Ushuaia - Puerto Natales

Yesterday our job was simple enough: riding 2 BMW F650GS from Ushuaia (Argentina) to Puerto Natales (Chile). Total distance: approximately 850km.

We were ready to leave Ushuaia at 7am but our departure was delayed by a minor battery problem on my bike which was 'quickly' resolved. We ended up starting engines at around 9am-ish and were planning on spending the night somewhere in the middle of the way.

Everything was going well, except for the very low temperatures and a malfunctioning heating grip on Micho's bike. We crossed a series of mountain ranges outside of Ushuaia riding through 100 kilometers of twisty roads and suddenly found ourselves trapped in the infinite vastness of the Patagonia. The word flat does not begin to describe how flat this place is. The one detail we missed was the lack of gas stations in the area. At one point, as we crossed the border between Chile and Argentina, the gas station where we were supposed to fill up at was out of order. I thought we could just fuel up in the next 50kms or so. 

After leaving behind 200km or dirt road along with herds of jumping guanacos and sprinting foxes, that yellow light indicating I had 40km left in my tank, finally decided to light up. Noticing how very much we stood in the middle of nowhere, I pulled over to look at the map in order to quickly make a decision: should we use those last 40km of gas left to turn around? take a detour? pour one bike's gas into the other's in order to get to a gas station and bring back some fuel for the other bike? We decided to keep going, I'm the one to think "these things usually turn out well, so we're just going to keep going and hope for the best..." And the best happened. 

We each had about 20km of fuel left, and trust me, we were nowhere near a gas station. All of a sudden, in the distance, we spot an enormous truck parked by the side of the road and a man (I could only assume was the driver) stood there waving his arms asking us to pull over, and so we did. 

He speaks up and says: "hey guys, I was carrying this 4-gallon container full of gasoline in the back of my semi but the friction caused by the movement of the truck punctured a hole in it and now I'm spilling gas all over the place. I don't want to waste all the fuel, would you guys like some?" 

Pretty amazing, huh? Now you understand why I say things always turn out well. 

After this small miracle we continued our journey towards Puerto Natales riding through VERY strong side and headwind. We had about 650km left. The days are long during this time of year, the sun didn't start setting until about 9-9.30pm and we still had around 50km left. Riding into Puerto Natales, the Patagonian plains started to disappear as we spotted a beautiful chain of mountains in the background, we could even see Torres del Paine. Check out the pictures in the slideshow.

Riding into town, we called the person in charged, said goodbye to the bikes who after all treated us well, found a hotel at around 11pm, slept for a few hours and by 7am we were on 13-hour bus back to Ushuaia.