Disaster for 10 Minutes, then We Acheive Our Objective

So, here we are, Ushuaia, the other end of the earth! But only after one of those moments where everything almost stopped. You try and prepare anything and have spares for all occasions, but occasionally something happens that you never thought of.

Night 21 (of this phase) we arrive at the municipal camp site at Santa Cruz (approx. 550 miles to Ushuaia), greeted by Marco the very friendly site manager, we put the tent up (for about the 600’th time) and the ladder broke clean off its (plastic) hinges! A disaster as it is not just the access to the tent, but also supports the tent whilst we were in it. Panic ensues for about 10 minutes, then the brain kicks in, I call Marco over to see if he knows someone who can help, he does, himself. He takes me straight down to the local Ferreteria ( hard ware shop) and I now know why they call it a Ferreteria, cos Marco and one of the salesmen were ferreting around in the back for a little while and came up with an angle bracket. We bought 4 of those and back to camp. Marco fetched his drill, his angle grinder and a big box of tools and 3 hours later, with some drilling, grinding and screwing the ladder was back in place.

We stayed in Santa Cruz the following day to do a walk to a point to visit some more penguins, basically you drive as far as you can, walk as far as you can and suddenly the bushes are full of penguins and you can watch then waddling down to the sea and back to go fishing. A tough walk as it is basically along the beach on pebbles and sand, in howling wind and occasional rain and when it really blows you get sand blasted.

As we continue south the wind gets stronger (almost blows the door off when you open its that strong) and the clouds shoot across the sky so fast the sun can shine one minute and it will poor down with rain the next, so we stopped in accommodation and ate in restaurants the next 2 nights and booked this place in Ushuaia on the net a couple of days before we got here.

So, 3 years and 8 months after we arrived in New York, 651 days and 53,203 miles on the road we have finally made it from the top of the Americas to the bottom, but of course we haven’t finished yet. Together with Morocco and Mongolia our mileage total is just under 85,000 and number of days on the road are 935, 749 nights of which have been spent in the roof tent. Our sticker says ‘100,000 Miles of Adventure’, so we have another 15,000 to go!

A whole pack of Rheas, but still from the rear.

This is what we have seen for 000's of miles! 

We take a short cut 

And stop for lunch in the only shade we saw all day.

Getting better but still from the rear

Patagonian Hares, with amazingly long back legs

We take a detour to visit a petrified forest

These trees were buried in Volcanic ash 150,000,000 years ago when they were 1,000 years old!

We spot another Armadillo amongst the trees.

An interesting map of the world many millions of years ago. Not sure where Europe came from?

Back to the main road past many ancient volcanoes

A life size replica of Victoria the first ship to circumnavigate the globe and brought Magellan to Patagonia. Looks more like Captain Pugwash's ship!

Steak and egg, chips were a bit soggy but the steak was amazing

And Chris has the fish

The brackets take shape

A bit of fine tuning

And the ladder is back in place with a big thanks to Marco

Spot the Penguin!

Most scuttled away, but this brave one was eyeing us up

Get into line laddie

Last one in buys the drinks

You sure its OK?

Nope! Its too cold, I'm not going in!

OK! If I have to!

Chris trudges back along the beach

Back on that long straight road, but at least there is something to look at now.

We leave Patagonia behind

And arrive at Tierrea Del Fuego

Approaching the Mountains

I have a short nap while Chris drives and wake up in the mountains

Dropping down towards Ushuaia

And Finally, some Rhea's not from the rear!