Pedro and Maria Motorcycle South America!: Ushuaia to Rio Grande, 130 miles

Yesterday was cold, but this morning broke the record. You couldn’t even get to a ‘comfortable’ temperature even all tied up close to each other in the sleeping bag, it was 38 degrees in the tent and we were freezing. Our ‘bank robber’ ski mask/hats didn’t even do the trick for us.

It was still raining, raining all night, all I could do was hope that the tent wouldn’t get the icy cold water inside of it. The surrounding mountains were all thickly powdered with fresh white snow, beautiful and very telling of the nights cold. We couldn’t sleep in, as soon as the light was more than just dim, we ran out of the tent and into the hot showers to try and defrost. After being in such cold all night, it takes a while to defrost, in which the campground didn’t have enough hot water for, but at least it took the chill off us. We followed the shower up with some hot tea and oatmeal in the communal area.

Our mission was to pack up, we couldn’t take another night in this cold and needed somewhere warm to get some good rest; either a hotel in Ushuaia or we make it further to Rio Grande. Packing up in the rain and ice cold mud is never fun. We did a team work effort and got everything in its place. Well, except for discovering that one of the pannier locks was frozen/broken in which we discovered it is VERY easy to break the locks on our panniers. Along with the frozen lock, our riding pant knee pads had somehow frozen overnight. They were rock solid; you couldn’t even zip your pants up before defrosting them in front of the fire. What kind of material are those things anyway?

We hit the road, muddy gear, rain and all. Brr! Before we even left Ushuaia I had already lost feeling in my toes and finger tips, but the worse hadn’t even hit us yet. Just outside of Ushuaia is the mountainous pass you climb through. Well, that pass must be higher than Ushuaia itself because as we drove, we noticed the snow level decreasing and soon was at our level. Thick white snow everywhere and falling heavily down on us. Brr, that’s all I can say. Freakin’ freezing our tootsies off, we slowly, slowly made our way through the snow filled mountains. Mike occasionally had to stop to do some jumping jacks just to keep blood flowing. Just as the snow was falling down on top of Mike’s jacket I thought to myself how this very gear we are wearing now in the icy cold snow is the same that we wore through the extremely hot and humid jungles of Central America…how can that be good for anybody!

I started thinking we might not make it over the pass, but before I knew it we started to descend back down to a lower elevation and the snow stopped, turned back into rain and eventually turned into a beautiful sunny sky. Still icy cold but a great break from earlier. Just some more hectic strong winds and miles and we made it to Rio Grande. Icy cold and desperate for a warm and comfortable place for the night, we decided to not stay at the hostel and spend the extra money to get our own private bathroom tonight.

We are now in our room, in bed, resting and trying to catch up on the warmth and sleep we lost the night before!

The 6AM defrost