The Journey Starts: Ushuaia to San Sebastian
Added on Monday, April 4th, 2011 by Carole Nash Editor
The Journey Starts: Ushuaia to San Sebastian
Customs released us uncharacteristically quickly. The mediation between the riders and the chief of staff being through a small white haired old man, but also through our shipping agent from Buenos Aires, Carlos from Blue Star Cargo and his mate Hector and Alberto.
It was all very Tolkienian, here, at the very end of the world. The peak of Mordur continued to strike a hold over the town and the main street. The jewellery stores and camera shops, the casino and countless small restaurants were all subject to the same law that required them to sell to tourists or die. Small cruise ships came and went, disgorging mostly old women cashing in their insurance policies. Tough sailors from container ships bound for Panama idled their free time before continuing on through the Canal Desperado and the western seaboard of Chile. From their portholes they would see the wine harvests of the south, Valparaiso, Santiago and the arid sands of the Atacama. They would smell distantly the vapours of the land but mostly they would know only the sea.
We rode out of the port and turned east out of the town and then northwest towards the Magellan Strait. Before that the Paso de Garibaldi, a small cleft through the mountains that took us over to the plains. A cool sun shone bravely through a blustery sky and as our engines made our journey easy we rode on towards the sea. Either side of us, small areas of flatland and marsh fell away from a forest to a faraway staccato of jagged peaks. Dead trees are prefaced by wind blasted bark made silver by erosion. If there is a dramatic conclusion to the life of a tree, it is to be reminded where we are so far south.
There are Triumphs and KTM’s and BMW’s, an Africa Twin, Yamaha XT’s and Tenere’s and my own big new Super Tenere all zooming past near-distance damp and decay. You could set off in a straight line and slip on death around these parts, rotting stumps sticking out of the ground like the broken teeth of an old man.
By Rio Grande, with its noisy cars loaded with holed exhausts, we rode onto the border with Chile at San Sebastian. 7kms further on, deep into the night on piste and in the cold, we camped by the Cafe Frontera, one of the greatest small cafes and at the bottom of the world.
