I arrived in El Chalten feeling fairly well beaten and flogged after a cold and incredibly windy ride from El Calafate. For most of the 150 mile route, fortunately almost all of it on pavement, I was blown all over the road and limited to a maximum speed of 40 or 45 mph. I...
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From Puerto Natales, Chile and the Torries del Paine National Park, I rode north towards the Argentinian town of El Calafate, which is famous for its proximity to the Perito Morino Glacier. After leaving Puerto Natales, I rode on nice, fairly newly paved roads to a remote border crossing near Cerro Castillo, Chile. ...
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After getting the KLR serviced in Puerto Natales, Chile, I decided to plan an overnight trip into the Torres del Paine National Park. An American operated hostel in Puerto Natales called the Erratic Rock gives presentations on the park every day at 3:00. Their talk is very informative and was a really great primer...
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Tierra del Fuego translates to “land of fire”. As far as I can tell, this is some sort of marketing scheme, along the lines of “Greenland” and other pleasant sounding place names like that. A more accurate translation would be something like freakishly windy, often raining, sparsely inhabited and damn cold. After leaving Ushuaia,...
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After a well deserved rest and a chance for my clothes to get fairly close to being dry, I was on my way from San Sebastian to Ushuaia. But of course, not before another breakfast of toasted leftover bread, marmalade of some sort and sparing amounts of coffee. In total, I had about 170...
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Wet. Cold. Really Cold. Dark. Muddy. Soaked. Freezing. Shivering. Windy. This is how Tierra del Fuego greeted me. It certainly felt like I was approaching the end of the world! I rode south from the Monte Leon National Park, intending to stop in a town called Rio Gallegos. When I got there, it was...
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After staying in the rather dull town of San Julian, I moved quickly south to Monte Leon National Park. The place is very interesting. As far as parks go, its quite new, having been created in 2004. At, 150,000 acres, the place is truly huge. It houses a penguin colony, a sea lion area,...
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Today, Wednesday, March 10th, I start day 15 of being away from home. This is sort of an interesting date for me as the standard American vacation unfortunately does not exceed two weeks. As I write this, I’m in the ugly, and very dusty oil town of Comodoro Rivadavia, which is about 1,200 miles...
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After staying for two days at La Posta in Azul, I decided to try and make up some time. The pampas area of Argentina is a little…short on scenery. Fairly flat, seemingly underutilized farm land, a few cattle and horses, occasional stands of eucalyptus type trees and a surprising absence towns or cities. It’s...
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Today, I’m in a little town on the pampas, in the state of Buenos Aires, called Azul. During the ride from Buenos Aires to Azul, I found it interesting how quickly the landscape turned from city to a very rural landscape. The pampas are interesting (and a bit boring). Very flat and wide open...
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