Friday, November 27, 2009

Just for the photo...

a mad rush through the forest but I'll let Caths "Its different from the behind" fill you in on that...



Then it had to be followed but the compulsory scotch...

Caths words.....
Oh, i failed to mention that we went through two border crossings today. The bottom tip of the country is shared by Chile and Argentina, and as a consequence, passports have to be duly stamped, fruit handed over to the large lady with the gloves and Chilean money bought.As you know all ready, we didnt do that one.
Out of the hotel after greeting some bikers riding v-stroms and a bmw who had been travelling from Brazil,and looked very slick on their new bikes...they even had pump action visa cleaner, it was off for the last leg of the journey southwards.
Fill the empty tank with fuel, the hotel and the gas station here take Argentine pesos, less than five minutes of tarmac and its 100kms of dirt road. Offroading with trucks took us to the border crossing back into Argentina and back onto tar seal .As the road started to climb into the mountains, we were greeted with plummeting temperatures,strong winds and freezing sleet. All ready wearing just about everything in the wardrobe, there was nothing for it but to hunker down behind my hero driver and sit it out.
Dropping into Ushuaia was a relief if only because the weather cleared and a milky sun hung limply out to dry(no rainbow for our pot of gold tho).
Just because we had reached our goal town, did not mean we were privileged enough to find a great place to stay, there were no t.v crew welcoming us in with 5 star accommodation or a champagne reception, so it was into a one star upstairs hotel in the main street and the bike didnt even get an inside courtyard as a reward! It was going to have to sit in the gutter and maintain its own dignity.
We didnt unload the bike, but went out to the sign in the National Park. We couldnt go this far and not do the photo on the same day, how would it feel, if someone nicked the bike overnight, knowing our form of luck this is not so random......Going into the Park, we got behind about 6 large coaches and any amount of cars. There was a cruise ship in port, and wouldnt you know it, they were all going out to the sign for a photo too!
This called for some fun, off road riding, and dodging the traffic on the narrow, dirt road became a blast, i felt like Dick Dastardly from the Wacky Races, making a race of getting to the sign before the crowds arrived, any which way.
The last coach was overtaken in the carpark, and as Mark squeezed the bike through the wood posts, i felt that the whole journey was represented in that last mad dash, and that it was very fitting.

Once there, well, you got the picture.....

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