The last 3.500km ...
After we have cycled a few days across Patagonia, we have got a rough picture of what was before us in the next 5 weeks. Heading east the wind coming from behind was nice, but turning west bicycle riding was getting difficult to manage with only 10km/h max. Speed. It felt like riding behind a jet. Fortunately, the course included only 50km in western direction.
The next largest town after Mendozza was Bariloche, where we had a day off. The town is famous for winter sports with a big lake and numerous hotels, restaurants, and bars. In Bariloche I had the best steak ever in my life. ;-)))
From there, we went direction Chile when the weather turned bad. In continuous rain we reached Futaleufu (Chile) at Nov.14th  where, fortunately, a room in a hostel was booked for us to dry us and our clothes, too. The weather forecast for the next days let us down, that’s why ten of our group left by bus to the next camp in Coyhaique. With the rest of our group I cycled another rainy day before weather and mood changed to getting better. After three lonesome days in the nature we reached Coyahaique - die biggest town in Patagonia on the Chilean side.  Next, we were off to Argentina, again. The highlight of the 10 days bicycle tour was El Calafate with its icy glacier, one of the few glaciers in the world still growing, despite of global warming. After this impressing experience we went further to see the national park Torres des Paine in Chile.
 
Close to Cerro Castillo on the border between Argentina and Chile we had the strongest wind, ever, of the whole tour. I couldn’t even manage more than 5 km/h, and when I stopped I had to hold on to my bike, so that it won’t get blown over. The national park belongs to the most popular vacation destinations of South America and is famous for its numerous beautiful hiking trails along lakes and mountains. We made a three mountain hiking tour to Torres des Paine, as well, and rode on further direction south to Punto Arenas, where we went to see penguins. Now we came to Tierra des Fuego, and therefore, close to our destination Ushuaia. After four more days on the RN 3 named “Routa fin del mundo” we reached Ushuaia on Dec. 13th 2016 around 16:00 h:  The end of the world!

We were all ovejoyed to have made it… Really, to acknowledge it, I still needed a few days.

Review:
4,5 months earlier we started in Quito, then always heading direction south to Ushuaia. We have managed 11.000km and 100.000 height meters. Very often I had the feeling: “Wow, a Mountain, a hard stage, a difficult unpaved passage survived again, and I was proud of myself. Though, from time to time I was swearing and I wanted to go home, but in the end the good feeling prevailed: We have made it, we rode from the midst of the earth to its end on bike – 13 of us with a Rohloff SPEEDHUB without any problems.

Now comes Christmas and then back again in every day life…
Merry Christmas

Thomas

A detailed daily report and pictures under:
www.thomas-lehmann.org