Riding day 10: Puerto Natales - Punta Arenas

10th day on the road was planned to be short and easy so we started late again. Packing and servicing the bikes took a while. We also had some confusion about the room prices in Hotel Glaciares when we were checking out. Originally when we arrived we had asked a price for four people. Instead, what we only now learned, we were given a price of a single room for two persons. So the hotel turned out to be twice as expensive than what we thought. Lost in translation some might say...

The route from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas is just easy going paved road with little to mention about. Day turned out to be heavily windy again so the ride wasn't that nice. 

We stopped at the only little village on the way, Villa Tehuelches, and managed to buy some sandwiches from the other local kiosk and coffee from the other.

After the stop we decided to have a bit more scenic and adventorous route for a while. So we turned to gravel again and drove to the Pacific Coast through the village of Rio Verde. We saw the ferries to Isla Riesco and continued our journey while the relentles wind was beating the joy of driving out of us.

After about 50km on the gravel route we reached the Ruta 9 again and turned south for the remaining kilometers. Just when we started to see the Straight of Magalhaes we hit our first rain on the whole trip. Already during the day we had got a few drops on our visors but this time we had to drive about 15mins in a rain. It turned out to be a good test for the driving gear. Luckily the rain changed to sun and blue skies just when we arrived to Punta Arenas. With the help of Here-navigation we easily found our 'cabana' from the city which is probably the biggest we have seen on the trip. Punta Arenas actually has buildings with more than 3 floors. Something we haven't seen since Santiago Airport.

We will eventually end our journey with bikes here in Punta Arenas. But we still have 4 days until then. Plan is obviusly to go to Tierra del Fuego and now it is only a ferry ride away. But as we have already seen the weather conditions are difficult to predict and we wouldn't want to drive hundreds of kilometres in a pouring rain. We have multiple options what to do and where to go. Stay tuned for more adventures!

Distance: 261km

Total distance: 3518km

Weather: 13-15 degrees Celcius, sunny with occasional clouds and rains