...the end of the world drawing closer. Off from St Julian, by now I am craving a more normal breakfast. While bread, sliced cheese and ham, croissant, sweet juice and hot milk on the frosties is interesting to start with, by now a good fry up would be much appreciated – or even a bowl of muesli – preferably with cold milk!

Today we had booked ahead in a town with the impressive name of Rio Grande. It didn’t look that far, but there were 3 border crossings and a ferry we hadn’t reallllly thought about.

We set of about 8.30 and reached Rio Gallegos by lunch time, very good going indeed. Unfortunately Julian had left his insulin at the last hotel, but again thanks to our Brazilian friends it was organised that the insulin would be left at our lunch stop awaiting our return (he had enough with him for the next week). We even saw some flamingos, quite a few, their distinctive shapes and colour were easy to pick out. More difficult was spotting the Rea, a large flightless Emu-like bird.

Shortly after Rio we came to the border. Up to now the roads had been fast, and straight – though we did have the odd corner today for once. Our first border crossing into Chile… would the cars be allowed in with the steering wheel on the wrong side? Leaving Argentina was easy, we crossed no-mans land. Then into Chile - the Chileans were really nice. Smiles, coming out with their cameras to take photos of the cars. One official did recognise that the cars were right hand drive and went for clarification, but nothing happened. We got the feeling that it was ok for old cars – quite right too.

Now we were in Chile, the road was even better. Brand new concrete road took us to the ferry to cross the Straits of Magellan. The stuff of legend, the stomping ground of Magellan and …. um… Drake to name but two. Why it felt like we were in the isles off Scotland I can’t think, perhaps it could have been the sheep, the grass, the undulating land, the grey skies, the cold and the rain? We also had about an hour to wait for the ferry. Stone skimming and a coffee in the café and advice from the waitress spent the time. She said another 4 to 6 hours to Rio Grande, this would put us close to midnight as the ferry arrived at 5.30. We decided if we saw a hotel in Chile we would stay there and cancel Rio Grande.

It was thrilling crossing the straights, not because of the spectacular scenery, but because of the history and what we had gone through to get there. We caught glimpses of porpoises along side the ferry and we tried to imagine what it would have been like passing through here centuries before in the short cut to the other side of the world.

At the other side the road changed, no longer paved we were back on gravel again. All the cars were now suffering badly from the gravel roads. The Westland didn’t have a panel that wasn’t dented or scratched and the air cleaners had needed cleaning already, plus the new windscreen had 2 cracks in it. Ivor’s car was also covered in chips and had serious exhaust problems and chassis outrigger damage, Julian’s had a badly damaged exhaust, chips and dents and the anti-roll bar had sheared off (an optional extra, so we could ignore the need to repair it). And this was just what we knew about. So it was with some trepidation we set off again in the hope we would make it back to Argentina and paved roads before it got dark – or we would find a hotel. I found it easiest to remove all spectacles to get the clearest view of the road and anticipate the potholes. Get it wrong and suspension/exhaust damage could occur. We bumped, scraped and swerved our way the 150km to San Sebastian, arriving there about 8.30 after a few stops to wire up Julian’s exhaust. We then had to cross back again to Argentina.