4-21-10 Ushuaia, Argentina....snowed in and crashing

Ushuaia was a fairly touristy town with more gift shops than necessary but also had some good restaurants and one of the best hostels I've ever stayed at.  While there we met up with another motorcyclist, Sami who split his childhood between Lebanon and Canada.  He'd flown to Quito and bought a bike there and plans to head north to Buenos Aires so we'll probably meet up with him again.

We loaded up the bikes with the intention of heading north, back over the treacherous Garibaldi pass and into the forests of central Tierra del Fuego. First, though, we thought we’d take a scenic tour to Tierra del Fuego National Park, about 10 west miles from Ushuaia.

The road was gravel at times and narrow and twisty and it was spitting snow. Upon coming around a corner we were greeted with a snow packed road leading up a hill so I accelerated to around 30mph as maintaining your speed on snow/ice isn’t that hard, but accelerating poses a problem decelerating is even more of a problem.

I was ahead of Mark and was able to maintain my speed pretty well, breaking traction just a few times which caused the back end to shimmy a bit. I made it to the top of the hill where there was a ranger station for the park with the sign we’d been looking forward to taking some hard-earned pictures with. I glanced in my mirror and didn’t see Mark so I dismounted and slid my way over the crest of the hill and was happy to see him on his feet, picking his bike up which was in a little ditch next to the road. He’d spun it 180 degrees while going uphill before sliding off the road. No damage to him or the bike. The video of the crash can be seen  at   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qe-vpj_9GA

After a bit of pushing and careful clutch-work he was at the top as well where we had a bit of a photo shoot. I’m sure I’ll be looking at these pictures when I’m an old man with sore hips and they’ll bring a smile to my face.

Before heading back down the icy hill I turned on my helmet-mounted video camera as another crash seemed likely in the next few minutes. We started out riding on the side of the road where the snow was fresh and not compacted and gave us better grip. After a few hundred yards I was confident with my snow-cycling abilities and accelerated a bit, passing Mark and pulling onto the main road which was snow-packed, still going slow though. Within seconds I felt my rear tire get a little loose and it started pulling to my right while I kept my front tire facing forward. It was a rather helpless feeling and not much later I low-sided the bike and we both went sliding down the road together on the ice.  It was a pretty tame crash and no damage was done to either of us.

 Upon reviewing the crash on my video camera, a faint whimper can be heard coming from me mid crash which Mark has taken full advantage of, incessantly heckling me when the opportunity arises.

Once back in Ushuaia it was snowing harder and we met an Argentine motorcyclist who’d just descended Garibaldi pass which had accumulated quite a bit of snow on it in the past few hours. Being that we weren’t in the mood for more crashes we headed back to the hostel and booked another two nights.

We spent two days exploring Ushuaia some more but mostly resting. One day we went to the penal colony museum that also housed a maritime museum of sorts. Most notable was a small exhibit about the indigenous people who were typically naked except for body paint that ran wild throughout Tierra del Fuego back in the day. Darwin had done a lot of exploring in the area and spent some time studying these locals to which he described them to be….”the missing link between humans and monkeys.” Probably not going to find that published in a textbook back home.