Day 14: Ushuaia – Rio Grande

We left our house in the forest for another forest: Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. We drove to Lapataia which is at the end of the Ruta Nacional 3. It is the farthest, farthest you can drive; after that either you swim or walk…

 

When we arrived, we met 3 members of our "Swiss-7" bikers. Why only 3??? Well, they faced cold, wind and rain when they drove to Ushuaia from Cerro Sombrero, so most of them were just fed up with riding the bikes and stayed in town.

Watching the end of the Ruta Nacional N°3, Hadrien spotted two guys with bullet-proof jackets and a big private yacht coming closer to the park’s bay. We watched with big curiosity the - to our eyes - unknown celebrity getting out of the boat and being escorted to a big private bus. Miji found out that it was the Peruvian president, Ollanta Humala. Of course we would have recognised him, if he would have been a little bit closer to us. ;) 

After this quick political insight, we headed to visit a castorera. By all this Hollywood excitement, Hadrien made us the honour of showing off his latest acquired skills. He managed to drop the bike and have the bike’s wheels up. No harm was done to the man, or the bike. He cursed and pledged not guilty. Hadrien’s truth is: “The fall was mainly due to the tank bag blocking the steering wheel. Thanks to my skills, I only fell once due to this”. Isabel was however very impressed by how fast Hadrien managed to jump off the bike before the fall, definitely chulenguito-style.

After this stunt-show, we continued with the castorera. We were astonished by the extent of destruction done by these cute waffle tailed beasts. As you can see, there were lots of dead trees along the river. Now the park has to control the population in order to avoid more destruction and give time to the fauna to recover. Sad note: you cannot eat castor. :-( (Dixit you know who!)

We were supposed to do a 3-hour trek but everybody was either tired or didn't want to change their clothes or it was Miji. So we went to Lago Roca for a well "deserved" lunch & beer. We had plenty of time to just relax and enjoy nature.

Lazy like we felt, but also because we were a bit sad to leave Ushuaia, we spent 3 hours to pack our bags. We then still took time to write some postal cards, and then went for a last coffee… pfff, it was definitely not easy to wave good bye to Ushuaia…