But before I left I was able to photograph a moon rise off the coast of Puerto Madryn.
One of the last things you want to see before you set off on a marathon journey across thousands of miles of uninhabited and featureless Patagonian plain though is a shrine outside the bus station. I thought buses were safer than planes!
The Holy Mother's influence kept me and my travelling companion, a thoroughly nice insurance salesman from Barcelona called Ricard, safe and the next morning we arrived in Rio Gallegos.
Rio Gallegos is the last major Argentinian city before crossing the Straits of Magellan onto Tierra del Fuego, and is a major transport hub. Most people get straight on to their next bus though and as we wandered around looking for a hostel for the night I could see why. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that Rio Gallegos is the ugliest city I've seen. It really was a hole.
And the grey weather didn't help. All in all we were glad to escape the next day.
The next day dawned a bit brighter and we headed off to leave Argentina, enter Chile, leave Chile, enter Argentina and cross the Straits of Magellan.
I think it would have taken only about 40 minutes to get to Ushuaia if we hadn't had to go through the ridiculous immigration, emigration, baggage scanning, bus changing procedure every 10 miles.
Why Argentina and Chile are arguing about where the lines are drawn on such a barren and empty place I have no idea.
About two hours out of Ushuaia though, the scenery began to change. A few trees appeared, there was the odd lump in the ground to break up the terrain, then a hill, and then between two hills was this...
Finally, some interesting landscape. As unique as Patagonia's steppe was, it would never be called interesting to look at. The road slowly climbed as we entered the bottom of the Andes and arrived in Ushuaia.
