Journey to the end of the world

From the Argentine border with Bolivia, the country spans a massive 5,171km to its Southern-most point, the world’s southern most city, Ushuaia.  Our goal was to traverse this distance through a combination of bus and rental car, to travel to within only 1,000km of Antarctica.

White marks on the bus and road from where the fire extinguisher was employed

The journey didn’t exactly start well.  It was a 7 hour bus ride from the border to Salta, a tourist town in northern Argentina.  We had been looking forward to getting back onto the Argentinian buses and once again enjoy the superior levels of safety, service and comfort that they offered.  However, about 4 or 5 hours into the trip the bus caught on fire.  Panic inside the bus ensued and people were clambering over one another to exit the bus.  Even I moved quickly!  With the fire extinguished we re-boarded the bus (I’m sure this was entirely safe) and made our way slowly to the next town, where, fortunately a replacement bus was made available.  

Salta was a very pretty town and we once again remarked at the massive distinction between the opulence and affluence of Argentina compared with the poverty of its Bolivian neighbour, less than 500km away.  Salta’s main attraction is a trip to the salt flats, but having done this in Bolivia, we decided to continue our journey after a couple of lazy days exploring the city, enjoying a couple of Big Macs (and Triple Macs) at McD’s and even a trip to the movies (Contagion with Matt Damon, I think, in english with spanish subtitles - hurrah!).  Most importantly we used our time in Salta to plan and organise the remainder of our time in Argentina.  We were keen to see the whole country and to get to the bottom if possible and decided this would be best achieved by motor car, where we could explore at our own pace and enjoy the passing scenery.  

(Note, having a very hard time uploading photos from our current locatio


So, from Salta, we said goodbye to our english friends and caught the night bus to Buenos Aires were we picked up a rental car and started heading south.  It took a little while to wheel and deal an affordable rental contract, but we finally secured a VW Fox at 4pm, in time to motor it to Walmart and pick up camping and cooking supplies to (hopefully) save us money in the long-run... 

After a couple of hours in Walmart we finally started making our way south at about 7pm.  Once again, driving on the wrong side of the road, sitting on the wrong side of the car, using the wrong hand to change gears, indicate and use the wipers, competing with the traffic heading out of town for the weekend, in an unfamiliar bustling metropolis, with the light going down, and angry frustrated drivers behind you both over and under-taking - sometimes simultaneously ... All the necessary elements for an exciting start to the journey.  At about 9pm, hungry and tired we pulled into a roadside diner enjoying a home-cooked lasagne.  We figured we needed to find somewhere to sleep and that we would have to wait until the following day to deploy our new tent.  

A relatively early start the following day had us covering a good distance south before finally turning into a campsite just after dusk.  Never mind - our tent-erecting skills, honed through Africa, came to the foray as we put the tent together in the darkness and then cooked a meal over our new gas cooker.  

On the second night our tent broke.  Such a pity.  We had thought that in buying the cheapest tent at Walmart we were acquiring a thing of fine craftsmanship.  An item to be treasured and cherished.  It appears not.  Fortunately the very helpful campsite owner pulled out some No.8 wire and wire pincers and managed to restore our tent to a thing of beauty!  Fingers crossed it lasts us the next few weeks.

On the next day the interior car door handle broke when we closed the door.  Eek.  Going to have to fix that before turning the car in, otherwise we will be voiding our insurance deposit!!  We crossed our fingers that nothing else would break!

The first 1,000km was flat agricultural land.  Nothing but grass, fences and the occasional tree or cow, and plenty of traffic.  As we reached Patagonia proper, the landscape changed to flat steppe.  For the next 2,000km the landscape was still flat, but rather than covered in grass and the odd tree, it was covered by shrub, the odd loose animal, dust and wind - lots of wind.  Gusts so strong the car is moved horizontally across the road.  The road is incredibly straight - as far as the eye can see and into the horizon.  A corner became a thing to look forward to, but the corner was never much more than a slight change in direction.  There were no hills, mountains, rock formations or really anything to look at.  So much for hiring a car to enjoy the view!  The Argentinian drivers seem to know this and do their best to pass through the countryside as quick as possible.  There is probably a speed limit - most of the time it is pretty hard to work out exactly what that limit is - but no one seems to care.  The police, the drivers, no one.  Everyone drives as fast as they possibly can.  It’s slightly disconcerting when you are driving at 110kmph, fighting against wind gusts that threaten to make the car airborne only to be passed by a beaten up Ford or Fiat travelling at 150kmph+!!  

As we continued south not only did it become very windy, but it also got cold, especially at night.  Jen would actually put on more clothes for bed than she was wearing during the day.  Singlet, woolen jersey, puffer jacket, woolen hat, thermal leggings inside our bargain basement sleeping bags (part of the set the tent came with) with an alpaca blanket over the top, and she was still cold.  On the fourth night I was freezing as well and we decided that we would have to find more suitable shelter whilst we continued south.  

So we continued south down the coast, making the odd diversion to a national park at Puerto Madryn (to see sealions and penguins) and Sarmiento to see a petrified forest.  But most of the time we headed south.  We finally reached Rio Gallegos where we needed to pick up our permit to take the rental car into Chile.  

In order to go to Ushuaia it is actually necessary to cross into Chile, from which a ferry is caught to Tierra del Fuego, an island split into two (half owned by Chile and the balance by Argentina) and the home of Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world.  

We had planned to spend a night in Rio Gallegos and were excited to, for once, arrive early at our destination (most days involved over 600km, or more, of driving meaning that we would generally arrive in the evening).  We had grand plans of finding a nice Cabana (motel) with WiFi access and spending a lazy evening catching up on the internet and watching TV.  Alas, after trying 3 cheaper-end hotels in the centre of town, all of which were full we decided to carry on.  Our thinking is that we had noticed that most big towns have cabanas (which are ideal for us, allowing us to park the car right outside the room and with a small kitchenette to prepare meals) on the outskirts of town on the major roads in and out.  So we weren’t too concerned about the lack of accommodation options and figured we would find something shortly down the road.  Unfortunately we were wrong.  Almost 10km out of town and slightly concerned about the lack of accommodation options we finally spotted Motel Eros.  Despite its interesting name we drove up through the maze of high walls and security to an intercom system.  In our best spanish we asked if they had a room for the night.  We think they asked us how many hours we wanted.  Well, we’d want about 14 or so, we guess??  Could we see the room?  No.4 we were told.  Very confused we made our way past the gate and into the garage for motel no.4.  The room was adjacent to an internal garage and all of the rooms were connected in a sort of hexagon type shape.  There were no external windows - this is odd we were thinking.  Very odd.  

We figured we’d go to reception and find out what the deal was.  But there wasn’t really any reception.  Just a couple of ladies doing laundry who spoke to us through a barely open little window with frosted glass.  

Eventually they let the cat out of the bag, “sexo” they said “utiliso para militaria por sexo”.  Ahh - it all made sense now.  Hmm, not really the sort of accommodation we were looking for.  We didn’t even bother to ask if they had WiFi and hastily made our exit.  

We didn’t have many options left but to continue into Chile and hope that there might be something at either side of the ferry terminal.  Each border crossing was an incredibly slow and tedious process with multiple forms, stamps and checks of our passport and car details.  Highly inefficient and surely unnecessary at this part of Chile where there aren’t roads connected to Chile proper... Nevermind.  

As we got to the ferry it started raining, but once again there were no accommodation options.  Neither side of the ferry.  So we kept on going.  On the other side of the straight we knew there was a smallish town some 35km south.  Arriving there we encountered the same problem from before - no vacancy.  

Our car on the ferry to Tierra Del Fuego

With the sun setting we had to go on.  The road turned to gravel for the rest of the drive through Chile.  100km of ripio travelled constantly by trucks going in both directions.  It was a real drain, we were both tired and rather disappointed that our afternoon of rest and relaxation had been turned upside down by our current dilemma.  Half-way along the ripio we thought about camping.  We even found a pretty good spot, 50 metres off the side of the road.  But just standing outside in the cold and the antarctic winds we knew it wasn’t really an option.  We were over 1,000km south from the last place we had camped, it had been considerably warmer there and we were freezing that night.  This would be death!  

Finally, after almost 2 hours of gravel road, bumps, rocks and trucks throwing up dust and occasionally rocks, we reached San Sebastian, the tiny village on the other Argentina / Chile border that we had to cross.  San Sebastian had a hotel, and the hotel had vacancy.  But there was a catch - it was US$60 a night and pretty average.  They had us over a barrel though.  It was almost midnight and we didn’t know when or where the next place to stay might be.  Reluctantly we handed over the money and turned in for the night.

This tropical bird was found in a Patisseria in Touhuin

The good thing about all the driving we had done the day before meant that it was a mere 300km and only one border crossing to Ushuaia.  An easy drive with time to spare to stop along the way, take photos, enjoy a well-renowned bakery in 

Touhuin (100km from Ushuaia), and arrive in Ushuaia with plenty of light and working hours to find a place to stay.  

We had made it.  3,850km, with only a broken tent and broken door handle.  Later that night I worked out that we were about 1,000km south of Bluff, New Zealand.  We’d gone from the equivalent of Auckland (Buenos Aires) and were now the equivalent of almost halfway between the southern most point of the South Island and Antarctica.  

A couple of days of rest and then it’s time to head back.