After a nice breakfast with “huevos” for me – Andrew does not eat eggs – we left at a good time and rode to the waterfront of the town and took some pictures of stranded rusty boats before heading towards our next and last stop in Argentina at Rio Gallegos – 255km away. Another sunny day and winds were lighter at the begin of the day but forecast to strengthen again later in the afternoon. My map had indicated two petrol stations along the way but it turned out there was absolutely nothing – no petrol, no place to stop just endless steppe and countless guanacos and Rhea birds. So we did not stop the entire 255 kms except for our first police checkpoint where we were pulled over and asked for our passports – there where military personnel and police and some were wearing black balaclavas. They took pictures of our passports and then let us ride on. We arrived early in Rio Gallegos, checked into our hotel and walked to the waterfront of the river Rio Gallegos where gale forced winds blew straight across the water. We took a few pictures of the town name sign and the “Monumento al Amor” ❤️ before having a coffee and some sweets out of the wind. Then we saw a kids playground with a merry-go-round inside some castle shaped walls and towers. You never guess who we met holidaying here close to the South Pole?- yep, Santa Claus comes here for his vacation after delivering all the parcels at Christmas 😂🎅 😂

The top of the Merry-go-round had images of all the wildlife and we had seen pink flamingoes (Phoenicopterus chilensis) on one of the waterways earlier in the day for the first time, which was awesome.🦩🦩

We went back to the hotel and put warmer clothes on and headed for dinner at a nearby nice hotel restaurant to end another long day of riding in challenging conditions.

On the foreshore of Rio Santa Cruz, Argentina