Starting the long drive north

We set the alarm for 4am to be ready for the apartment owner to come and collect the keys at 5! In the event, we were ready a little early, so Mark set off to the hostel where the others have been staying while I waited to do the handover.

We were both at the hostel in good time and met up with the others. None of us were relishing the prospect of the next six days driving to cover the 3000 kilometres or more needed to reach Buenos Aires. The only consolation was that 5 people have left the truck completely and another 7 have chosen to fly direct to BA, so there are only 21 of us on board! It means we can spread out! Mark and I bagged a double seat each - a vast improvement on the past few weeks!

We set off just after 6am and retraced the route that had brought us to Ushuaia. By 8am, we were stopping at the bakery in Tolhuin for people to buy something for lunch, and by 10.30, we were crossing the border back into Chile at the same place where we camped the other night! We had to take all our bags off the truck to be checked, but we were soon on our way.

We reached the ferry across the Magellan Straits by 2pm and were fortunate to drive straight onto one which was about to depart! This time, I got off the truck to explore the ferry, but all I managed to see was the inside of a very smelly toilet when I got myself locked in!! I made a lot of noise, but nobody came to help. I was beginning to panic when I finally got the lock open!!

Once we docked, we continued our drive north. We were soon on a different road and crossed the border into Argentina once again. We were leaving Chile for the last time on this trip. We have entered and departed the country four times and have eight stamps in our passport to prove it. We will leave and re-enter Argentina again, but have no Argentine stamps as they just register your movements electronically.

Fortunately, our second border crossing of the day went as smoothly as the first and we were soon heading for the town of Rio Gallegos 70 kilometres further north. Once there, we went to a huge Carrefour supermarket for the cook groups to shop and for the rest of us to buy something for lunch for tomorrow and anything else we fancied. As usual, it was a rush around grabbing stuff, Supermarket Sweep-style!! Mark is cooking at the bush camp tomorrow, so his group needed to shop. There was very little fresh fruit and veg, and everything was very expensive as we have come to expect in Argentina, so we all just have to improvise!Read more