I’ve bumped the guy behind me and the gas station attendant makes sure that I’m aware too. Getting out, I obsequiously gestured to the driver behind at how apologetic I was and he waived it off after realising there was no damage to his car. This didn’t help settle the nerves with regard to the car making it where it needed to get to that day.

At this point, I’ve given the us maybe a 30 or 40% chance of successfully arriving at our destination. But we’re all booked in for a really exciting fishing trip and it’s a reason to be less cautious than usual.

A very easy border crossing and short drive see us to Perito Moreno (the town, not the glacier which are very different places) and we stop for cash and fuel with mixed results. Argentinian fuel is cheap, high quality and easy to pay for; the best country I can recall in the trip scored across these factors. Cash is the worst – our first ATM lets us get out 1,000 pesos with a 360-peso fee (so USD$16 with a 36% / $6 fee!). The second is 4,000 with a similar fee. So the three of us max out our daily limits on our different cards, pay the crazy fees and at least we have enough money now for a couple tanks of fuel.

We praise our decision-making only hours later when we come across our first, and already much needed, gas station at Bajo Caracoles – a tiny town with not much more than a fuel pump, a hotel and several aged buildings. Clearly not the kind of place to pull out your bank card, they relieve us of half of our cash and we push on.

A typical view in Patagonia. This photo could be almost anywhere

Bajo Carcoles: one of the smallest towns we came across. Thankfully with a working fuel pump

So many overlanders have passed through these parts and have a habit of leaving their stickers across fuel pumps and the store fronts across the region

This was the view but my eyes were mostly glued to the fuel gauge

We have a rendezvous point with the fishing people at Governador Gregores which is about a 400km drive through the pampa. They made a point that despite us being in a capable car, it’s very tricky to both find and drive to the location of the fishing lodge. The challenge of getting there along with the general challenges we’re already facing makes the prize of the fishing lodge so much greater and excitement builds between my sister and I as we close in.

Without knowing exactly where we’ll find them in Governador Gregores, we pull in to the only gas station and they are waiting for us. After filling up and running the fuel calculations again, the next worry is if a tank of fuel will see us to the fishing lodge and back again – it’s three hours each way, albeit not that great in distance. Jose indicates for us to follow their Hilux into the desert, I let them know that I’ve got some engine issues. The response I get as best I could translate was, amusingly, is something like “ok, well you’ll be screwed if you have trouble but let’s go”. So we did.

It all makes sense once we’re following Jose. It’s about 40 minutes of highway followed by some easy unpaved section but slowly gets worse and worse as we push forward. The last hour of the drive to the lodge is a crawl at 10 or 15 kilometres an hour across a rocky road. Guests rarely drive themselves in and now I can see why.

There is a feeling of elation as we crest the final hill and sight the fishing lodge. The car be damned – at that moment whether it ever worked again was redundant, for that moment we would park up and go fishing in remote Patagonia, a dream of mine for many years.

Convoy to Jurassic Lake

Breaking up the three hour drive to Jurassic Lake Lodge - their traditional stopping point

Jose leading the way in his Hilux. Despite us driving further and further from infrastructure that we may need like mechanics and gas stations, at least we knew we had a trusty Toyota with us to save the day if things went pear-shaped

Cresting the final hill and descending down to the lodge

Jurassic Lake Lodge

The fishing at Jurassic Lake was totally different to any fishing I’d ever done before. If I understood correctly, the landowner introduced trout to his private lake about 25 years earlier. Without natural predators, the rainbow trout of this location were averaging around six or seven kilos and the bigger ones closer to ten. My experience fly fishing for rainbows in the rivers of Canada had me thinking that one kilogram was a good-sized fish so this was completely next level.

So that evening, we helped ourselves to the complimentary beverages, settled in at the stunning lodge and talked to the fisherman who slowly were coming back from their day’s outing. Nacha and Naza, our host and chef, made us feel welcome while our guide Lucho explained tomorrow’s fishing, sorted us out with gear and reminded us of the fly techniques that had become a little rusty after a couple years without casting.

Jurassic Lake Lodge

The waters here are literally thick with giant rainbow trout. Any closer than this shot and you can see the dark water which is just solid with fish

Pulling in one of the ~65 trout

There are two main fishing spots from our lodge - directly out front on the shore and the upstream in right of frame

A typical rainbow trout of the area

Our full day of fishing is incredible. Barely able to control our excitement, Kelly and I started the day off at the shore with intense anticipation for our first fish. Within ten minutes Kelly has one on the hook and experiences what an eight kilo trout on the end of a fly line feels like. Normally a good brother to head over to take a photo of her first catch, I can’t bring myself to put down my line, wanting my own fish, and shout a quick ‘congrats’ to her and keep on fishing.

From there on it was a frenzy. Between us we would probably pull in around 25 fish over the morning. The afternoon was even faster paced as we left the shore for an upstream location. I probably catch 20 and Kelly around 15. For the whole afternoon it feels like we’re pulling in fish and unhooking more time than we are waiting with a line in the water. Potentially my most action-filled day of fishing ever. In the end, I probably have pulled in the most by number but the prize fish, as usual, belong to Kell.

Sister and brother

Lucho: our guide

This one left a little surprise on my pants. Occasionally they would eject their eggs when caught

All catch and release. Kelly doing her best to catch this one

Such magnificent specimens

It’s a full day and exhausting. By the time our guided day is coming to an end, so is our energy. We have grins from ear to ear. Friends have commented that it was too easy and akin to shooting fish in a barrel. Admittedly it was exactly that. But for all the times I’ve fished and pulled in one fish, or none, in a whole day of fishing, to have caught and released around 65 solid trout in a single day between us was exhilarating.

By evening, we’re back with the other fisherman, mostly Argentinian doctors and some twins from Buenos Aires. Our hosts cook asado outside, we drink wine, watch the twins dance to Cumbia music and revel in the memories of one of my top few days of fishing ever.  

The fact that we’re both holding fish at this point is testament to how quickly we were pulling thing in

We’ve well and truly lost count by this time

Well deserved beer at the end of a long and amazing day

Each night the chef Naza would whip up something absolutely amazing. But no fish on the menu, the government prohibited taking any fish out of the lake

The lodge was small; all guests are at the table so in total it was myself, mum, sister, the two twins who were friends of the owner and the three gents at the end

Leaving Jurassic Lake, the guys lead the way out of the property in their truck to get us back to a point we can navigate our own way out. At my request, they route us through a river and I follow their Hilux through the fast flowing water and feel the car drift sideways a little in the current.  

The day’s drive along Ruta 40 is another nervous one, mostly from the point of view of the gas situation. There’s very few fuel stops and the car is drinking gas at this point. The whole drive, I’m calculating over and over again whether we’ll make it to Tres Lagos or whether we will have to take a four hour detour back to Governador Gregores just to be safe. As we pass the point at which we need to finally decide, I figure that there’s 20km left in the tank by the time we reach the next gas station (including using all 40 litres on the roof). I mentally rehearse the situation whereby I have to hitchhike the last 10km with a jerry can, which I guess at the end of the day is just another minor adventure.

Play time on the way out. I love a good water crossing

The moment our guides turned around, pointed towards the Ruta 40 and we carried on solo again

We were chewing through petrol and doing continuous fuel calculations. I swear I could see the gauge move as I stared at it

El Chalten

El Chalten was to be our next destination. The curious tourist town is a popular destination for hikers as it sits below the peaks of Cerro Fitz Roy (known for lending its silhouette to the logo of the Patagonia outdoor clothing brand). Strangely, it’s also Argentina’s newest town. In 1985 Argentina and Chile almost went to war about a border dispute that would have seen the area fall into one of the two countries. In the end, there was no war and Argentina claimed the area. And shortly afterwards, they began building the town settlement.

The town really is a hiker’s dream with the spectacular scenery accessible by various and free hiking trails. There are outdoor stores, accommodation, bars and restaurants solely catering for hikers and nature lovers. We joked that it’s a good place to observe wealthy American millennials with too much money dressed in the most expensive of outdoor attire.

Parque Nacional Los Glaciares: In front of Fitz Roy

Blessed with perfect weather as we rolled into town

Fitz Roy: famous for the Patagonia outdoor clothing brand logo

Kelly and the town of El Chalten were both born in 1985

The road to the north of El Chalten is a truly magnificent drive and takes you passed waterfalls, rivers and forests and eventually ends up at the base of a glacier and the river Rio Cañadon de los Toros. The air is fresh and the scenery is dramatic. It somewhat reminded me of an earlier time in my trip and another of my favourite drives between Jasper and Banff in British Colombia.

After following the river north, we eventually arrived at Glaciar Huemul. It’s a short and easy hike up to the top to see the glacier and the stunning turquoise of blue of the lake below. Very reminiscent of the lakes outside of Huaraz in Peru (like Lagunas 69, Paron and Llanganuco). Was also a great opportunity to get some drone footage, which you’ll see in the photos below.  

As we consider the path out of El Chalten and towards El Calafate a bit further south, I consider something that I haven’t before. Resting my car and its problems and renting one to see out the rest of the family trip together without the mechanical issues that had been plaguing us. For me, I had time and could settle down for a few weeks in a Patagonian town with a decent mechanic and wait for parts and to fix it properly. But my sister and mother were on a relatively short holiday and we had a firm plan of what we intended to see in their time there. It felt sacrilegious but it was a practical move.

Meanwhile, we had a plan in parallel to have oxygen sensors delivered from Santiago to Puerto Natales and the couriered by a fellow Land Rover fanatic on his bus company to Calafate. There was a certain logic to parking the car up in Calafate, waiting for the sensors that would fix my issues and carrying on in a rental car. This was our plan as we said goodbye to the beautiful town of El Chalten.

Mum obviously enjoying one of our newer wines, the Black & Ginger Grenache

Aprés-style drinks in the cold but with a healthy dose of sun keeping us warm with our artesenal beers

El Calafate

Arriving in El Calafate and checking in with a guy from the Land Rover network, Alejandro, who owned a Patagonian bus tour company, he was pleased to meet us and extended an offer to help us further any way he could including a recommendation for a local mechanic. We thanked him and promised to return.

The plan we had agreed was to source a rental car to finish the trip and we could do this in El Calafate. Businesses in Argentina, particularly in the countryside, are prone to closing for lunchtime siestas and it seemed more pronounced in El Calafate with the rental car companies closed from midday to 4pm. So to wait for their re-open, we lunched and then went to visit the Perito Moreno glacier.

Back on the road pushing towards El Calafate

Perito Moreno Glacier is just beyond those mountains

Perito Morena Glacier

Perito Moreno glacier turned out to be much more spectacular than any of us had expected. At this point, I had handed over the role of researcher and route planner to my sister – my responsibility was merely to ensure safe of arrival of the family along the route I was told to follow. So without expectation and stumbling across Perito Moreno, I was completely blown away. I guess a fair comment would be to say that it’s the most impressive glacier I’ve ever seen.  

Perito Moreno Glacier

A visitor stands in front of the 70m high ice wall of the Perito Moreno Glacier, conveniently providing my photo with some scale

Mum & Kelly trying to stay warm and dry

There’s a condor more or less centre frame here if you look hard

What’s more, the glacier is moving quickly and calves relatively frequently. We stood in the snow and light rain for several hours watching from various view points and patiently waiting for the next chunk of ice to sheer off the face of the glacier and fall into the freezing water below.

Mum is cute AF

We were treated to an up-close encounter with a condor which perched on the railing only metres from us and didn’t seem bothered by the dozen fascinated tourists scrambling over each other to get a photo of the majestic bird.  

A Condor (I think)

Kelly used her zoom to catpure this photo but we were still probably a couple metres away as he perched on the guard rail right in front of us

Beautiful blues of the ice

Time to head out: They really did an excellent job of the walkways and stairs. The expansive network really spreads out the tourists so you don’t feel like everyone is crawling on top of each other

The whole drive back from Perito Moreno to El Calafate, I’m second guessing the decision to rent a car. It feels like I would be cheating on Jolene. It would require me back tracking a significant distance to get the car. It was considerably more expensive to rent a car than most cities. And the problems we were having we’d now put up with successfully for so long, it wasn’t getting any worse – they were just there. As I bring this up, it appeared as though we were all thinking the same thing. At this moment, I very much appreciated the risk appetite of my family and their ability to push on and leave the worrying to me. We were on an adventure together and we would keep rolling the dice, a plan that had worked for us so far.

With a renewed enthusiasm to push on, we started the next day with our sights set on Torres del Paine National Park – a much anticipated highlight of the trip. It would be another drive through dirt roads of the sparse pampa, back across the Chilean border. What’s more, it was a 350km drive – more than a tank of gas – and with only one gas station on the route and located in the middle of nowhere. And even if we made it in, the next station wasn’t until Puerto Natales on the south end of the national park. Our research seemed to suggest that there was a small, independent service station and that it was open for business.

With so few gas stations and such short range, this had become our normal. Like Tarzan swinging through the jungle from vine to vine, so we would risk it and bet that each gas station would be open and operating, then swing to the next.

Cutting back into Chile

The geography of the area is this: A coastal mountain range running down the west of the continent. The mountains trap all the rain on the west side and is quite green. So the east side (Argentinian side) is just dry rolling pampa (scrub)

Guanaco … or llamas … or whichever.

Somewhat ominous scarecrows manning the gates here. There were quite a few of these scattered through Patagonia and we never figured out why

We had a lot riding on this gas station. If it wasn’t running, then we would have been in big trouble. As we showed up, it didn’t look attended but sure enough after pulling up, someone came out of their little house alongside to pump the gas. They were just staying out of the wind and going about their day

Torres del Paine

Villa Cerro Castillo on the north end of the park would be our base for our time in Torres del Paine. It’s a great option and means you don’t end up in the city of Puerto Natales each day. Functionally, Puerto Natales has much more on offer than Cerro Castillo but we found the ranch style accommodation of the small town to be more fitting of daily drives into the national park. Technically you can stay in the park itself but the cost of doing so is prohibitive and we couldn’t see the value in it – perhaps an easier decision to make being self-reliant with our own vehicle.

So for a couple days, this was our base and we would spend our time exploring the beautiful Torres del Paine National Park.

The road into Torres del Paine

Starting to get close to the Torres

Guanaco

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t on our side and we never got a clear view of the torres (the three towers that are the centrepiece of the park). But even with the clouds and a little rain, we weren’t complaining.

Perhaps our best glimpse of the torres on this pass through the park

Our hotel, the Hotel Estancia Ovejero Patagonia was a warm retreat from the freezing temperatures of the park in November. My favourite part of the hotel was the saddle-style bar stools. The hotel also heavily invested in sheep skins which were generously strewn through the whole hotel.

Saddle chairs in the bar at Hotel Estancia Ovejero Patagonia

Unfortunately we never came across the puma. The big cats eluded me my entire trip across the continent

None of us are big hikers and we were short on time so we kept to the shorter walks of an hour or less. I would recommend to anyone going to Torres del Paine to plan to do some more significant hikes (a couple full-day hikes at a minimum and the W-Trek for those really keen). Missing this opportunity to do some hikes would be a draw card to come back a couple weeks later as I turned around and headed north again.  

Grey Lake / Lago Grey offered a short walk down the beach to see the icebergs floating in the lake. While the cursory walk from the parking lot doesn’t give you a great view of the Grey Glacier at the back of the lake, it’s definitely a nice experience to wander along the shores of the lake and see the giants clumps of ice flowing by.

Lago Grey

The icebergs of Lago Grey

Breaking down … again

Leaving Grey Lake at the end of a full day in the park, we were doing our usual fuel calculations. With the nearby station in Puerto Natales open but an extra hour out of the way, I was watching the fuel gauge more closely than normal. Rather than a diversion through Natales, we were planning to conserve enough fuel for our re-entry into Argentina and back to the fuel station we’d been to some days before.

Believing this to be possible, we headed home with the plan to cross back into Argentina early the next day. But it wasn’t to be. As we were driving north back to Cerro Castillo and the warmth of the sheep rugs and saddle chairs, an ominous thud camp from the engine bay. I immediately noticed the battery light come on and a loss in power steering. Instantly I knew that I’d thrown the fan belt. I knew the car wasn’t happy but this was an entirely new problem and nothing to do with the sensor issues I’d been having. I pulled the car up a few hundred metres down the road at a mirador (lookout) to assess options.

A quick inspection confirms my suspicion that I’d thrown the belt. There’s a fan pulley missing so I wander off down the street with Kelly to go look for it, knowing it will be easier to fix later if I have the broken bits rather than trying to source a whole pulley down here. I find what I’m looking for lying on the side of the road – the bearing is in bad shape. While I’m carrying a spare fan belt, I’m not carrying a spare pulley (although I am now at the time of writing having learned from this misadventure).

In theory I could have driven the car on the battery but we opted not to. The hotel was an hour to the north with all of our gear. And the car, practically, needed to be back in Puerto Natales, an hour to the south. It just wasn’t worthwhile driving it until the battery gave up and stranding ourselves at a less convenient pullout. So we Googled a tow truck and pretty soon one has confirmed and we’re left on the roadside to wait.

Broken down… again. This time you can see my fan belt hanging off the bull bar

I figured out very quickly what the problem was but it wasn’t something I was going to be able to solve on the side of the road with the spares I had at the time

The offending pulley with destroyed bearing

An all too common sight: A Land Rover with the hood up

Mum had been kind enough to bring some of our newer wines we’d made this year from my wine label (a business I have with my good friend Hadyn). With nothing to do but wait for the tow truck, I cooked us some pasta and poured some wine as we sheltered from the freezing wind and made ourselves comfortable.

Good opportunity to try the Black & Ginger Riesling. While I’m off flitting about the world, my business partner (he’s the Black, I’m the Ginger) is back home doing the hard work and putting out some really good wines

The new Riesling gets Mum’s stamp of approval. But she is quite easy to please

Have definitely lost count of the number of tow trucks by this point

Puerto Natales

Unfortunately, while a minor issue in the scheme of things, the pulley going out was the last straw and ultimately the end of the family holiday. With too tight a timeframe to allow for a few days in a workshop, we needed a new plan that would get Mum and sister to their outbound flights and not completely write off the last few days of their trip.

Swinging passed our hotel in Cerro Castillo, the tow truck got us into Puerto Natales at 2am, dropping the car outside the mechanic I’d managed to locate during the ride via Alejandro. We found a small hotel and checked in for the night.

For my part, I would stay in Puerto Natales, rest and take as long as it needed for my oxygen sensors to be delivered and the car fixed. Thankfully their delivery was scheduled shortly and they were already on their way to to Calafate via Puerto Natales - I would just need to intercept the delivery in Puerto Natales and not bother with the onward courier via Alejandro’s bus company.

Mum and sister would get a bus back to El Calafate and fly to Ushuaia. It was a neat solution to the problem. They would still get to the ‘fin del mundo’ (end of the world) as per the plan - the town of Ushuaia - and otherwise connect with their planned exit flights out into Buenos Aires and onwards back to Australia and Canada respectively.

So the next morning, we taxied to the bus station and said a tearful goodbye as they carried on and left me there to sort out my problems.

Puerto Natales would be good to me and I would be there almost a week. Highlights would include:

• Trying the local crab which is a speciality of the area akin to the Alaskan king crab

• Witnessing a sliver of the Chilean riots which took a much more peaceful and sensible form down in the quiet town of Puerto Natales

• Finding a nice bed and breakfast hosted by a lovely Chilena and having some time to myself to rest and relax

• Meeting a rambunctious Danish ship captain who would tell me a story about drunkenly taking a tender to shore to find a pub and getting rescued at sea after misjudging the current and making news all over England for his stupidity

• Negotiating the sale of one of my companies back home which would help extend my travels further  

I had the fortune to meet a very interesting guy at the mechanic. A Canadian, he noticed my license plate and we got to talking. Robert turned out to be a fascinating character with various careers ranging from working on Lockheed Martin missile programs to a motorcycle manual technical writer, a motorcycle tester, teacher and a translator. He’d also crossed the Americas on a motorbike and thoroughly explored Patagonia both on his own as well as guiding people on organised motorbike tours. We became good friends quickly and would meet most days for a meal while I waited for my car to be fixed (and a four-day long Chilean national holiday to pass).

The sound in front of Puerto Natales

A comfortable place to rest. Shame the heater was broken

A kindred spirit: Robert and I shared many interests from motorbikes, overlanding, travel and Latin America in general. Robert would become a good friend and guide while I was waylaid in Puerto Natales

Chilean protests: The smaller towns were much more peaceful in their demonstrations. Nevertheless, you exercise a healthy amount of caution when social unrest in spreading through the country. We noted that several businesses obviously expected the worst and had boarded up their shops in fear of rioting and looting

Fixing the car in Puerto Natales

Fixing the car is a two part affair. First we deal with the bearing on the fan pulley. It’s a simple job and the cost of the replacement bearing is literally $7.00 in parts. A short drive around town sees us stop off at Puerto Natales’s one and only bearing shop (yes, a whole store - albeit a small one – dedicated to bearings). By mid-morning the issue that stopped us in our tracks is sorted. It’s now just the persistent and painful problem of the sensors.

In the meantime I research engine swaps and talk to my friend in Peru about me driving back up to Lima so that we can both swap Cummins diesels into our Discoverys. I figure this would be both a fun thing to do and a practical way of solving it given Augusto has a fabrication shop and knows what he’s doing. But for now it’s a pipe dream.

Eventually my parts arrive from Santiago. A quick swap of the new for old sensors doesn’t solve the problem and we’re all a bit stumped. Chile inconveniently has a four-day long weekend so I’m not going anywhere in a hurry and I make myself comfortable.

When the weekend passes I have my day - they’ve allocated two mechanics dedicated to working on the problem. I’ve also created a Whatsapp group to include various Discovery 2 mechanics and fanatics from around the continent to contribute to the troubleshooting. We start by spraying some accelerant around the intake to look for intake leaks (which would show up by a rev increase as the combustible gas got pulled through the leak into the engine). That was my best theory at the time but alas not the issue.

As Javier and I begin to pull the intake off and start to look for a more insidious problem, the shop owner Daniel stops us. He doesn’t want to open a can of worms when a simpler solution could present. Pulling out his diagnostic computer and trying a few things, he comes to a conclusion that they oxygen sensors are wired up wrong.

A short time later, he’s proven himself right. There are are four wires to each oxygen sensor – positive, negative and a third and fourth reading the fuel air mixture. Two of these wires had been wired backwards. It’s sad and hilarious several months later looking at this. All of the stress and confusion, the engine codes, the decisions to carry on or not, considerations to rent a car; all hinged on two sensors having two wires with the wrong polarities. I drove 3,000 kilometres paying already stupid Chilean gas prices and getting half the usual fuel economy – almost $1,000 in wasted fuel spend.

Stupidity aside, I can’t describe the relief of having my car back to full health with a clean, simple and logical diagnosis – the inference being that it was 100% healthy apart from the stupidity of my problem and my inability to understand it and sort it out.

New and old. Such a simple and cheap component but enough to stop me in my tracks. I now carry spares

This won’t mean much to most people but each of those codes represent an engine fault. Thankfully all stemming from the one root cause

Daniel’s shop in Puerto Natales. He proved to be a very smart mechanic. The rest of us were ready to tear the engine apart looking for an unknown problem but he sat back and thought the problem through before we had a chance

Daniel wanted to make 100% sure that I knew the cause of the problem

Punta Arenas

I wouldn’t waste any more time than I needed to in Puerto Natales. I had a friend waiting for me in Ushuaia and I was keen to get there to meet him. I would pack up, tell Paula at my bed and breakfast I was done and hit the road first thing in the morning to Punta Arenas, my one stop over before reaching the end of the continent.

Punta Arenas

San Gregorio

A major point of interest on the drive to the end of the world would be San Gregorio on the coast of the mainland just before the cross to Tierra del Fuego. A term you commonly hear in this part of the world is ‘estancia’ which I guess is roughly a ranch or a homestead (or a farm). Many are from the late 1800’s and were presumably sheep stations or the like. San Gregorio was more interesting than most because of the two beached cargo ships – the sailing tea clipper called Ambassador built in London in 1869 and the steamship, Amadeo, built in Liverpool in 1884.  

Tierra del Fuego

The further south, the colder and the windier it became. But not necessarily more interesting as the island of Tierra del Fuego was largely uninhabited and without a lot to see. Symbolically it was exciting as I crept closer to the southern-most point of my journey. If I think about it, there wasn’t a whole lot inherently interesting about a good portion of Tierra del Fuego. But that I’d be telling people for well over a year that this was my objective, it had developed a real meaning and become a key destination in my journey.

The border crossing back from Chile into Argentina

I’ve had probably 15 or so quick vehicle searches by Argentinian police since arriving in the country. But they’re just doing their job and early single one of them has been lovely and chatty and many have asked about my trip and if they can come with me

A ferry shuffled me across the way and before I knew it I was on the island of Tierra del Fuego on the home stretch. I practically had the whole car ferry to myself as the crew, myself and one other passenger made the extremely short passage across.

The Tierra del Fuego ferry appears to run all the time without a timetable and is just constantly back and forth as though its a continuation of the road. The cost is negligible

Preparing to board

Arriving to Ushuaia

The last 300km as I crossed Tierra del Fuego got increasingly interesting as I eventually started to come out of the plains and back into the mountains. Snow appeared by the roadside and the scenery became more dramatic and impressive. It was with great excitement that I came into the town of Ushuaia and headed for a hotel my friend had booked and been at waiting for me.

Nearing Ushuaia

Fin del Mundo

The end of the world

It was thrilling to reach my ‘destination’ but that it was hollow at the same time. I realised somewhere in the week or so prior that a ‘waypoint’ was a much better description than a ‘destination’. Ushuaia felt barely different from stopping at another town or city as I had been doing all year and the excitement was more so attributed to catching up with my friend Fabrizio again. It meant that from now on I would be headed more north than south. I suppose there was a level of achievement that I’d locked in and something that I could be proud of. But the expression ‘it’s about the journey and not the destination’ never felt more real as the time I arrived in Ushuaia.

When I thought about it, Ushuaia was the waypoint and Buenos Aires was my goal. My trip started because I wanted to live in Buenos Aires for a few months at least. The overlanding idea grew out of that and eventually took on a life of its own. Buenos Aires was a city I’d fallen in love with 10 years earlier. At the time, I’d initially planned to move there shortly after visiting on a backpacking holiday. But after getting back to Australia and looking for jobs in Argentina, somewhere between my poor Spanish and a business opportunity to get out of corporate life and go out on my own back home, it never happened.

And so I would meet my friend Fabrizio in Ushuaia, spend a few days relishing in the feat of having crossed North, Central and South America on my own and then get back in the car and point it towards Buenos Aires to fulfil my long-term goal of living in one of my favourite cities in the world.