Amazon and on.. and on..

miserable hammock dweller...

Next morning in "Alto do Chao", after another bad night in a 
hammock, and I'm ill (again). I really feel bad, it's my 3rd trip to HELL (of this whole trip), and I'm regretting returning to the Tropics at all, especially a place notorious for unpleasant bugs. Once again it was a Burger, I'll be put off those damn things for life ! I also find that the boat leaving Santarem the next day is the last one for 5 days, if I don't get on it, I'll be stuck here for a quite a while (at Manaus I was told there is a boat everyday from Santarem to Belem, not so...).

Strangely, the following day (after my first actual sleep in a hammock) I felt absolutely fine and made the crazy decision of returning to Santarem on the bus and getting on the boat. It's a shame to be leaving "Alto do Chao", I've seen so little of it (confined to hammock) & the "jungle trips" are supposed to be good here.

As soon as I stepped on the boat at approx 1430 it left the dock (I was heading for the 1800 boat, this was the 1000 boat and it was very late, it turned out there was no 1800 boat, this is the last boat for 5 days !). Cost was R130 for a hammock space. After 2 hours of steaming away from Santarem my symptoms returned and I then had the most unpleasant day and half that I could just about imagine. Nausea, a high fever and bad diarrhea are hard enough, but in a hot, humid and grubby Amazon river boat when all you have is a hammock (which is hard to enter and exit without disturbing your neighbours), and just a few toilets between hundreds, is no fun at all !! As I was the last person onboard I got the worst hammock space, bottom deck by the engine, steerage ! This boat, the "CISNE BRANCO", is in some ways better than the first one, smaller, quieter, better run, but I find it hard to appreciate the improvements.

I'm fortunate that I'm feeling better when we come to the most interesting part of the river trip, we enter the narrow creeks and channels of the Amazon delta as we start to head Southeast towards Belem. People are living on the muddy river banks here in crude wooden shacks. The living looks rough and I wonder how anything ever dries, they live suspended (on wooden posts) over mud, everything must be perpetually damp & mouldy. Later we pass hundreds of canoes (pic left), mainly containing children making a strange high-pitched ululating sound. Brazilians, on our boat, throw plastic bags full of food and clothes out to them. Turns out they are VERY poor and they need this stuff just to survive.

More enterprising kids are selling stuff on our actual boat. To do this they take big risks as the boat does not stop for them. They paddle their canoes close enough to place a homemade re-bar hook inside one of the truck-tyre fenders (the hook is attached to the bow of the canoe with rope), they then hold on for dear life as they accelerate to 12 knots !! Impressive to watch ! Most did not try to sell their wears too hard at all they were more interested in the freebies they got off the crew, tins of coca-cola, biscuits, sweets etc...

a typical small community on the banks of the Amazon

After 2 and half days (2 nights) from Santarem, we arrive in Belem.  The boat skipper says it is too dangerous to navigate the creeks close to Belem at night, there are too many pirates !! For boatey types:  the river boat had no charts, no GPS & no Radar, they navigated the whole 1500km on memory alone, quite a feat, and, except for arriving in Belem, there were no external navigation aids at all (buoys, whitheys, beacons, lighthouses).

It's typically raining hard as we arrive in Belem (the rainy season has just started) and it's a surprise to see skyscrapers and office blocks looming out of the murk, having seen very little of "civilisation" since leaving Santarem.

Into the Heart of Darkness & down the river

Sao Paolo, I spent a day there waiting for my flight, I wandered around the center in the rain. It is a huge concrete jungle before heading for the real one !! I can't say there is too much for the visitor to do in Sao Paolo, because there isn't. The scale of the place is incredible though. The new & efficient subway whisks you around so fast it actually feels dangerous ! nothing like the plinky plonky ancient creaky London Underground. Next day I take a plane to Manaus.

Manaus is not quite what I expected. It's a large, very industrial town right in the middle of the Amazon ! How did that happen ? There is an enormous HONDA plant here (and others), apparently sited to make the most of the cheap labour (I'm told just $300 a month) and raw materials arrive by ships sailing up the Amazon (Manaus is an international port, 1500km from the sea !)  At my hostel is an older British couple I'd met previously in Chile in August last year, a remarkable coincidence because they are on their second holiday since I saw them last !

Manaus's most famous landmark is the opera house (right), otherwise it is very busy, noisy and pretty dirty, very humid, and unlike other places in Brazil, tourists come in for some attention, staring children etc...
When it rains, it RAINS !! I got caught out and was soaked in seconds, I forgot my passport was in my pocket, it got a little soggy.

I bought my boat ticket for Santarem for the next day, and made a mistake. The "official port" is not the place to buy tickets (LP is wrong), buy them 300m down river at the floating "unofficial port", on the actual boat, I paid R115, I should have paid around R80.

Next day I'm at the official dock at 0630 (missing my hostel brekkie), the boat is there but no-one else is, even the crew, the 0800 departure looks unlikely. Sure enough, when the crew turns up, our ETD is 1200 !!  I've got 5 hours to wait ! The "official port" ticket office gave me totally the wrong time. On the positive side I am the first person onboard so I get a good position for my hammock . I leave for 20 minutes to get some breakfast, return and have a heart attack !! The boat has left, there is an empty space at the dock, ALL my stuff is onboard ! I can't see it anywhere   Don't Panic !  After some very confused conversation I am told it has moved around to the unofficial dock. I try and sprint there but it's too hot for that, and 500m down river, there it is.....it's a relief to see it, and my stuff is where I left it. After a couple of hours more hammocks are appearing....(pic below)

At 1220pm the "Ana Beatriz III" is as full of people & baggage, on 3 decks, as can be imagined. We cast off and noisily head down the Amazon, with the current.
I've mostly lost my good hammock position as people have crowded in from all sides, but not below and above as I'd heard previously.
I was pleasantly surprised by the conditions on the boat, the showers and toilets are OK, the food was pretty good, though not that cheap.

typical Amazon passenger boat (not mine)

The 36 hour trip down river to Santarem is not the best for tourists, as the river is wide and the boat goes down the middle, it becomes significantly more interesting after Santarem. There is one other backpacker on the boat and we get chatting, he is called Rami, from Germany. That night they play "Forro" music (Brazilian folk), until very late, it's quite a party atmosphere as there is a bar on the top deck. I did not perfect hammock sleeping that first night ! I think it takes a while to adapt...




I spend most of my time on the boat giving English lessons to an enthusiastic 18 year old Brazilian guy, his English is really terrible ! but I think I've done my best for Anglo-Brazilian relations. Actually that surprised me in Brazil, a lot less people speak English than other parts of South America.

After we arrive Santarem, me and Rami head straight to "Alto do Chao", an hour away by bus, where there is a most amazing river beach, right in the Amazon, it looks like a 5* resort. We arrive in the black dark and the rain and have a bit of a game finding accommodation (it's all pricey). In the end we go for more hammock swinging spaces at an Albergue, frankly it's the last thing I wanted after a sleepless night on the boat, but it's all there is. It's strange, lying in a hammock, right in the jungle, there are no mosquito nets, I thought we were in for big trouble !  but, strangely,  the multitudinous insects did not bother us. In the kitchen there are pickled snakes in 5 litre water bottles, ominously all caught in this Albergue ! All are poisonous, one is a beautiful multi-coloured coral snake.

Alto do Chao

After stringing our hammocks we went for food. There was a stall selling BBQ kebabs. They looked good but I shied away after previous bad luck with street food. There was also a shop selling burgers, for safety I had one of these (I feel that vendors in solid, unmovable structures cannot poison their customers....). Completely the WRONG DECISION as it turned out.....

Rio - on the cheap !

It's another long bus trip from Iguazu to Rio. They play the movie "Up in the Air" for the 5th time, I think I know all the dialog ! I find that overnight a "Cama" seat is not quite as good as two "Semi-Camas" (if your lucky enough to get two free seats that is !) The Rio bus station is busy and fairly horrible but I find a bus to Catete, the cheapest accomodation area. But in Catete I can't find the hostel !! After 2 hours of padding about with a heavy pack, in the heat, and not wanting to get back on a local bus, I give up and go to a very cheap hotel. The "Hotel Oasis" is a men only hotel and it's very rough, but only R16 ($9) a night !! sort of a doss house really, but friendly enough.

Sunset from Ipanema beach

the lovely Hotel Oasis

After a shower I head off into Rio. I'm quite lucky as in my first few hours in Rio I see both Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. There is a glorious sunset over Ipanema beach. It's a Saturday and the beaches are busy, when the sun finally sets there is a loud cheer and applause ! After that it's back to my grotty room for a sweaty sleepless night. The next day I find that I can rent a fan for R3 a night! so I do that, it makes a big difference, but I find 2 nights at that place is quite enough. I relocate to an inexpensive spacious small hostel (Hostel Carioca) in Copacabana, 5 minutes from the beach, the small ones are best ! There is a nice set of people there, only problem is, it's run by a witch...

My first impressions of Rio are positive. I did not expect it to be so beautiful and so scenic. All around town the views impress, there are large steep sided rocky outcrops covered in tropical vegetation and the famous mountains "Big Jesus" (Corcovado) and Sugarloaf (Pan de Azúcar). It's seems so unique to use the super modern subway and emerge at a station just minutes from a fantastic tropical beach. There are office blocks right on the beach, what a quality of life ! Ships come and go, there are tankers, cruise liners and supply ships, oil rigs in transit, airliners taking off and landing, cable cars rising and descending, it's a Richard Scarry scene brought to life. Offshore there are islands and on the hillsides, Favelas creeping slowly upwards.

The main tourist attractions are expensive but with a little "google research" there seem to be other options. There are footpaths up both Corcovado and Pan de Azúcar. Next day, myself and Kieran, from the hostel, head up the footpath to Corcovado. The start of the footpath is at the back-right of "Parque Lage", a very pleasant park close to the botanical gardens. It's a 2 hour sweaty, jungly climb to the top, but a pleasant enough trek. We disturbed a naked batheing couple on the way up, at one of the natural pools, who scrambled for their towels. At the top we hit bureaucracy !!  At the car park they refuse to let us into the grounds of "Big Jesus", we can get a free ride to the bottom so we can buy a return ticket back up again !! It's a "swiz" of course, we refuse on principle. But the 8 or so security people eye us suspiciously in case we try and vault the fence, of course, we are tempted ! but we don't. From the car park we can see the views West and from a bit further down we can see the views East, we don't really lose out.

Next day two Hong Kong girls that I had met in B.A.  (same hostel), CiCi and Karina, turn up and we catch up over beers. That evening me and CiCi stay on Copacabana beach until long after it gets dark. Thanks to the floodlights and the warm humidity, beach life goes on into the evening (a far cry from the "dash for warmth" that occurs at the very moment the sun goes down in the UK !) I body surf in the largish waves, in the dark, it's lovely !!

As Keiran is busy I tackle the footpath right to the top of Sugarloaf, by myself. The start of this footpath is located at the end of the paved path called "Pista Cláudio Coutinho" at Urca beach, you go past the small concrete lighthouse at the end, skirt around the rock (at the same height) until you get to 5-6 small disused concrete blocks, turn left here and go up the steep path to the top. It's frankly a bit of a scramble, however, not far from the top, it became really hairey, I felt I had to turn around (as I was alone) which was disappointing as I was nearly there. Keiran later reported that he made it to the top with a friend, that it was indeed really hairey ! climbing gear is recommended ! He also went back to Corcovado and successfully vaulted the gate at the top and got in without trouble. I had to settle for walking up "small" sugarloaf instead, the midway cable car station, which is still free and still very scenic.

Rio with Sugarloaf at the back

The first time I wanted to go and watch Samba in Rio it rained the moment I put my foot outside the door. It then rained hard all that night and caused substantial flooding and mudslides to the North of Rio. So bad that it made the international media and I got a few concerned emails. In fact downtown Rio was completely unaffected. The second time I wanted to watch Samba I was sabotaged by my fellow Brits and the UK drinking habit. A British couple in the hostel suggested an aperitif before going out, homemade Capirinhas (the national cocktail of Brazil). We assembled three 1 litre bottles of Cachaça (a 45% proof, or more, spirit for just R4 ($2.5) a bottle ! ) and made them. We had plastic glasses, and there were only 7 of us. Alarm bells should have rung !!  Poor CiCi did not pay attention. As soon as our Taxi pulled up in the Samba district she was incredibly ill, as I knew her I best I had to take her back to the hostel, my last evening in tatters.

On arriving in Rio I booked my flight from Sao Paolo to Manaus (in the Amazon), directly on the TAM website. This was only £118 for a 4 hour flight which I thought was pretty good, booked just 7 days in advance. It's the first flight I've taken on this trip since arriving in Mexico in December 2009. So now I have to go to Sao Paolo on the bus. My last few hours in Rio are taken up with souvenir hunting and replacing a sun hat I left on a bus (I'll need it in the Amazon !). I'm sad to be leaving Rio, it's been one of the best city visits of my entire trip.

Back to the Tropics - Iguazu Falls

New Year´s in B.A. was fun, I went to a party in the hostel where Sarah and David were working (same Sarah and David from the terrible Panama-Columbia cargo boat trip in March 2010). At my hostel we had "make a dish" night. I burned my large olive pizza so badly no-one else wanted any, so I had to eat my "Charcoal Pizza" alone, it was horrible, and gave me even worse indigestion. It´s now the 2nd January 2011 and suddenly B.A. is full of tourists, mainly American, as if a Berlin style airlift (from Houston...) has occured overnight ! I buy myself a 20 hour bus ticket to Iguazu and depart. Everytime I get on a bus in Argentina there is some clod sat in my numbered seat, and this time is no exception...

In the morning, clouds and jungle, I am back in the Tropics  !!  It´s steamy hot in Puerto Iguazu. Found a good little hostel (Hostel Iguazu), with a pool ! but the AC was on the blink, so not a great night. I´m not feeling up to "The Falls" next day so I have a "day off", and change rooms, it´s too hot to do much.

Next day I get on the first bus of the day (0600) to the park and I´m about the 10th person in the park.  Instead of waiting for the train I head off down the "Sendero Verde" (I read about this "plan" on a blog and it really works) to the first train station, and then take the "Upper Trail". For 20 full minutes I have Iguazu Falls completely to myself !!! beautiful, multiple, tiers of falling water, cauldrons and cascades !!  It´s really something  ! And I try to explain to my Jaded Traveller Self that this is so !!  After 20 minutes or so a wave of other tourists appears on the path (from the first train), and during the day it just gets busier and busier.

Iguazu Falls   - of the big three (Iguazu / Victoria  / Niagra) I´d say it´s the most scenic, but it does lack the power and awesome spectacle of Victoria (both are way ahead of Niagra). Because everyone else did I took the boat trip. I was disappointed, it lasts 12 minutes !! and I think because of the season it does not go anywhere near the "Garganta del Diablo" (Devil's Throat), the most spectacular part, and of course, they don´t tell you this. Essentially it´s $30 for a 12 minute shower, in a boat, err, that´s it ! I managed to leave my wallet in the drybag I was given, whoops !! One of the boat guys returned to me intact, very honest of him.






Next morning I have to decide what to do, I have 6 weeks left (from my booked and unchangeable flight back to the UK from Salvador) and a number of options !!  I get all my maps and guides out, and ponder what to do, I could;

1. Go to Salta, Argentina (via Paraguay) then go back to Bolivia (and see more of this amazing country), then fly east to Salvador.
2. do option 1) then take an Amazon river boat all the way east from Bolivia to Belem, then bus to Salvador.
3. Take a bus to Puerto Velho (Brazil), via the "Pantanal", then Amazon riverboat to Belem, bus to Salvador.
4. Go directly to Rio, then fly from Sao Paolo to Manaus, take an Amazon riverboat to Belem, then bus  to Salvador.
5. Be a lazy xxxx and sit on a beach for 6 weeks !! , while making slow progress to Salvador !!

 I decide to go for option 4), I think Bolivia is going too far the "wrong" way, and there is not time to cross the whole Amazon by boat from West to East (though I'd love to do it..), flights back to Brazil from the West side are an unknown, I really don't want to sit on a beach for 6 weeks (I'm already a little bored of it), anyhow, going to "the Amazon" sounds exciting....!

I manage to buy the last seat on the direct bus to Rio for the next day, 26 hours!  For the rest of the day I sit by the pool and wonder if I'm doing the right thing.

Buenos Aires and on, then back again

Arrived bleary eyed at Buenos Aires bus station after an overnight bus journey from Puerto Madryn. The bus station is very bustly and busy and there are things like "Subways" that I have not seen for a while. The recommended hostel is in the district of Palermo, it is full, so I go down the street and find another. I´m back in the big city with all it´s incipent advantages (food ! drink!) and disadvantages (noise, crowds, murderous vehicles). My first night at the hostel, and I seem to be the only who even attempts sleep, cos even at 0730am only two others have returned to the 6 bed room. And this is the way of it in Buenos Aires, genuinely, the city that never sleeps !! Partly because, I think, it is hot and humid 24 hours a day and unless you drink it is difficult to sleep, and often you don´t even want to....

Palermo is bit too European (i.e. smug and wealthy) for my tastes, so after 2 nights I move to the more run down but seemingly friendlier "San Telmo" district of town and find a cheap but mangey hostel in the center. For a week I roam about town, covering huge distances on foot. I watch many live Tango shows on the street, is there a more intense dance than this ? I´ve not seen it.... There are street decorations and buskers aplenty. I went  to a show called "La bomba de tiempo", fantastic percussion-only band in a "rave setting" - an adandoned industrial works of some sort and they play as the sun goes down behind them. BUT, as I always find, the city is impersonal, it is hard to make connections and I don´t make a success of my time in BA. Not really helped by my lack of Spanish in a mainly Spanish speaking hostel.

So after 6 days I buy a ferry ticket to Uruguay, not sure whether I´m going to come back to BA or not.

Uruguay is very sleepy by comparison! I travelled on the "Cacciola" ferry from Tigre (borough of BA) to Carmelo, a light twin hulled boat that whizzes through the shallow marshy channels of the River Plate. I then took a bus to the old colonial town of Colonia. I find a nice rustic hostel and walk about town. It´s predictably touristy, but in a sleepy way, it reminds me of Orford (or Southwold) in Suffolk. A day to look around is enough, so I head to Montevideo on the bus.

I enjoyed my day and half in Montevideo, I think it´s get´s a bad press ! From the town centre (a peninsular) you can see the sea in 3 directions (unlike BA which for some strange reason completely turns it´s back on the sea) which makes it breezy and cooler for walking around. The neighbourhoods are obviously poorer and a bit grubbier than BA, but it has good beaches within walking distance (unlike BA). A day here is enough though. Xmas is coming ! (it´s the 20th Dec). I decide to spend the whole Xmas period on the beach at Punta del Diablo (4 hrs North up the coast) and not travel anywhere. To buy my bus ticket I have to queue for an hour, things are getting crazy holiday busy already.

Punta del Diablo was a sleepy fishing village until a few short years ago. Now it is a rapidly developing beach resort, 120 houses built on the sand dunes this year alone, a rate resembling a Spanish resort in the 1970´s (I should think). I opt for a hostel out of the town, it´s brand new, very smart and anxious to please, Hostel de la Vieuda. Within 10 minutes I have a very narrow shave with a sunbathing snake on the garden decking. I surprised it and vice versa, we both jumped !! it then curled up and struck out, and fortunately, missed ! I told the hostel owner and she arranged for a neighbour to come over, he, rather unfortunately, killed it with a piece of wood. This was rather a shame as it was a beautiful thing, the subtle colours and the texture of it. However, I looked it up on google later http://bit.ly/gd3LSN (correct I think as it had a matte black rattle) it´s turns out to be very poisonous !! one of my lives used up I think! It made me think twice about walking through long grass the whole next week. And so the 6 days of Xmas passed pleasantly enough, every day swimming in the surf and lounging about in the hot sunshine, just like the UK at Xmas !! Uruguayans celebrate Xmas eve not Xmas day, so the hostel organised a big Parilla (BBQ) for late late Xmas eve, the punch was super strong, I drank too much and predictably passed out (without making into town for the disco).

I was going to go straight to the Brazil border only 30km away. But I made the odd decision to return all the way to Buenos Aires and spend another week there, including New Years day. On the way back to BA Chaos !! in the holiday craziness the Montevideo bus station had half burnt down. Very long queues everywhere to temporary tents in the car park. I was lucky to come away with a ticket at all, let alone to the right place ! It cost a bit (I had to get what I could) but I got back to BA that night, by ferry, arriving back at 2am (and finding it even hotter than when I left...).

Sunset @ Colonia

Puerto Madryn - what ! more Penguins ??

The first shock of stepping off the bus from Patagonia is....the temperature !!  I realise I have not been properly warm since leaving Valparaiso (over 2 long months before), it feels very strange...

Puerto Madryn is another of those Argentinian towns founded by the Welsh, I spot a few unusual Celtic-skinned locals down on the beach. It´s very dry and deserty here, not what I expected. It´s main attraction is "Peninsular Valdez", it´s particularly famous because this is the only place in the world where (at the right time of year, this is not it) Orca´s will "rush the beach", swim up it at speed and take unwary Seals straight off it (for their lunch...). There is a well known clip of this in "Blue Planet" (I had just assumed that it was in Antarctica, or some such, but, no).

I cycle 20km out to one of the whale spotting beaches. I sit and wait for 4 hours, staring at the sea, and see absolutely nothing. By the early evening I give up and cycle back up the nearest headland. I look back one last time and there is a Southern Right Whale and her Calf, frolicking in the sea, only just off the beach, exactly where I had been sitting !     NUTS !!!

The day after that I put up a notice in the hostel, I want to share a hire car and drive all around Peninsular Valdez. I find four 19 year old German backpackers who are too young to hire a car themselves, perfect !  except they are all tall, it´s going to be cheap, but a bit of a squeeze.

Somewhat unusually the hire company transacts a $2000 deposit payment straight off my credit card, this helps me stay focused !  It´s pretty easy to slide on ripio.

The hostel guy says the Park Entrance is not manned until 6am. So we leave at 5am (not easy...) and get to the Park Entrance at 05.40, a sleepy face pops-up at the booth ! Crapola !  We are each relieved of a hefty 18 bucks entrance fee. This was my idea (getting up at 04.30am for no purpose), and it pushes German humour to it´s limits....

Peninsular Valdez is very hot and very dusty (over 400km of gravel road). There is really nothing there except the odd wildlife in various spots, mainly penguins and sealions, some elephant seals, all in the distance, Fauna no Flora. It was a long hot day, we were all a bit disappointed really, but our day was comprehensively saved by a fab sighting in the evening. I wanted to go back to the same beach I was at before (outside the park). And sure enough, there was a Southern Right Whale and Calf, frolicking, just 7-10 metres off the beach. Incredible ! we were all  mesmerised for a good couple of hours, the magnificent size of these beasts. We got back to Puerto Madryn in the black dark at 5 mins to 10pm, just in time to return the car and secure my deposit. It was soured slightly when I realised I´d left my mini-binoculars somewhere in the park...doh !

Not a sandbank !  an adult Southern Right Whale and Calf (calf not visible)

Next day, I head to Buenos Aires on the bus, the German guys head to Patagonia.

Farewell, trusty steed...

Established, back in the hostel, I write up an A4 "For Sale" poster for my bike (right) and my camping stuff and distribute it to all the other hostels in Ushuaia. Before I went in Antarctica I´d put up a number of internets ads (pricipally on http://www.horizonsunlimited.com  but no cigar !).

Why am I selling it ?? As I still do want to go the 3060km to Buenos Aires. Well, I think the Argentine Ruta 3 is genuinely dangerous on a low powered bike and I think I´ve already stretched my luck about as far as it will go. And I´d like to realise some value in it, the back tyre is nearly gone, the chain and sprockets are worn too. For me Ushuaia was always going to be the end of the road.

Back to the hostel, I wait and I wait and I wait, 4 days go by and I hear absolutely nada......nobody bites. I thought the camping stuff would go quick (it´s expensive down here), but I´m wrong. So I have a much needed haircut (nearly 1 year since the last...) and spend the time doing cultural stuff in Ushuaia, visit the museums and the parks, ride out to Enstancia Harberton and a lighthouse on the Beagle channel. For this reason, cue the history bit....

A very potted history of Tierra del Fuego

Patagonia, in terms of human development, is still in a very youthful state. The original pioneers, Drake and Magellan were down here in the 17th century but a full two hundred years went by when Europeans, and others, seldom landed here (although of course hundreds transited (& were often wrecked in) the Magellan Straights or Cape Horn) so there is little recorded history during this time.. The local indigenous tribe, the Yamanas were aggressive to outsiders and were left mostly to themselves, several attempts were made by 18th century Anglican Missionaries to land, but they were chased off.

The Yamanas were an interesting tribe. During the day they went about this very windy, freezing cold, place completely naked !! It´s almost unbelievable !! They covered themselves only in Penguin fat. They were a tribe that stayed principally in their bark canoes. For this reason, over millenia, they adapted and  developed short spindly legs and enormous shoulders and arms, they were, apparently, ungainly on land. 19th century sailors, partly because of the smell no doubt, considered them more animal than human and treated them as such. When the European and American colonisation of Patagonia began in the 1850´s sheep were imported in large quantites. The Yamanas called them "White Guanaco" (A Guanaco is the Patagonian Llama), they were easier to hunt no doubt, and so they ate them ! This led to very uneven "battles" between rifle carrying settlers and bow-and-arrow equipped Yamanas. As a result, and typically of the period, the Yamanas were wiped out in a few decades, by the 1950´s, as a seperate tribal group, they were gone. There are no current native Yamana speakers left.
It´s worth noting that Ushuaia was first settled by Europeans (Thomas Bridges and family in Estancia Harberton) as late as 1877 !  A penal colony and prison was established in 1897 and that lasted until 1941. The road to Ushuaia was only constructed in the 1950s !! until then all transport was by sea, and later air.  As little as 30 years ago there were no apshalted roads in the whole of Patagonia !!

With new owner

There is a "Latitud del Sur" motorcycle club meeting in Ushuaia over 3 days. On the first day I place my poster behind the guy taking registrations. The very next morning a guy turns up, out of the blue, and buys the whole lot, he does not ride the bike or even look at the camping stuff. He hands over $500 (I wanted $560) and rides off, so that´s $340 for the bike and $160 for the camping stuff. I give him everything that I had that´s bike related, the lot !! (hat, jacket, gloves, waterproofs, levers, guage, patches, pump... etc..). He is from Ushuaia and is not interested in the paperwork either, and that´s a definite plus, as I´m well aware that selling this bike, here, is strictly, illegal !  I feel a pang of sadness to see it disappear around the corner, that bike looked after me for 2/3rds of South America, now it has a new "life" on Tierra del Fuego.

In the afternoon I am walking through Ushuaia, there is a noisy motorcycle club convoy. And there it is again ! It´s the first time I´ve seen someone else riding it, and I had not realised how small it is ! This guy is shorter than me and he looks faintly comical riding it, I hate to think what I looked like. Later on I see it again in the centre of town (left) , which is handy as I really wanted to keep the Peru plate as a souvenir, and the new owner kindly agrees. I also catch up with Alfredo, the guy who I previously met (a month before) at the petrol station in Rio Gallegos. Back at the hostel that evening I´m amazed by how little stuff I now have !!

Next day I realise I`m almost done in Ushuaia, but the following day is my birthday, so why not stay another day...? Me and a few others, I´d bribed, hit the Dublin Bar in Ushuaia for a birthday pint or two. I bale out fairly early. Heidi (a German girl from my room who crawls in at 6am and wakes me up by kissing my cheek) tells me she really enjoyed my birthday party, even though I wasn´t there !! Fantastic !!

I take the bus to Rio Grande and luckily find the only hostel. Soon decide it´s not worth stopping there long. Make an early start for the bus to Rio Gallegos and discover why most people go to Ushuaia by air !!! The bureacracy of stamping out of Argentina, into Chile then back into Argentina is crippling, time wise. It all takes 10 hours and we only drove for 4 hours.

Argentina appears to be the only country in SA that links immigration documents with vehicle temporary imports. This was a bit of a worry. I was expecting to be asked at the border "So.... where´s the bike then ??". My immigration slip (a carbon copy from a triplicate) had the bike´s number plate and details on it, but with yet another piece of carbon paper (from a shop), I´d blanked it out with the edge of a coin (though, then it looked a bit shifty....). I need´nt have bothered, no-one asked anything.

Patagonia gives us a proper send off, the wind is howling, we can barely walk and get nicely sand blasted into the bargain. The Magellan Straights ferry crossing is interesting too, on full power it cannot maintain station against the wind, it has to keep pulling off the concrete ramp and driving back on. Some of the vehicle drivers don´t want to drive off while the land is sliding past ! until, that is, they get yelled at by the crew ! All the vehicles get a nice salt water bath. It´s a luxury to be back on the buses, so much less to worry about !!

Then it´s an overnight bus trip on a swishy "ANDESMAR" double-deck bus North, up Ruta 3, to Puerto Madryn. On these Argentine buses you get food, good food !. I also have a new, cunning plan, for overnight bus trips, WINE ! I get 2 seats to myself, down a bottle of red, and it´s lights out til the morning, it works ! It´s the first time I´ve slept on a bus this entire trip ! (all good except for the headache next morning....).