Rio Grande 2

There was a brutal wind blowing in the morning and then the rains started, pounding the windows of the boat hanger. It was dark and gray over the water and it felt good to be inside and out of that weather. The Dutch couple were going to leave and would have to pack their tent wet. They had slept outside to test the tent and needed to get on the road. The day before they had turned back because of the wind near the Salesian Monastery north of Rio Grande. Now they would have a wind just as bad but with rain. It was going to be a tough day on the bike.

Claudio offered to help with the rear rack problem and he came up with a solution that did not involve finding a welder. We got into his car and drove to a hardware store and purchased a 3 foot long metal rod threaded the same width as the eyelet tube to which the upper rack arms attached. The threaded portion of the left side of the tube, as deep as the allen screw, had broken off with the screw, but the rest of the tubing was hollow, intact and the threading was fine on the right side. We would remove the right side allen screw and run the long threaded rod entirely through the eyelet tube so that it protruded on both sides, cut the metal rod to size, and with nuts and lock-washers attach the upper rack arms to it.

For the stripped eyelet at the axle we bought a drill bit that was just large enough to drill out the threads. An allen screw would then go in from the backside of the eyelet and the two lower rack arms would attach to it with a nut and lock-washer on the outside. The work did not take long and Claudio had the tools for it. The rack is now as strong as it was before the eyelet failures.

While removing the rear wheel I saw that the axle was loose and I found the nuts had loosened on it and dirt had entered the axle. I had to remove the rear sprocket and take out the axle and clean and repack the hub. The bearings were fine and the cones looked good too. The bike is now ready for another few thousand kilometers.

With the bike again ready to ride Claudio and I celebrated the achievement with a cocktail made with Coca-Cola and Fernet and called a "Fernando". The Fernet is a popular Argentine digestif and is dark and syrupy with a bitter medicinal quality. It reminded me of the Hungarian liquor called Unicum. I thanked Claudio for his help and I hoped he found work in Rio Grande and if I was ever as far north as Cordoba I would be sure to stop to see him.

Rio Grande

The wind was blowing southeasterly like I expected. I felt good on the bike, my arms did not ache from yesterday’s ripio, and the wind pushed me down the road out of the small mountains and onto the plain. After a day on the ripio the feeling of riding on the pavement was wonderful. It was early and there were few cars and camions.

I was within 30km of Rio Grande when around a bend in the road I saw a figure. I thought it was a stopped motorcyclist and slowed to ask him if everything was alright. But as I got closer I saw the bulging front panniers and it was another touring cyclist heading north. I pulled off on my side of the road and laid my bike on the shoulder and crossed the road to him. His name was Matthias, part Swiss and Argentine, and he had just begun a 3 year tour from Ushuaia that would take him to Alaska and then across Canada. He was young and this was his first bicycle tour.

He had a beautiful new carbon fiber touring bike. He was wearing fine new synthetic clothing and special sunglasses and the bike was loaded as a motorcycle was loaded. His front panniers were larger than my rear ones. I imagined he had inside them a special piece of clothing for every type of weather condition. There were bright logos on everything and you could see he had put a lot of money into his gear.

But he did not have the legs yet or the will for the wind. Matthias rode during the night when it was windless and walked the bike into the wind during the day. He had been on the road a week and had not gotten far. He wanted to know about the ripio through Chile. Were there towns? What was Cerro Sombrero like? Did San Sebastian have lodging? Was there anything in between? What was ripio exactly? He was very worried about the ripio.

I did not want to tell him that riding the ripio at night would be too dangerous, and that pushing his bike across the 125km stretch would only be possible if he were carrying more than a week’s worth of food and water. There was nothing there and he would need to begin riding into the wind during the day if he was to get anywhere. A bicycle when ridden in its lowest gear was still faster than a man walking it. And the Chilean ripio could be ridden unlike some of the other ripio I had been on.

It takes a different type of conditioning to ride into the wind and when I started at Buenos Aires I did not have it either. The winds are strongest in Tierra del Fuego and Matthias was starting into them and I did not envy him for that. But the only way to develop the legs and the will for the wind is to ride into it. Matthias would learn that and he would have to when his supplies of food and water forced him to get on the bike and to ride it. The ripio in Chile would be the first of a number of stretches which you rode hard across before the water ran out. It sure was a beautiful bike he had though.

Salesian Monastery

I made Rio Grande before noon. It is a dull, industrial town along the Argentine Sea but is well-known for having some of the world’s best trout fishing in the streams and rivers around it. It rained a little as I rode towards the center of town and I stopped at a service station and ate a sandwich.

Two days earlier Ian had told me about a campground at the Club Nautico at the furthest part of town along the bay and I rode to it. I had not even gotten off the bike when a smiling woman pulled back the curtain inside a building and came out the door to greet me. I could put up my tent outside for 26 pesos or inside for 36 pesos. My bike would go inside, of course. Either way I could come inside the building and use the kitchen and internet and there were hot showers. I needed to dry my tent and decided to put it up inside.

The building was an old boat hanger and there were kayaks and small boats hanging inside it and a kitchen was set up in one end overlooking the water. I talked with Claudio who was from Cordoba and looking for mechanical work in Rio Grande. There was also a Dutch couple who were just beginning a bicycle tour from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires. They had toured in many places around the world and recommended Vietnam and Cambodia as countries I should ride in next. The Dutchman also said I should go down to the port at Ushuaia and see if I couldn’t pay to board a cargo ship bound for Valparaiso, Chile. From there I could ride west through Santiago and cross the Andes to get to Mendoza. It seemed a very good idea to me, but I would first need to fix the back rack. I made some pasta and had a beer and it felt very good at the Club Nautico and I was looking forward to staying another day and resting and repairing the bike.

Tierra del Fuego (10 km after San Sebastian, Argentina)

I crawled out of the tent and it was very cold and cloudy but it was windless. I packed and got on the bike to warm myself up. I wanted to get a good portion of the straight south stretch of Y-79 ridden before the winds picked up. I thought I might do the entire stretch of ripio, all the remaining 115km, and be back in Argentina by the evening. It was ambitious, and it would depend upon the quality of the ripio and if I had to walk the bike through stretches, but I would have the wind mostly as a crosswind and tailwind. Still, you cannot ride fast on ripio.

I stopped to eat a package of cookies for breakfast and noticed my rear left pannier was touching the rear wheel. I looked more closely and saw that the allen screw that attached the two rear rack arms to the eyelet on the axle had pulled out. The back rack on that side was swinging freely. I looked at the other screws and on the same side the eyelet that held top flat support piece of the rack had broken off part of the eyelet with the screw still inside it the threaded portion. Only the 2 screws on the right side of the rack were holding the rack onto the bike.

It was a disaster. I had at least 100km of ripio to go and the rear rack had failed. I turned the allen screw into the lower eyelet and it turned in difficultly and stopped. The eyelet was stripped. The screw was only partly in and I couldn’t get it out. I got out my tools, duct tape, twine and extra bungee cords and sat down to think about what I could do.

With duct tape I was able to wedge the two lower support rods of the rack between the frame, the protruding allen screw, and the quick release. The two extra bungee I used to lash the top of the rack to the frame around the axle. The bungee cords I hoped would provide enough vertical pressure to keep the rack from breaking the duct tape cast and swinging sideways. Then I duct taped the upper rack support to the eyelet it had broken from. It all seemed to hold firmly. There was no give to the rack. But the test would be on the next 100km of jarring ripio.

I passed Cullen by midmorning and saw the gas facility set in off the road. There was no chance I could have made it before nightfall yesterday. I checked the rack and it was still good. I was nearly out of duct tape and would have stopped in and seen Mauricio at the plant if the rack was getting worse and required a better fix.

The ripio was always rideable and I did not need to get off the bike to push it. Cars, camions and tour buses passed me kicking up rocks and dust. They were almost all from Argentina. I figured the road remained unpaved because the Chileans didn’t use it. It had been paved only as far as the last town at Cerro Sombrero.

An Argentine family stopped in a van ahead of me and waved me down. They gave me a sandwich and small box of chocolate milk. They would be in Ushuaia today and maybe I would see them in a few days and we said goodbye and good luck. I would take only one break to eat the sandwich over the last 65km of ripio.

It was 5pm when I made San Sebastian on the Chilean side and I stopped at the hosteria and had a hot sliced meat and melted cheese sandwich with everything on it and it was very large and very good. I drank a liter of sparkling water and had a coffee. The Chilean ladies were very nice to me until they hit me with the exchange rate they were using to convert Chilean pesos to Argentine. They calculated the bill at 76 Argentine pesos, or 19USD. It was outrageous. I was too exhausted to argue and the sandwich had been too good, with a special flat bread they baked freshly in the back and eggs that came from the chickens out front. I told the ladies they were thieves but I was smiling and I would probably have paid more for that sandwich too.

I crossed through the Chilean checkpoint and then rode the last 14km of ripio along the cliffs between the frontiers. At the Argentine checkpoint the pavement began again. I went through the passport control and received my stamps and rode up the hill and down below stretching out was the Bahia San Sebastian.

I ascended higher and looked for a place to camp. I rode 10km before I found a spot and put up the tent where it was partially hidden behind a ridge above a lower lying drainage area. Only truckers going to Chile could see me and only during daylight. At night the headlights of cars or trucks would be too high on the road to pick up the tent. There were sheep on the pasturelands and just over the last hills I could see the blue of the Bay of San Sebastian.

I made a coffee and finished a package of cookies and read about Rio Grande. My wrists hurt, my shoulders and elbows too, but my legs were alright. It wasn’t too cold but when the sun set the cold came on quickly and I put my sweater and headband back on, a second pair of socks, and wrapped a tshirt around my neck as a scarf. I got into my sleeping bag. I felt a little cold but I was dry and knew I would warm soon. It was too cold and I was too tired to go outside the tent and spend 30 minutes cooking pasta and I made myself a cup of soup and ate a package of crackers. I had eaten that big sandwich earlier. I had gone 125km, 115 of them on ripio. It was a brutal day, the sort you would not wish upon anyone. I lay in the tent listening to the trucks pass. Most of them were coming from the Chilean side. The moon was bright and there was almost enough light in the tent to see without my flashlight. Tomorrow would be an easy wind-assisted 70km to Rio Grande.

Tierra del Fuego (10 km after Cerro Sombrero, Chile)

There was light rain in the night. I awoke to the beeping sound of some goose I had not seen before. The morning was cold and cloudy but windless. In the north towards Rio Gallegos it was dark and I could see there were storms. I ate the banana the Swiss had given me and made a coffee. I walked around the Laguna Azul to see how it looked in the morning light and then I rode back to Ruta 3.

The frontier with Chile was 8km away and I ate my last apple before crossing through the Argentine side. The guards at both the Argentine and Chilean checkpoints were impressed I was coming through on a bicycle. The Chileans checked only one pannier for contraband and passed me through into Chilean Patagonia.

A breeze had picked up but it was blowing southeasterly and I was catching part of it as a tailwind. Up ahead coming towards me I saw a fully loaded cyclist, the first one I had seen. We both pulled off onto the shoulder of our side of the road and I walked over and greeted him. His name was Ian and he was English and lived in Vancouver and had started riding from there in June of 2009. He had intended to ride the way back going up Ruta 3 but he couldn’t do it. There wasn’t any more cycling left in him. He had been hit by car in Bolivia and hospitalized for two months and his knee had not healed right. He hoped to hitch a ride from Rio Gallegos to Buenos Aires so he could see Uruguay.

We talked about different parts of his trip and it was strange to hear him talk about places he had been at years ago as part of a journey he was currently on. It was hard to imagine a journey that lasted years.

But how was it from Rio Gallegos, Ian wanted to know. I told him there was no protection from the wind and nowhere to put up a tent. There were no petrol stations or towns either. It is 65 km of windblown riding through the countryside between the small mountains. I will camp then at the frontier, he said. It is better to camp where I did last night, and I told him about the lagoon in the volcanic crater.

Ian told me I would have the wind southeasterly across Tierra del Fuego, mostly blowing with me, and it would not be difficult to reach Ushuaia. At Cullen, on the Chilean ripio, I should stop at the gas facility and ask for Mauricio, the supervisor, and tell him that Ian sent me. Mauricio would invite me to join the workers for an asado and I could sleep indoors.

Ian had come down the Chilean side on the Carretera Austral on his way to Ushuaia, but there were too many touring cyclists and there was too much stopping to talk with each of them. It was too popular a route and he had crossed into Argentina to ride the ripio of Ruta 40. How was that, I wanted to know.

Ian shook his head and laughed. “When you piss it just vaporizes. Even when you piss with the wind it comes back at you as a mist of your own urine. I was like, aghh, here I am covered again in my own urine.”

“But the road could be ridden?” I admired him for riding it. It was maybe the hardest touring route in the world.

“The wind on ripio can be impossible because you lose all traction on the stones. I was once walking the bike and the wind snatched it away from me, and I watched the bike roll three times down the road. Three times. A fully loaded bike.” Ian grinned. “It is the hardest riding I have ever done. I began at 5am in the darkness every day to beat the wind. But there was no one and I did not have to stop and talk to other cyclists.”

The wind had really begun to blow now. I took out my rain jacket and put it on.

Ian looked cold too and I saw his teeth were chattering. “A coffee would be great. And we could talk more,” he said.

“I have coffee,” I said and looked around. “But there is nothing to block the wind for the stove.”

“There was a bus stop cabin some ways back,” Ian paused. “But I can’t go back.”

“Yes,” I said. “I wouldn’t go back either.” Going back was something you did not do. We both needed to start riding to warm back up.

“Then I guess this is it.”

“Yes.” I shook his hand. “Ride safely.”

“Yes. You too.”

“Goodbye.”

“So long.”

I would think of Ian later in the day as I had the wind squarely behind me, coasting eastward the last 10km to lthe Strait of Magellan and the ferry at Punta Delgada. Where he was then and where he was going there would be no coasting. He would fight the wind to the frontier and into Argentina and I hoped he pushed ahead the next 8 kilometers and went to camp at the Laguna Azul. I imagined Ian would put up his tent between the same wind-protected lava formations I did the night before. Men who take to the road on long bicycle journeys are always good men and I hoped the best for him.

At Punta Delgada I waited two hours for the ferry crossing. Two ferries came but accepted only camions. While I waited a guy in sunglasses walked over to me. His name was Ryan and he was South African. An hour earlier he and four other guys had swam the strait. It was 4km across and the Chilean navy had escorted them and it was a national media event for the country. They were ice-water swimmers and were planning next to swim the Beagle Channel to Puerto Williams if the temperature was above 4 degrees. I congratulated him and he congratulated me on my riding and he headed off with the other swimmers in a van.

Looking out at the Strait of Magellan I remembered Tom Cunningham and we were standing in the driveway in Chicago on a clear, cold day in the fall and we talked of shipwrecks and Magellan and his men and the swirling currents and remembering took away all the months in between. It felt like last week but it was many months and a long way ago. I had come many kilometers since then and soon I would cross the strait into Tierra del Fuego.

There was another ferry and a man motioned that I board it and I rode down the embankment and to the back end of the ferry. Cars drove in and lined up behind me and when it was full the ferry disembarked. A few Argentines came out of their cars and spoke with me and I did my best to explain how smaller wheels do not affect the speed of a bicycle. It is a hard thing for non-bikers to understand and it is a conversation you have often when you ride something that to most people looks like a child’s bike or a circus bike.

On the other side there was a large group of tourists standing outside two buses and as I pushed the bike up from the water they pointed and talked and began taking my picture. It was like passing through the lines of the papparazzi at a movie opening.

I was in Tierra del Fuego, but it didn‘t look any different from where I had been. There were hills and small mountains in the distance across the yellow brown fields, and the wind was still southeasterly. I had hoped get as far as Cullen, where I could find Mauricio at the gas facility Ian had told me about, but the two hours I had spent waiting for a ferry would make that difficult. There were 125km of ripio beginning at Cerro Sombrero and Cullen would be the only stop before the other frontier with Argentina. Even if I did not make Cullen I could at least pass Cerro Sombrero and start eastward on the ripio with the wind at my back.

The sun was low when I arrived at Cerro Sombrero. There was a small restaurant with a minimercado attached to it and I stopped in and asked if they took Argentine pesos and they did. I ordered a hot sliced meat sandwich with cheese and when I was finished I stood next to the gas stove warming and drying out. I bought some cookies and nuts at the market and back on the road just outside town the pavement ended and the ripio began.

Storm cloud with hail

The wind was blowing strong behind me, the setting sun hot on my back, the dark mountains ahead, and I rode into a dark cloud and there was rain. No, that’s not rain. Hail. It was small bits of hail. I supposed hail was the proper welcome to the Land of Fire.

I did not ride much further before I started looking for a place to camp. On a bend in the road there was a deep trench and I stopped and walked down and saw it provided a good break from the wind and the tent could not be seen from the road. That didn’t matter much anyway since there would be little traffic during the night on a long stretch of ripio in the middle of nowhere.

I pitched the tent and crawled in and changed out of my sweaty clothes into dry ones. There were pieces of metal drums piled in the trench and I made a windbreak for the stove and cooked up the plate of pasta I had planned to have the night before. I had the pasta and a coffee inside my tent and I was warm and it was good to think I had finally gotten to Tierra del Fuego.

Laguna Azul

I was up early because of the guy snoring in my room and went to the kitchen and made coffee. It was very cold and raining and from the window of the lodging I watched the wind gusting and blowing the trees over. You will not ride today, smiled the old lady who was cleaning the place. But I will ride, I said. I will not stay here one more day.

Johann came down later and we talked until it was nearly noon. The rain had stopped and it was sunny now but the wind was very strong and very cold. Johann was having his bike delivered to Rio Gallegos that afternoon and he was anxious to get it. I loaded the panniers onto the Bike Friday and said goodbye to him and started off into the winds towards Ruta 3.

There was nothing from Rio Gallegos until a town in Chilean Patagonia and I bought a load of cookies and snacks at a mercado on the edge of town. Where the town ended the wind was devastating. I rode leaning off the side of the saddle into the wind, almost as a motorcycle racer takes a corner, but trying to ride straight. When the gusts didn’t come I almost toppled over onto the shoulder. I was barely moving. It should have been a rest day, I thought to myself.

Ruta 3 shifted so that the wind was a headwind and crosswind. I set simple goals for myself. Go 6 kilometers and stop and eat some cookies and have some water. The 65km to the Chilean frontier did not seem possible. Even going 20km did not seem possible in this wind. Those numbers were too big to think about at the speed I was moving. Just do 6km. Just 6. Rest. 6 more. Its only 6. C’mon, 6 is nothing. And that was how the day went. As the sun was starting to go down over the small mountains I had gone 50km and began looking for a place to camp.

But there was no protection from the wind. I kept riding and figured if I saw nothing the Argentines or Chileans at the frontier would let me camp behind a wall or a building at the crossing. Then I saw an exit sign for Laguna Azul. It was a tourist spot 4km west off Ruta 3. Maybe I could camp there. At least I would be off the busy main route.

The road was paved toward the Laguna Azul and the fields here were strewn with pieces of lava and in the distance were black mountains. The last kilometer was gravel ascending into the sun setting over the far hills, the wind beating back at me fiercely. I almost could not go further but I saw there were two cars parked on a hill and a cinder path that ran up it and I rode there and laid the bike down and walked up.

The hilltop was the edge of a large volcanic crater and far down below was the Laguna Azul. The Blue Lagoon. It sounded even better in English. It was poetry. I walked further around the edge of the crater and met a Swiss couple huddled around a nook in the lava. On a little stove they were cooking their last vegetables before crossing the border into Chile. You couldn’t cross with fruit or dairy either and they gave me a banana and some cheese dip.

I realized I was getting chilled walking around the lagoon in my sweaty clothes in the cold and wind. I had forgotten to change into dry clothes and didn’t even have my tent up. I hurried back to the bike and pushed it near the crater edge between two lava formations that blocked the wind. I quickly pitched the tent and got inside and changed, but it was too late and I was freezing. I wrapped clothes around me and balled up inside the sleeping bag. I was hungry but that could wait. I needed to get warm first.

I had pasta I wanted to make for dinner but didn’t want to spend so much time outside the tent cooking. I made a bowl of soup instead and ate some cookies and an apple. It had taken a few hours but I could feel my body temperature warming. It would be cold every day now and I had to be more aware of getting out of sweaty clothing before I became chilled.

I was still hungry and ate a box of crackers with the cheese dip of the Swiss couple. It was dark and I was the only one up there on the crater’s edge above the lagoon. The wind had stopped blowing and it was silent and peaceful. Through the tent window I could see the Southern Cross. In the distance I heard the baying of sheep. Then I was asleep.

Rio Gallegos

I awoke in the night after the storms passed and went out of the tent to relieve myself. It was still and cloudless and I looked up at the foreign stars awhile. There was something just like what we called the Milky Way. I wondered what they called theirs. The moon was bright and I could see clearly over the hills. I was wearing two tshirts and my sweater and a tshirt wrapped around my neck as a scarf, but it was still cold and I crawled back into the tent and went back to sleep.

The wind was cold and blowing hard from the west when I awoke. I would have less than 10km through the hills fighting the wind, and then the road bent eastward and I would have 33km of windblown riding into Rio Gallegos. It was exactly what I had hoped for the day before and the reason I had not started this stretch yesterday when the wind was blowing from the sea.

After winding through the hills Ruta 3 dropped and it was a fast run-out to the lower plain. There the road turned eastward at a place called Güer Aike and traffic was backed up at a police checkpoint. They stopped me too and I needed to show my passport.

The wind was blowing from directly behind me now and I up-shifted to my highest gear, mashing it hard. To my right the yellow brown plain extended to the south and on my left were the cliffs of the broken plain I had just descended from. I was riding so hard traffic was only slowly passing me now and though it was rolling country it was the fastest I had ever ridden not descending from mountains.

I soon made Rio Gallegos and rode into the center of town and at the tourist office was given a map and a location beyond the edge of town for the campground. I stopped at a pizza place and had a large pie and a Quilmes. I was there awhile and ordered a salad and when that was not enough I ordered another small pizza. There was a free concert going on in a parking lot beside the plaza and I pushed the bike over and watched two of the young rock bands.

It was getting dark and I went in search of the campground. It began to rain as I rode to the southern part of town. I was near the bus station and it was a beat-up area and down a muddy gravel road with deep potholes and puddled water there was supposed to be the campground. I didn't see it anywhere. Dogs barked and chased out after me from the shadows. I couldn’t out ride on the gravel and when I saw them coming I got off my bike and would pick up a rock. That usually stopped them, but some still charged and I had to throw at them. These dogs must have been hit by rocks before and a rock thrown near them turned them around quickly and they pulled back but continued to bark.

It was fully dark and I gave looking for the campground. I had the address of a hospedaje and rode through the dark streets with a handful of rocks-- dogs around every corner-- until I found it. It was 60 pesos for a shared room and I would have to lock the bike up outside. I had little choice and paid for the bed. I had wanted a rest day in Rio Gallegos but decided then I would leave the next day. I didn’t like the hospedaje, the town, or all the dogs.

Sleeping in the bunk beneath me was a Dutch guy named Johann. He lived in South Africa and was traveling Patagonia and planned to do some mountain biking. We talked roads and bikes for awhile and he was a fine fellow. His life had taken a difficult turn and he had come to Patagonia to figure things out. Patagonia was a good place for that. I made coffee and we talked until they closed the kitchen and turned the lights out at midnight.

I did not sleep well. There was a couple in the other two beds in the room and the man snored loudly through the night. I kept thinking the snoring would wake her and she would nudge him. But she didn't and maybe she was used to it. I didn’t like Rio Gallegos at all.

On Ruta 3 (40 km to Rio Gallegos)

The cold wind that was blowing when I went to sleep must have blown itself out overnight and it was calm and peaceful when I awoke. It was cool and the clouds above the hills in the east were bright pink and purple as the sun came up behind them. I made a coffee and then packed and got on the road.

When it is windless Patagonia comes to life. Birds and insects come out from their hiding places and it is no longer a silent, empty place where only the wind blows. The birds darted low across the road feeding and there were also many guanaco and rhea and for the first time I saw a Patagonian fox. The grasses and scrub along the road is a feeding area for the wild animals as they do not compete here for food with the sheep and cattle that graze within the fenced in estancia lands.

I saw another sign for Lemarchand and then I saw the red building on the plain that was the restaurant, hotel and gas station. I stopped and had four sandwiches and a coffee and recharged my computer battery. The day was still windless and I did not want to stop for too long.

I was riding hard and felt good in the saddle and to ride without the wind was easy. There were no longer any kilometer markers and I dropped into and out of smaller riverbeds and I forgot about the distance and and even where I was going. I saw the land and the road and there was only the motion of the pedals. If it were not for water, food, sleep and darkness there would be no reason to stop riding.

By afternoon the sun had burned off the cloud cover and it was hot and I stopped to remove my sweater and leggings. There had been a squeaking sound coming from somewhere on the bike and I saw one of the rear fender stays was rubbing against the wheel. I readjusted it but now the fender was touching the wheel. Since the day on the ripio that I had lost the plastic nut that held the stay to the fender, I had not been able to get it re-mounted right.

I rode further but the fender again began to touch the wheel and made a rumbling sound. I stopped and this time pulled a plastic nut off the front fender and moved it to the back, now duct taping the front fender stay in place. But this failed too and I soon pulled off again. All this stopping was ruining my rhythm and it made me furious and I removed the fender from the bike and lashed it to the back rack. Had it been biodegradable I would have tossed it on the roadside.

Now I was riding without any noise and I got back into rhythm and began to push it. I saw a sign indicating 80km to Rio Gallegos and I began to think I might do the whole 170 in a day. But a slight breeze soon began from the east and it quickly developed into a gusting headwind and crosswind. I felt strong and rode through it but it worsened. I knew that Ruta 3 would soon turn directly eastward towards Rio Gallegos, and the last 33km would be directly into this terrific wind. It was almost 5pm now, and I decided I would ride until I saw a good place to camp. The wind would probably be from the west tomorrow and that last 33km would be easy. 

There was a bend in the road through the hills and a steep drop off and I stopped to inspect it and saw that I could camp below and be unseen from the road. I pushed the bike down the embankment and pitched the tent and lay inside and watched the sheep grazing on the hills.

The wind died down and I went out and started to cook some rice. The skies had gone grey and there were dark, nasty clouds moving in quickly from the west. The wind picked up and I put on the rain fly. It had become a race between the cooking rice and the rain.

The rice finished cooking just as the first drops fell and I got back into my tent and began to eat. The sky went black and the wind and rain battered the tent, bending it severely when it gusted. I finished eating and lay in my sleeping bag watching the tent bend and shake and wondering if it would hold. The storm only worsened and rain began to leak through the rain fly and when it gusted water hit me. I packed up the panniers and readied my rain gear beside me. If the tent went down I could evacuate it quickly. I fell asleep with my rain jacket over my face. It was easier to sleep when you had a plan for when it all went wrong.