The first 100km...

We´ve just completed the first 100km chunk of our journey to Lima.  We didn´t break any world records doing it, but we made it in one piece and it was enjoyable (mostly).

                                   Our first experience of the icy Fueguian winds outside Ushuaia airport

The first 5km out of Ushuaia were unmitigated torture.  So thorough was our preparation for the trip, neither of us had ever cycled weighed down with 25 kilos of junk before.  Nor had we experienced the kind of winds that are commonplace at the end of the world.  Add in the sort of hills that you just don´t find at home and by the time we reached the city limits we were about ready to sell the bikes to the nearest passers-by (some bemused policemen and two young boys who couldn´t work out how we were making such hard work of it) and invest the proceeds in a bus ticket or the next flight home.

Just before we contemplated selling our bikes to the nearest passer-by

Fortunately we persevered and as we crawled up into the Sierra Alvear the sun came out and we started to get used to carrying the extra weight. 

By the time we ran out of steam that evening we´d covered a good distance and began to look for somewhere to stay for the night.  We came to a bend in the road with a sign to a "complejo turistico" (a tourist complex) called Haruwen so went in to investigate. 

Haruwen is in fact a cross country ski station that has been there for many years and closes down for the summer months.  There was something really eerie about being in an old ski resort out of season.  There was a restaurant, some snowmobiles, and a big piste map showing the various routes, but there were also some wierd things that you don´t normally see in ski resorts, like an old shipping container with blacked out windows and locked doors, and a wall with leathery objects that looked a bit like human scalps ritualistically nailed to it in pairs. 

Feeling slightly unnerved by the place we were just about to get back on our bikes and get away (while we still could) when a man appeared on the verandah of the restaurant and greeted us.  Like Jack Torrance in The Shining he had been employed to look after things while the resort was closed out of season, and like Jack Torrance he was there for the peace and quiet.  Fortunately the parallels with Jack Torrance end there.  He introduced himself as Roly and said we could stay for the night and he even offered us a bed in a hut round the corner. 

The bed was quite small (and quite soiled) so we declined and said we´d put our tent up in the garden instead.  It was a lovely spot by a bustling stream with views of the snow-capped mountains and suddenly seemed far less freaky.  We asked Roly about the scalps on the wall and he told us that they were in fact beaver tails.  It turns out that the river that runs along the valley is absolutely teeming with beavers.  Once the ski season is over there isn´t much to do here except kill beavers, and what´s more the Government actually pays people to do it - you just need to hang on to the tails to keep the tax man off your back....

The next morning we had breakfast with Roly and then said farewell to carry on cycling up to Paso Garibaldi and over to Lake Fagnano and Tolhuin where we planned to stay the next night.