We left at a good time in the morning after breakfast and leaving our sticker on the glass entry door of the hotel. The plan was to get to the border in good time as we did not know how long it would take there and avoid the strongest winds forecasted for the late afternoon. It was forecast to be a hot day up to 30 degrees where we left from but cooler in Puerto Arenas.

We got stopped just on the way out of town and this time they did not want to see our passports but it was a RBT and that took a while to work out with hand gestures etc as that had not yet been covered in our Duolingo lessons 😂 – had to take our helmets off to blow into a device – all green and we were on the road again towards the border crossing 86km away. We arrived at the Argentinian side of the border – driving past a queue of trucks and parking next to a Tenere 700 (see video) who turned out to be ridden by a German female named Sabrina – we chatted for a while, ate our fruits and avocado (which you are not allowed to bring across the border) and took some pictures – Sabrina commented that in 8 months of riding in South America, I was only the third female rider she had met.

We got all the paperwork done on the Argentinian side, placed another sticker on the back of the border sign and rode through to the Chillean side where the queues were longer and it took quite a while to get the internet and fill in the “sag” form and declare the food we were carrying which included milk, bread, cereal. We got our new TIP for the motorcycles and helped a group of Chinese tourists with the forms – at our second border crossing we seemed to be slightly less confused than them 😉👍.

It all took time and we left the border around 3pm still having another 175km to travel and winds increasing. We pushed on and ran into some incredibly strong cross winds where the road went along the Strait of Magellan from Baha Santiago to Baha Gregorio. At obe stage the gusts on top of the steady cross winds were so strong that we both almost ended up on the other side of the road with oncoming traffic – I was leading at the time and when I saw the large trees and buildings of Estancia San Gregorio, I pulled over for a break. We hit pictures of the abandoned buildings and the shipwreck of the steamship “Amadeo”. We continued on and it got a bit easier with the direction of the road changing and us mostly heading straight into the wind. There were threatening rain clouds ahead.

We got pulled over another time at a police check point – this time they not only wanted our passports which they photographed again but also our TIP papers which I carry in my top box for both of our bikes. All papers were in order and we continued and finally arrived at our accommodation at 6:30pm. We had to wait a few minutes for the owner to come and show us our cabana after I messaged him that we had arrived.

We were both so relieved and happy we made it here where we will spend 3 nights and meet friends from Australia and get ready for the last final stretch South to Ushuaia.

We treated ourselves to dinner at what turned out to be the best place we have eaten so far – the food was outstanding, the waiter was great and we might have to go back for at least one more time 😉