We get an early start, both of us excited about completing the journey south today.\u00a0 We go to a confiteria for coffee and pastry, and then do some riding around town asking about front tires, as both of ours are looking very worn.\u00a0 We find several 21”\u00a0 tires in town, at two different shops, but they are not the exact correct size, and we decide to ride on and see what might be available in Ushuaia. The road is well paved, but it is windy, cold, and threatening rain.\u00a0 That seems to be the normal conditions down here this time of year.<\/p>\n
We ride through the same, monotonous Patagonian desert for a couple of hours.\u00a0 The temps warm up a bit (50’s), and the sky lightens up as we ride south.\u00a0 The weather above us changes very fast; cloudy one minute, looking like rain;\u00a0 then sunning and cold, with blue sky.\u00a0 The wind never stops, though.\u00a0 Suddenly, about 50 miles from Ushuaia, the landscape starts to change;\u00a0 first some scrubby, broken trees, appearing in clumps on hillsides, that all look dead and broken.\u00a0 Then more hills, and soon real tree;.\u00a0 then mountains appear on the horizon,\u00a0 green and snow-capped.\u00a0 Before long, we are riding in richly forested mountains, with lakes and waterfalls and beautiful, wild and rugged scenery.\u00a0 After the thousands of miles of desert we have crossed to get here, it is an incredible rush and very exciting to be treated to such spectacular scenic beauty.\u00a0 We stop so often to take pictures, that it seems like we will never get through the last 30 miles!<\/p>\n
We finally come through a mountain pass, and enter a long valley between some of the most rugged peaks yet.\u00a0 At last we descend down the last mountainside and see the town of Ushuaia spread out along the shore of the Beagle Channel.\u00a0 What a sight, and what a rush.\u00a0 We stop at the town’s entry sign, to hug and take pictures.\u00a0 We can barely believe it is real – that we have made it to the end of the world.\u00a0 It is just fantastically beautiful here!<\/p>\n
We cruise the town, and find a place that is open for lunch.\u00a0 Because it is so late in the season, a lot of the shops and restaurants are closed for the winter.\u00a0 We look around for a cheap hotel, and settle on a hostel that is close to the bay and downtown.\u00a0 We get some poster board, and make for sale signs for the bikes, and park them out on the road with them on.\u00a0 The response is almost immediate – people start stopping by the hostel and asking about the bikes right away.<\/p>\n
We relax for much of the afternoon – drink a little whiskey and lay around reading and napping.\u00a0 Later we go out and find some empanadas for dinner.\u00a0 It is hard to believe that we are at last at the end – there is nowhere south of here to go.\u00a0 So after 111 days on the road for me, and over 15,000 land miles of riding,\u00a0 we have completed the long ride south.\u00a0 It feels great!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We get an early start, both of us excited about completing the journey south today.\u00a0 We go to a confiteria for coffee and pastry, and then do some riding around town asking about front tires, as both of ours are looking very worn.\u00a0 We find several 21”\u00a0 tires in town, at two different shops, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[25,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3746"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3752,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3746\/revisions\/3752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.longridesouth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}