First Aid and Fast Riding

T`was a cold tail wind that pushed us eastwards out of Porvenir on our last section of ripio. We decided to take the high summer road instead of the coast road for the initial 50km. First mishap was Alan’s derailliour (sp) almost taking out some spokes (our worst nightmare) then then my partially fractured carrier decided to completely break. So we had to undo the string job holding it to the frame and incorporate a tent peg as a splint and re-attach, thank goodness for First Aid courses that teach the principals of splinting.

It was very cold and exposed heading up and over the 500m hill. The journey was punctuated by tails of the gold mining era – Croatians stealing the Indian women and such like, and, by guacanoes gracefully leaping fencelines as they crossed our path. The long necked beasts make unusual sounds to warn the team of our prescence and their hides were used to keep the indians warm before fleece garments becames so  popular.

It was a welcome descent to the flat (stll gravel) coast road and our average speed for the 100km in the afternoon was over 30km/hr because of the amazing tail wind. At times we were coasting at 40km/hr along the flat ripio with no pedal strokes – exhilerating stuff.

We met a crazy Italiano who was on foot pushing his red and heavy looking loaded bicycle in the oposite direction – it was just too windy too ride and he was too proud to hitch. We offloaded spare water and sped on by. 2 minutes Alan calls a halt as the two lugs that hold his carrier to his bike have just snapped and his carrier is bouncing along on his wheel. Hmmm..

We are starting to run out of string with all these carrier repairs but still managed to tie the 2 sides of his carrier to the frame and got thru thlast 40km of ripio to the Argentinian border and paviemento by 6pm. It was the furthest distance we had gone in one day and to have done it on a gravel road says something about the wind down these parts!

The night was spent camped out in the waiting room of the Argentinian border post, showers included! Today we had another fast and uneventful ride into the large town of Rio Grande. Our destination of Ushuaia is now on the road signs and less that 300km away.