Penguins, Pampa and Panderia
The last 20 km into Punta Arenas makes it quite evident we are in a larger city. The small road we have traveled since Natales opens up to a four lane highway passing through an industrial area of factories and large trucks. Eventually we make our way to a nice downtown filled with parks and bike lanes.
Punta Arenas is a major port city in the Straight of Magellan, so named when the Portuguese explorer Magellan was here 500 years ago in 1520 and charted a passage through the fiords for boats between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This allowed a much safer route versus going around the bottom of South America with its volatile high winds and crazy seas.
We have an evening ferry for the following day, so we do some much needed laundry and research the area heladerios (ice cream parlors). We visited the Plaza de Armas (weapons) where parades and festivals are held. We also ate in the same taverna where Shackleton organized the first Antarctic expedition. These little rewards and experiences have become a big motivator to reach places of civilization.
Our friend Ben has moved to another family going a little slower pace and will spend a bit more time in town before crossing the water over to Tierra del Fuego. The good news is he has decided to ride all the way to Ushuaia and complete his journey of 20 months from Alaska.
We load on the ferry for the two hour transit to Porvenir and Lara and Anne quickly head to the outside deck for spotting whales and dolphins while Kip relaxes inside watching a John Wick movie.
We disembark into Porvenir, a colorful small harbor town and our entrance to Tierra del Fuego. We have decided to leave the busy Ruta highway that many bikepackers use to reach Ushuaia and follow the “Fin del Mundo” off-road route from Bikepacking.com www.bikepacking.com/findelmundo
Taneli RoininenGone Bikefishing
This will give us several hundred more kms of dirt and take us to a king penguin sanctuary as well as the remote small towns of Cameron and Pampa Guanaco. We also get a rural border crossing back into Argentina that’s only open November through March.
We get a lot of rain our first night in Porvenir and it makes the dirt roads delightful for our 120km ride to the penguins. So delightful that we get sideways at speed in a very slick and muddy curve and drop the tandem. Not counting the high wind gusts the week before, it is the first time I have crashed us in 30 years. We both get a little dirty, as well as the tandem, and it is difficult to move as the mud builds up on the tires and our shoes. Fortunately, Lara is a bit behind and sees us on the ground, able to dismount before she hits the bad section.
We eventually find some more solid dirt and are able to proceed, stopping a while later beside a stream to wash off our clothes and shoes. We find a nice refuge a few kms after the penguins and set up for the night with an entrance time to the sanctuary the next morning.
The king (Rey) penguins nesting here are the second largest in the world and grow to about 3’ (1m) tall. They can travel over 1000km (some over 5000km) and come back here to mate and lay eggs. This colony is over 150 birds and has one member of a different species that arrived from New Zealand. As we watch the birds, Lara reminds us that we need to watch My Penguin Friend as soon as possible!
We make our way to Cameron for a nice campground and the opportunity to wash and dry clothes and the bikes.
We then set off for Pampa Guanaco. We know it will be a harder day as the wind has shifted and we will have a constant headwind. But it is really brutal, it rains for quite some time and we are in a cold fog. One bright spot is we pass a wood processing plant about halfway and we are allowed to eat lunch in the canteen with the workers.
We arrive in Pampa Guanaco with excitement of sleeping in a new refuge that has high reviews on iOverlander, complete with a warm shower and electricity! But it is Sunday and we are in a real ghost town. Pampa Guanaco is a new project being built by the government to promote tourism in the area and all the people “living” here go to their real homes on the weekend. The refuge is only open Monday through Friday and we are cold and wet, faced with the prospect of wild camping knowing a big storm will hit that evening. Fortunately we find some tent shelters behind the town and get the tents up in the dry beforehand.
We are mostly out of food and have two more days of remote riding before the next possible resupply so we decide to alter course and ride the dirt out 100km to the closest bigger town of Rio Grande. Passing through the border crossing, we have wifi access and try to book an Airbnb in town, letting the host know we will be out of coverage for several hours until we reach the main road.
We trudge on, aided by a sidewind that does not hinder progress much and reach the outskirts of Rio Grande, where we are met with a stiff 50+ kph headwind to get to town. With internet restored, we discover our rental has been denied and we regroup for options. It is 3pm and Lara suggests we should use the wind and go south to tomorrow’s destination of Tolhuin, 96km away. Without considering all the stuff that could go wrong, we take off!
And the first hour is splendid, spun out on the gears and cruising along at 35 kph. A bit slower the second hours and then things get ugly. We turn towards the west and our wind assist becomes a crushing side wind. Now we have about 150km under our belts and another 40 to go, the sun is setting and it starts to get cold. It is a rough end, especially following yesterday’s trudge fest, but we finally arrive after 187km of loaded riding at the renown bikepacker’s paradise of La Union Panderia.
La Union is famous in the bikepacking world. It is a massive spectacle of a panderia/pastry shop/restaurant in the small town of Tolhuin and the owner welcomes bikepackers to sleep there for free, along with a bathroom and hot shower. You reside inside the factory in a small corner of the basement with some mattresses. All bikepackers on the way to Ushuaia stay there and have for the last 20 years. We were lucky as there were only us three plus Jed, a young English guy biking for the last 10 months from Columbia. The night before, there were 8 people sharing the tight quarters.
A small tour to our sleeping quarters under La Union
They are open for business 18 hours a day and production is round the clock, so it wasn’t too surprising to have the lights on at 2am when workers were down in our area. But if you need a late night pastry fix, it’s right upstairs!
Though it was a must-do on our journey, everyone slept poorly. Jed had actually stayed a few days at La Union recovering from a malady and was ready to depart at the same time as us. He had intel from a lady who had left earlier about a cool abandoned lakeside resort and cottages that could be used for camping. Our original plans were to make the full 100km final push to the end of our journey in Ushuaia. But since we arrived in Tolhuin a day early and were ready for bed before even starting to ride, it was an easy decision to go half the distance and spend the night on the lake.
Next up, the final leg to Ushuaia or bust + ending with a big bang!