After a noisy night at the border with not much sleep, we passed both borders. Had no problems. Immediately after the Argentine border started an unpaved road with lots of holes. We lost our fuelbottles there… Not so good, because we need those for cooking. Fortunately we could also cook on gas, so we used that that night.At the Chilean border we saw some more cyclists. They are Dutch also, Gijs and Karen. We met them again on the road and talked for a bit. At the end of the day we decided to camp together on the side of the road. We had tailwind all day, so we had a good day. But the next day it turned and we had headwind most of the 40 miles to Porvenir. And there were many steep hills.

Right when we got ready to leave, we saw a lonesome cyclist coming our way. This woman, Frederique, who is also Dutch had a good day, because she went the opposite way. We asked her if there were stores in Punta Arenas where we could buy fuelbottles. She didn’t know, but we could have hers because her stove broke and she couldn’t use the bottle anymore. Lucky us! We hope she found ours on her way.

We met another cyclist on our way. He told us the ferry from Porvenir to Punta Arenas (the last one for the next 2 days) would leave anywhere between 2 and 4 pm. And we were going very slowly because of the headwind so we had to hurry. Fortunatly, the last 10 miles we had tailwind, so we could move on a bit quicker. But when we arrived in Porvenir, we discovered that the ferry didn’t leave until 7 pm!

But we had a very nice afternoon. Gijs and Karen were already there and had met up with friends of Frederique, Jan Willem and Harmien. Jan Willem is a colleague of Gijs’ mom, so it’s a small world once more. There also was another cycling couple, Mel from New Zealand and Chris from London, who are living in Australia. We spent the afternoon together and then went to the ferry terminal where we saw Pablo (from the first night in Tolhuin) again. So the ferry ride was very nice also. We also met 2 motorcyclists from The Netherlands, Branko and Ingrid. They have travelled from Florida to Alaska and then to Ushuaia and are now on their way back up.

When we arrived in Punta Arenas, us 6 cyclists found a hostal together. The following morning we spent some time together at the kitchen table and that afternoon we went on a trip to a penguin colony. That night (Christmas Eve) we had a nice dinner together at one of the very few restaurants that were open. So we had a nice Christmas Eve.

On Christmas day we got back on our bikes because the wind was supposed to be blowing from the right direction. The others stayed in Punta Arenas for another day.