Vacations in southern Chile and southern Argentina Part 2

Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego – the „End of the World“ everything here advertises for tourists. The dispute of the most southern city in the world Ushuaia has lost but for us the most southern point of our tour is reached and the place on our trip farthest away from home. More than 14.000km it is to Berlin.
Along the east coast of Argentina it goes to the north. Seemingly with each kilometer it’s getting warmer. Even the extreme winds accompanied us in our early days here in Patagonia disappears. What a wind, notorious and feared by cyclists and climbers. In the treeless grass steppe, the Pampa, to find a sheltered camp ground is not easy. As the 3 Little Pigs we sit in tents behind and anchored at the car, while the wind outside blows and blows.
Our tent poles breaks, however, just as it is windless. „Everything gets broken“, concerns us more often on the lips. The hard permanent usage some equipment must pay tribute. A very annoying failure is my camera precisely just before a series of scenic beautys with an international reputation.

In the sparsely populated countryside we see many animals – dolphins, a large armadillo, rheas with 10 to 18 children throng, several large, hairy spiders tarantula as a popular means, flamingos, parrots, a large palm sized beetles. In close proximity are we to sea lions, with big mane as the naming cats.
The sea elefants that we observe on the Peninsula Valdez but „only“ is the about one-year juniors, but nevertheless they are already impressive chunks. Finally it is the largest seal in the world, wants to become up to 3.5 tonnes in weight (according to some reports up to 5 tonnes).
Significantly smaller, but even numerous on the coast live Magellan penguins, on land known very entertaining.
Many Patagonian Mara pass our way, a strange mixture of water pig and rabbit. They are large guinea pigs, with a head-torso-length of 60 to 80cm pretty big guinea pigs.
And we meet a False Coral Snake, which, or the real coral snake, considered one of the most beautiful snakes. Black, white and red rings alternate along the snake. The sequence of colors can conclude whether it is an extremely poisonous snake or, like in our case, an imitation. Short mnemonic rhyme: Follows white (or yellow) to red, you’re dead.

The „fun“ at the border continues. Each time we are excited. Times when you not find fault with the car papers, you wonder how we leave twice, actually are not in the country. When entering the territory we got the exit stamp in the passport.

After more than 6 weeks with Andrea our time together ends. Again we are in Santiago de Chile hand over Andrea and our rental car from which the the side mirrors are stolen penultimate day. Nearly 11.500km in car we gathered up in the vast south of the continent. With the bicycles a distance for at least half a year.

By bus it goes to Argentina to our bikes – one last time over the Andes, passing on Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside Asia.
One last time we drive a piece on the „Cuarenta,“ the route 40. Once traverses Argentina, with almost 5000km it is the longest national highway in the world. A large part of this road we drove with the bicycles and car.

Tom

translated by Denise and Tom

photos to this article: Urlaub in Südchile und Südargentinien Teil 2 : Fotos

12. Dezember 2008 - Tom | english texts | Kommentare :: comments :: comentarios | Inhalt drucken