I’m 67 and all my life I’ve read about the explorations of this wild land. Now at last I am here myself at the bottom of the world.
It looks like the Highlands of Scotland where my duster lives except the emptiness is vast, hundred of miles.
We enjoyed driving the Lobeliest Road, Highway 50 in Nevada just last year. However it really isn’t that lonely and compared to this it’s positively suburban.
Occasional ranch buildings a few flocks of sheep, some horses grazing and guanacos running free and gracefully leaping the endless fences.
The beautifully smooth cement pavement ran out six short miles from Porvenir and I had known that from looking at Google satellite view. That it did so without warning came as a surprise and we rolled off pavement onto gravel trying to slow down from fifty miles per hour to 15.
The gravel wasn’t terrible and we could run it between 15 and 20 miles per hour on the best stretches but it’s noisy and dusty and I don’t enjoy trying to find the best lines through washboard and piles of loose pebbles. I love pavement.
We stopped for sandwiches for lunch and Rusty as always wanted to be outside so he found his spot.
An overlander in an iOverlander recommended spot by the side of the road.
Love those dust clouds and the locals zoom by creating huge ones.
Why this curve was dangerous I couldn’t say but it had its own sign in the middle of nowhere.
This is Tierra Del Fuego. Isn’t it amazing we drove here? I can’t believe it myself half the time.
Up ahead the main road took a sharp right turn where there was a bus stop, bit that we saw any buses, and the black structure is a government provided cyclist refuge.
Rusty owns Tierra Del Fuego. Or thinks he should.
These refuges are brilliant. Inside they are just empty plywood rooms on many cases with a lift so traveling bicyclists can get out of the vicious weather when needed.
They also include an attached pit toilet which can be handy for anyone traveling especially if it’s a van with a porta potty that needs emptying from time to time.
They are scattered all over Chilean Patagonia but the sad thing is they are not respected by their many users. I’m sure the cyclists don’t dump trash or turn the toilet into something you would never want to use but the refuges are open to anyone. Rather like these fancy bus stops for the use of farm workers and others in these desolate places, graffiti palaces.
30 more miles of gravel. Two hours for us probably.
And then we met the road works for the last stretch. This road is going to be paved one day and not a minute too soon if you ask me.
The cement layer:
An interested audience:
In the background below an old fashioned bicycle refuge now abandoned and next to it the black one in the new style. Meanwhile the penguins were getting closer. The pavement started here but only if you were driving to Argentina.
We took a sharp right turn to the penguins and stayed on gravel. Lucky us.
Did I mention I hate gravel?
We wild camped near the penguin sanctuary and this was our view. Not bad.
Oh and I forgot to mention we picked up a hitch hiker at the bicycle refuge above. The Swiss traveler is an environmental engineer in Switzerland has six months off to see South America. And penguins.
Rusty took a wild moment and galloped off over the hills chasing a lone guanaco that he must have thought was a reincarnated deer. He hates deer. He ran like a puppy over the horizon and came back ten minutes later panting like a steam engine. The guanaco played him like a pro and led him into a coma. So much so he never noticed the Patagonian fox that walked through our camp.
He’s very fierce really when he’s not sleeping. Age takes its toll.
He is not going to sleep in a tent. He sleeps with me lady.
