Puerto St Julian

15th October 2025

I woke up at 5 am to the sound of the wind howling outside the hotel windows. Having tried to sleep a little longer I noticed a message from Tim to say that he was already up and had had breakfast. I think both of us were worried about today having felt the full blast of Patagonia‘s winds yesterday. We said goodbye to our new friends and headed off to find petrol for what was to be quite a long day. We were supposed to visit the petrified forest in the middle of the desert today, but we chatted whilst the bikes were being filled and decided not to take the hundred plus kilometre detour into the desert but just to ride straight to Puerto San Julian. This was already a 476 km ride and based on yesterday‘s experiences, we certainly weren’t looking forward to it.

Our fears were slightly unfounded because the winds never materialised in the strength of yesterday and because they were slightly behind us today, they actually aided our journey. The road conditions still made our riding tricky. The roads in this part of Patagonia have not been kept up-to-date in terms of maintenance, and this has led to the surface of the road almost becoming rutted where the heavy trucks run up and down. This creates a ridge in the centre of the road which when the bikes are blown around creates a very uneven surface and makes handling the bike quite difficult. We tended to stop every hundred kilometres or so either to stretch our legs and occasionally, where we found petrol stations , to fill up and grab a coffee and a warmup.

We arrived into Puerto Saint Julian at around 3 pm and found the small house that we had rented for the night in a slightly salubrious part of town. We got inside to find that the house had not been cleaned from the previous occupants. We contacted the owner and they assured us that someone would be coming at 5 pm to do that. In the meantime, Tim and I headed down to the seafront to see the reproduction Galleon ship that was navigated by Magellan during his voyage which led to the finding of the Magellan Straits. Magellan ships were supposed to have over-wintered in Puerto San Julian to affect repairs before heading south again the following spring. I hope thier rooms were more ready than ours !

We found a very local café which would take quite some description to be able to effectively convey what I mean but the fact that one customer was asleep with his head on the table and a litre of beer next to him might give you some idea of what we were experiencing. We had some pork escallop with a fried egg and chips and a beer each. A cafe never to be forgotten. We then jumped back on the bikes and headed back to find our apartment cleaned and ready to go.

From my previous visit in 2017. I knew that there was a quite cool bar in town that opened at 8 pm so at that hour we went out again to find a bar that was really out of place for Puerto San Julian and would have been more in place in a up town part of Buenos Aires. Neither of us could work out how such a cool bar could be in such a place, but needless to say we sank a couple before heading home. Once again i drew the short straw and had the tiny bottom bunk bed in the corridor whilst Tim lived it up in the double room. We both slept inside our silk sleeping liners. we still were not sure about this place.