The Road to Rio Grande ...

.... Isn´t all that much fun!  We left Tolhuin yesterday morning at 6am hoping to outsmart the Fuegian winds, which we did for a few hours at least.  We had the most fantastic three hours of cycling, the roads were peaceful, the sun was shining and the road was a gentle mix of manageable hills and some good bits of downhill free-wheeling.  This was definitely our best cycling so far and we spent most of the morning spotting herds of wild Guanaco (basically the same as a Lama), enormous birds and marvelling at the impressive landscape.  At about 10am we met a pair of Argentine cyclists who had come from Rio Grande. Just as we were thinking how well we were getting on they decided to tell us about the hell that we were about to hit - 40km an hour winds, no trees and a totally flat, desolate landscape.  We pushed on, and as we rounded a big corner in the road sure enough the trees stopped and we could see the white horses of the Atlantic ahead of us.  Sure, the wind was pretty bad but we could see a bit of a drop in the road ahead and our thoughts turned to some freewheeling.  Clearly we had never cycled downhill into the 40kph Fuegian wind (Ben says it was 80kph but I´m not so sure).  You have to cycle with all your might and if you´re lucky you´ll hit a top speed of about 5kph.  This is not good for morale.
Memories of our blissful morning´s cycling were fading fast so we decided to try and make it to a camp site which we´d heard was 50km out of Rio Grande.  We´d already made it 60km from Tolhuin so techinically it should have been just over the hill and round the corner ... unfortunately our legs gave out before then and we decided to stop for lunch.  We looked around for some shelter, turns out whatever you do the wind will still seek you out so in the end our picnic spot was the grass verge of the road.  Still, we managed to get our wonderful stove working and feasted on packet soup and then managed an hours kip on the roadside huddled under our bright orange groundsheet from Poundland - this has turned out to be the best investment.  With warm soup in our bellies and a good roadside kip under our belts we felt ready to take on the next 50km to Rio Grande.
We made it to the top of the next hill, battling every step against the winds.  We were relieved to see a sign for the campsite and were thinking about bedding down for the night when the rains came.  On closer inspection the campsite was not looking all that inviting, in fact we were pretty sure it was an episode of Midsummer Murders just waiting to happen.  In a moment of blind desperation I flagged down the next car which handily happened to be a little pick up truck with room in the back for two bikes and a couple of weary cyclists. 
We´d managed to hitch a lift with what I think was Argentina´s answer to the white van man - a copy of Las Noticias tucked between the dashboard and the window rather than The Sun and a flask of Mate rather than a Wild Bean Cafe coffee cup but basically the same principle.  There was some fairly filthy chat going on between the two of them, also I´m pretty sure they were trying to work out how much our bikes were worth and how easy it would be to either push us out of the door as we were going along or get rid of our bodies if they killed us.  They seemed to spend quite a lot of time working out how much we both weighed - maybe it was much less sinister and they were just working out how much petrol money they should charge us.  Anyway they were very kind to us and we are eternally grateful to them for getting us to Rio Grande in one piece.
Rio Grande looks like a massive nuclear bunker but it has given us a warm shower and a bunk bed in a dorm with 3 other long distance cyclists and a Canadian motorbiker.  As you can imagine, it smells pretty good!  We were suprised to wake up this morning to find that the police armoury opposite our hostel had blown up during the night, we were so exhasuted that we´d slept right through it.  We have a day in Rio Grande to steel ourselves for the 80km to San Sebastian where we cross into Chile.  The road to San Sebastian runs alongside the Atlantic coast so we´re not expecting a break from this wind anytime soon.  From San Sebastian we head west and inland towards Porvenir where we cross the Magellan Straits to Punta Arenas.  This is about 200km and will be our longest stretch of cycling without a stop off point.  We hear there´s a petrol station in San Sebastian and then nothing for 200km until you reach Porvenir so it´s going to be a tough stretch but we have the thought of Penguin spotting in Punta Arenas to keep us going.