Cerro Sombrero

17th October 2025

KTM ??

Here we go again! Today we are heading for the end of Route 40. A place called Cabo Virgines The temperature is now dropping every day and today it was 4° when we loaded our bikes and headed off to the petrol station to fill up for the morning. We rode out of town and we were immediately confronted by a large traffic jam, which was due to a protest on one of the bridges out of Rio Gallegos. We have no idea what they were protesting against, but they had lit fires and there was lots of black smoke and people waving banners. The police told us it would be cleared at 9 o’clock and precisely on the dot they cleared it and the protesters went peacefully away.

waiting for the ferry

We carried on and turned off on the road to what what was supposed to be the Eastern most point of Argentina. we had not got very far when Tim developed a problem with the KTM. ( no one said "again") !! The chain guard bolts had come out and the chain guard had come off and taken his chain with it. It was going to be a roadside repair. Tim had spare bolts, but we did not have nuts to hold them on with. I eventually found some deep in a pannier which was supposed to be for my Garmin GPS mount. These worked and Tim was able to affect a repair fairly quickly.

However , in the meantime we had noticed that there may be another small problem, the road to Cabo Virgines was longer than expected and Tim‘s bike did not carry sufficient fuel to get us there and back and onto the border. We could have returned to Rio Gallegos to top up with fuel and then turned round again to go back to the border, but we were guessing at the end of 220 km of off-road ,the thought of going back and then going forward again only to get to be stuck at customs was not a good one. We decided to stop that route and carry straight onto the border and cross into Chile.

We think now we made the right decision the border crossing into Chile took at least an hour and a request by the border guards for one of our stickers.

We then carried on in Chile for another 60 or 70 km before having to take the ferry across the Magellan Straits into Tierra del Fuego.

From the ferry it was another 60 kilometres also to our hotel which we did whilst battling severe wins which for some reason today I found highly amusing and fun. All in all it was a nice day with lots of new adventures for us even though we did not make it to our prime destination. I think we both feel that every day has an adventure hidden somewhere in it and both of us are enjoying the experience.

The hotel was nice enough and we sat in the lounger with one too many cans of Patagonia IPA, which was amusing at the time , but led to not a very good nights sleep. We never learn !