ODO: 334,297
It’s 8am and time to get off the boat. We’re still drunk from last night. This is hard. We uber straight to the truck, pop the tent, and go right back to sleep for a couple of hours. Our boat friends are in Ushuaia another night, so we have plans to meet them later after they’ve checked into their hotel and napped as well. Everyone still has sea legs, so the ground feels like its rocking slightly beneath us. We have dinner at the brewery, and a final couple beers together before saying a genuinely sad farewell to our boat friends. We find a spot on a hill above the harbor, with a great view of town and the mountains behind it. The wind overnight is the strongest we’ve had, which is saying something. The truck is rocking back and forth. It’s like we never got off the boat.
After a long resupply (we visit both grocery stores), its off to Tierra del Fuego National Park. Our heater is not working right now, so in our extremely tired and sick state we make a weak attempt at troubleshooting it. We are unsuccessful, so we deploy our spare spare blanket. The campground in the park is full of crested caracaras, and they are VERY used to being fed by people. They get uncomfortably close to us several times. We have to close the camper door because they look like they want in there too. Our current state has us make a quick dinner before a very, very early bedtime.
Today is all about the rest. We sleep in, we nap, we wear our pajamas all day. The birds are back. Our best guess is this is a mated pair because they seem to work together. A fox also wanders into camp a few times. It’s not quite as friendly as the birds and we are fine with this. Since we have nothing else going on, we finally test out the new oven we bought around Christmas, and the inside stove we bought almost a year ago. Huge success! All we have is box brownie mix, but it comes out fantastic. And it bakes in about twenty minutes! This is a major improvement over our last oven.
Today is a big day, it’s End of the Road day. This is the reason we have camped in the park, the official end of the road is located inside this national park. The end of the road is very anticlimactic. The sign is behind a barrier so we cant drive right up to it, and is a little lack luster. It’s also strange to be at the “end” of this big thing that we have been doing for so long. It deserves more celebration, more excitement, more fanfare, more confetti, more…something. But this isn’t the end of our trip, so that also makes it a little strange. There is also a post office at the end of the road, so of course we get passport stamps! Now that we’re done with Ushuaia its time to start heading back north. A short ten minuets outside town the truck makes a bad noise and the rear end locks up as we pull onto a dirt road. This is where we camp tonight. Literally right here on the side of the road until we figure out what is wrong.
It’s a slow morning. Berne has no voice, our heater isn’t working, and it’s cold outside. It’s decided that if we’re really lucky, a bolt or two has come loose in the rear diff. If we’re less lucky, we just smoked the ring and pinion. Our best solution, where we currently are, in our current state is to pull the drive shaft and disconnect the axles, and put the truck into front wheel drive mode. The tools come out, and Berne talks KoKo through pulling out the drive slugs, before we both crawl under the truck to remove the drive shaft. We finish strapping the drive shaft to the awning just as the rain starts. Our friends are back in the area, so we meet them at a nice riverside camp spot for the evening. And we re-plumb the heater, which finally fixes it! We get to be warm tonight!
There is a mechanic in town that will see us today, but not until 2pm. We’re excited. We’re also extremely lucky…Almost all of the bolts are loose on the rear diff, some have even worked all the way out. Because of this everything just needs a little cleaning up, and then it can all go back together!! It pours rain and even snows a little bit, perfect weather for spending all day inside a garage. The garage is very small, so Berne helps the mechanic to speed along our progress. They both work until 10pm to get everything back together, which we were very appreciative for. The truck is still stuck in 4×4, but that’s a later problem. We head back to the river for a good sleep.
It’s another very late morning for us (is this our new normal?!). For the first time in several weeks we don’t have any kind of schedule, or place we need to be. We are out of practice at figuring ourselves out. Our friends left early this morning. They got too cold in the night, so packed up and headed down the road. So it’s just us. Some locals tell us a storm is headed our way, so we decide heading north is better than staying here. There is a shipwreck in a cove on the Atlantic coast we think may be protected from the wind, and we are very ready for some protection from the wind. The spot is as advertised, tucked against a cliff, overlooking the ocean. And very little wind! This is a winner!
