I guess that traveling by public transport is not so interesting to describe. That is more then common to many people. On the other hand when you travel for longer time you use different means of transport and one of them is hitchhiking. Therefore I decided describe one of my days on the road when I was hitchhiking from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia or from Chile to Argentina.
At this point I should mention that hitchhiking is not my favourite way of moving around even thou I so far enjoyed this way of travelling. So than I hitchhike for some time and then mostly continue by other means of transport (this is also influenced by prices for the buses).
Main reason why I have decided to hitchhike this time was because I wanted to see one kind of Penguins (Pinguino Rey), but going with tour agency was really expensive and in same time it would mean that I have to stay in Punta Arenas for two more days. In same time Penguin colony was on my way down south to Ushuaia and with combination of my “sickness” from buses why not then go for some more adventure…?
I have chosen the way which is not so usual for hitchhiking as there is not much transport passing by. The road is not paved and basically you are all the time in the no-man land. After taking ferry across Magellan strait we (with a friend I met in hostel) could start hitchhike. First ride we got from harbour to the village. After moving behind village which was literally said “death” I started to little bit doubt this will work, but weather was nice so why not to hangout around for a bit in worst case? First car we stopped quite fast (it took no more than 20 minutes or better say third car passing by). Man who took as went to his ranch close (15 Km) from the Penguin colony which was our first goal. When we reached his ranch he smiled and said that he will takes us till the colony as otherwise we would wait here for ages.
Penguins were amazing, but how long will take as get to the nearest junction (around 30 km) where pass at least some cars? Honestly I didn’t care at the moment as I saw King Penguins… I guess that I took more than 100 photos and didn’t talk about anything else during the rest of the day. Surprisingly we didn’t have to wait long for next ride. Within 5 minutes we are already on the way with couple who went to see colony as we did.
Later with two more stops which went surprisingly fast we are reaching Chilean side of border where the fun begins… First I thought: “Cool it looks that we can get even to Ushuaia in one day”. I felt even better when I managed to convince Chilean officer to stamp my passport where I wanted not where he planned to do it (I have last two pages remaining and quite lot of border crossing in front of me). When you start to think that you can make something fast than of course things begin to change. The Chilean border post was 14 Km from Argentinian and as we realised soon between two border post is more than hard stop some car. At the end after walking around 10 km on dusty road, “talking” with cows and enjoying flat, but incredible landscape of Tierra del Fuego during sunset we already started thinking about where to build tents. Than we suddenly stopped an car. Few minutes later we had been not only in Argentina, but also on our way to Ushuaia (city we wanted to go – the most southern city in the world). On the way we realised that today is full moon which was incredibly coloured to the red and shining on our way… In the same time I have realised that in few hours I will reach place I was dreaming for ages and more over place where I was going for my last 1 year 23 months and 6 days. So close from the goal in which even I at the beginning didn’t believed much that can come true … It seems all the time too far and so unreal.
As already few times in my life again I realised that if you really want something and you go for it you can reach to that point… Only is necessary not to give up with first obstacles.
