Leaving Tierra del Fuego...

"I hate this", "I can't do this", "this isn't fun anymore", "I'm done", "I quit,"; these are just a few of the strategically censored outbursts that have been uttered in the last 6 days. But, we made it.... a tiny bit further up South America.

When I was sat in a cozy living room in Vermont I wrote down a neat little table of travel distances and proposed time taken on a piece of paper, I have now destroyed that piece of paper. What I originally thought would take us 3 easy days has taken us 6 incredibly sore ones.

It took us two relatively uneventful days to reach the Chilean border. I remember thinking at the time that it was a difficult two days but compared to the following few it was like cycling round a beautiful wooded park in Guildford. We arrived at the border to find two fresh grievances, firstly, that the Chileans hadn't bothered to pave their roads, and secondly that they wanted to take away our food. We spent 20 minutes eating our way through several carrots, pineapples, peaches and other veg before crossing into Chile, our 2nd country of the trip.

After camping in a disused house by the police station on the 2nd night the road turned West towards Punta Arenas. Sadly, the wind, which had never really bothered me in my life before this trip, decided to blow due East at 60kmph. Putting that together with the gravel road and we were pushing hard and still averaging less than 5 miles an hour. You can't really go anywhere if you're averaging less than 5 miles an hour. With miles of flat open spaces, the only place to camp we could find was in a beautiful ditch beside the road.

We had barely left that ditch the following day when talk of quitting reached unprecedented levels, the winds hadn't abated at all and progress was pathetic and exhausting. Rain was sporadic and moods were at an all time low. The chances of us reaching Punta Arenas before we ran out of food and water were looking dismal. We even attempted hitchhiking for a while but (thankfully) nobody picked us up. It wasn't until around 4 that the winds died down a little bit, the road got slightly less holey and we set out determined to make some progress. We crept closer, spending the night in a small valley with a group of llamas, sheep, a fox and even an owl as our neighbours.

We awoke determined but on seeing the rain and the wind we crawled back into our tent for a few more hours. We struggled onwards in the afternoon but ran out of water and had to hike to a farm to replenish our containers. Again it was the evening when we made some progress, the winds reducing slightly as we hit the coast and some very Scottish looking scenery and made it to 35 kilometres from our destination by 9.

Up at dawn and we were on our way, the wind and rain subsiding as we approached Porvenir where we bought some food, a couple of cervezas and boarded the ferry off the Tierra del Fuego. A few hours later and we were in Punta Arenas eating an obscenely large steak and feeling pretty good about things.

Tomorrow we continue towards Torres del Paine, and hopefully on the way we will meet some friendly penguins.