When people told us it was windy in Patagonia, I imagined constant strong wind, riding down the road with the bike leaned over at 45deg, getting blown around a bit… Like really windy days back home. Um, No.

I didn’t imagine having to stay in one place for days to wait for a window of time when the wind DROPPED to that level so it would be less unsafe to ride between two towns 200km apart.

But there it is, and so, here we are in Punta Arenas watching wind forecasts and waiting for something below 60kmh of side wind before we leave.

The wind here is evil. At night in the room it feels like the whole building is going to get blown away. Yesterday I had to stop walking and crouch down low not to get blown over in the middle of town. The power lines screech and get blown so hard they smack against each other with such force it feels unsafe walking underneath them.

Anyhow…

The past week was spent getting to Ushuaia (mostly tail wind), being in Ushuaia (mostly disappointing) and then getting out of Ushuaia (mostly side and head wind).

Ushuaia itself is just another mid sized town, with not that much to see or do if you’re not doing excursions to see penguins or taking a boat to visit Antarctica.

The ride there from Porto Natales was nothing like as scenic as we’ve come to expect, just rolling hills and quite barren, aside from the weather we could have been in Australia!

As we were waiting for some spare parts to arrive in the next town we stayed there a few nights, and that was definitely enough.

Luckily the wind dropped to a manageable level for our departure, but even so…

‘babe there’s something wrong with my bike. It’s just going slower and slower’ crackles Sally over the intercom

‘ok… is it misfiring? Any lights on the dash?’

‘no it’s just going slowly, like only 70kmh’

‘mine is too, it’s this headwind, just try to tuck in a bit behind the screen and it’ll go a little faster’

Now we’re doing 80, full throttle. It’s 11am and we have another 300km to go, It’s going to be a long day.

To make matters worse, Sally got food poisoning last night so didn’t sleep, and was vomiting into a bucket half hour before leaving.

Poor Sally.

Also it’s cold. Really cold. 11deg on the dash, but with the wind tearing through me it feels much worse, well at least it’s not raining I muse…

Yep. There it is. Rain.

Kudos to the goretex gear we have though, or more like kudos to Sally for recommending that I bring my rain suit despite the bulk. At least we’ve stayed bone dry.

Unexpectedly those spare parts arrived a week early so we could have left here (Punta Arenas) had the wind allowed, but it’s been pretty brutal these few days. Today it’s averaging 68km/h with gusts at 92km/hr. And today is A LOT BETTER than yesterday.

We have a two hour window at 45km/h tomorrow morning to go north, fingers crossed the forecast is right!