Sorry I had no updates for a while. The C. Austral got so rough and I got reckless enough to bounce over those rocks in the road in such a fearless manner that my iPad got squeezed and turned itself on during riding. The keyboard punched in random numbers during more rocky, reckless riding and after gazillion of numbers it decided that some hacker was trying to get into my data info and my iPad disabled itself. I got to the end of the C. Austral: O'Higgins and found out further more that I had been stingy with my Cloud space and my iPad had not been connected to save my notes in the cloud - therefore I had lost all the stories and journal updates. Frustrated, as you can imagine I wasn't ready to reset my Pad to factory setting and start over - it took me about a week and then I found a nice person in Tolhuin with an apple computer and with a little help of my friends got the thing going again - having lost a little less than I thought....so, here it is...
I will write more updates from the time from my last entry until Ushuaia.
But now we are in Ushuaia I want you to know and this is from the day we got here:
The end of the world, the tour and Ushuaia
..didn't come easy!
Just a few km before the town the (head) wind picked up and the rain decided to drown us out of our minds. I yelled profanities, cursing this idea and the urge to have to ride to the end and not give up any of the other times I wanted to and now I am going to do it "come hell and high waters" (isn't that what you say?). The sign, the entrance to town with two of the other cyclists (we had met in the bakery in Tohuin the day before) waiting for us got my adrenalin going and I felt "high" - the rain had stopped for a moment and this moment and we goofed around, taking pictures eating chocolate, congratulating each other, posing....
Rolling into town through the icy wind- it was seven o'clock pm and I was feeling numb, dumb, empty, emptying out more and more with every pedal stroke......The "high" was getting very "low" and the center of town still a few more km to go.....COME ON, let it be, let me get there already, let me call it done and pamper me or let me pamper myself, get out of the wet clothes and EAT (the theme of the trip: EAT).
We ask in the hostels for prices and availabilities - full and overpriced. The people in the few hostels in the downtown area had no sympathies for us - smiling they told us either a horrendous price for a bed in the dorm room (leave alone a private room) or they were just plain full (it being Saturday). In one place I saw a suitable lawn area for our tent in the back yard and one of the guests who heard our story and where we came from was trying to talk the desk person into letting us camp back there for no avail....super friendly and superficial "no" and no alternative for us to find a place - they just didn't care...I felt tears welling up and swallowed them down - now, now, don't get wimpy on me I said to myself...
I put on as many clothes as I was able to pull quickly out of my panniers and we kept going - up and down some steep, steep small city roads, down the wrong way on a one way street..aimlessly through town, dark and wet, hungry and pissy - my mood sunk into some kind of dungeon below the dark place I was just minutes before. OK, back to the hostal we had first ask and deemed it too pricy - we pay the price just to get off the streets. The desk person said we can store the bikes down below the kitchen, he opened up two trap doors revealing some steep steps into a room below - I just looked at the steeps and laughed ...no way! But before I could say any more, three young men had picked up my 60kg bike and hauled it down there with me tagging along feeling helpless and done...ok, our bikes are safe and the guys are funny and I didn't even worry how we get them out tomorrow - that can just wait until the morning.
All four of us stayed in this crowded six bed dorm room - the girls shower room in the 3rd floor had no hot water, the one in the second floor was full of girls and unavailable - there was no first floor shower room (just in case you wondered). I went back to the dorm room, sticky and uncomfortable, lay on the top bunk and fought my tears no longer. I cried like a little girl - quietly and into my pillow. At least I wasn't on the dark street anymore fighting those steep roads and the traffic...crying felt GOOD - oh so good.....James was concerned - sad, he ask me if I wanted to eat....no, I just wanted to cry....feeling relieved that I can. He fetched me a sleeping back from his bike - just in case the blanket wasn't enough for me tonight - he put the new clean sheets on my bed -when I was finally able to use the shower -and when I came back into the room I climbed into my bunk and fell into a deep sleep before I could cry another tear.
