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Having lots of time off in Rio Grande is giving us a chance to get to know more about Argentinian culture. A couple of nights ago we were treated to an asado, a traditional way of cooking meat, a bit like a BBQ on a grand scale. The asado is a feature inside the house that takes up part of a room! It’s huge and the size of the meat that you cook is also massive! We did have a few sausages, but everything else that was cooked was a slab from a cow. It was cooked slowly over an hour and a half and it was delicious.

Yesterday we took a drive down the coast to the south of here to look at the coast we will be kayaking past later on. It is neap tides at the moment and the tide still goes out a very very long way!

On Friday we will drive down to Ushuaia with Monica & Marcelo and spend the weekend looking around. We hope to start kayaking early next week, depending on how Barry´s wrist feels. By then we will have had almost 2 weeks off kayaking. Its a long time but Barrys wrist needs time to repair fully. When we start kayaking again, it will be our last chance  to continue with the trip this year, and Barry is anxious not to do any lasting damage to his wrist.

I went for a short paddle at Rio Grande this morning with Marcelo & Carlos. The river ´Rio Grande´is the biggest river in Tierra del Fuego and it reaches the sea in the town of ¨Rio Grande¨, the second largest Argentinian town in TDF, after Ushuaia.  We paddled out into the open sea for a short distance before paddling up river a bit. It felt good to be back on the water for a short while, although a bit strange to not be with Barry continuing our trip. Carlos tried out Barry´s nordkapp and my spare Mitchell blades.

We are still in Rio Grande with Monica & Marcelo and are very grateful to them for looking after us and letting us stay with them. We are having a good time getting to know them and their friend Carlos who is also staying here, but we try not to look out the window at the sea too much and think about time ticking away.

Barry has tendonitis in his right wrist, due to his dry suit wrist seals being too tight. This is our 3rd day off after it flared up the second time. It gets better every day but tendons are very slow to heal and realistically it is going to be at least 3 or 4 more days before he will be ready to kayak again. He is taking ibuprofen pills and applying ibuprofen cream, icing it regularly, and has a neoprene support on it, and he´s resting it as much as he can….  We intend to wait until it feels fully better before kayaking again and hope that it will not flare up again. We´ll then continue with the trip and hope to complete the circuit & experience all the different environments that TDF has to offer. If we have to change our flight and stay longer then we will do that.

On a positive note, we have permission from the Argentinian Prefectura to kayak in their waters, although they still have to inspect our kit before we set off. We had to sign a piece of paper saying that we took full responsibility for anything that might happen to us in Argentinian waters – fair enough but I gulped when they told us we had to pay the equivalent of US $80 to get a notary to witness our signatures.

 Today we drove back to Cabo Espiritu Santo to collect our kayaks. We couldn´t bring them back to Riao Grande 3 days ago because Monica & Marcelo use a trailer to carry their kayaks, and of course they didn´t have that with them when they came to see us. We hid the kayaks in some bushes in the dunes above the beach but we were worried about them, just in case they were damaged in the wind or someone found them and claimed salvage rights. Fortunately they were fine but we are happy to have them with us now. It is an interesting drive up there, its about 170km, 70km of it on a long flat dirt road with almost no traffic on it. We saw guanacos, oil wells, flamingoes, geese, cows, sheep and a fox, and about 5 cars. Thanks to Marcelo, Barry & Carlos for some of the photos.

This is where we landed yesterday after our 42 mile paddle out of the Magellan Straits – well, we landed at the gap in the cliffs a mile or so behind the buildings and walked up to the Cabo Espiritu Santo Lighthouse. The building with the blue roof is in Argentina and the red tower is in Chile. The fence between them is the border between the 2 countries. I took the picture from a lighthouse in Chile, after I climbed over the fence!

That isn’t as disrespectful as it might sound!  On top of the hill are 2 lone houses where representatives from the Chilean and Argentinian navy’s live. We had to talk to both of them to say that we had passed from Chile to Argentina by sea and we would now be continuing our journey in Argentina.  Both buildings are more like houses than offices, with a room full of  technology dedicated to their work, and the rest of the building is their home. We were welcomed into both houses and offered a drink and some food, while the formalities of crossing the border were very quickly dealt with.  We were treated to home made empanadas in Argentina and tea, biscuits & cake in Chile. It was nice to chat to the 3 guys who man the building for 30 days in Argentina and the family who run the Chilean side. Coincidentally, an Admiral in the chilean navy visited their building by helicopter while we were having tea so that was interesting.

Monica & Marcelo from Rio Grande ( the next town we will kayak through) drove up to see us at Cabo Espiritu Santo which was a lovely surprise as we have talked a lot via email and facebook but we have never met. In the end, we asked if we could come back to Rio Grande with them for a few days because Barrys wrist got worse towards the end of the crossing and it is painful and swollen again. It needs at least a few days rest and it will be much nicer to rest while getting to know Monica & Marcelo, plus we can do some of the jobs that we would have to do in Rio Grande, like visit the Prefectura & do some shopping.

Notice how far the tide goes out in the top photo. This was at mid-tide so it goes out about twice that far!  It´s like that all along the east coast so we will try very hard not to land or launch at low tide. It will be a very long walk with the kayaks , even with the trolley that we have!

Gianfranco Sergio Maria Liotta  is translating all of our blog posts into Italian on Facebook.

Gianfranco Sergio Maria Liotta   traduzione del post en facebook en Italiano per gli amici che non parlano inglese