From Puerto Natales in Chile, where we relaxed after our hiking trip to Torres del Paine national park, we cruised down an excellent paved highway to Punta Delgada, where we took the short 30min ferry to the Island of Tierra del Fuego. Although not the southernmost island in South America, it is the last large island and the last one with significant roads on it. At the southernmost end of the roads here is the port town of Ushuaia, symbolic ending for most trips to the end of South America, and harbour for around-the-world sailors passing around the tip of South America throught the Beagle Channel.

Before getting to Ushuaia we had to cross the border into Argentina, since the island is split in half between the two countries. Returning from the customs building, we found the Safari once again sitting on a rim – the last stretch of gravel road on the island had once again wrecked a tire.

On our spare, we rolled into the town of Rio Grande, a weird town of 70,000 people in a free trade zone and home to electronics manufacturing plants and residential subdivisions – not something we were really expecting to find at the tip of South America after thousands of kilometres with nothing but tiny settlements. Anyway, the town was big enough to have a few tire shops and we got a new tire, then enjoyed dinner at a chain diner restaurant not unlike Kelsey’s and stayed at a wanna-be high-end hotel/casino called Status that was just about as out of place as the Nokia plant.

The next day we rolled on through forest-covered mountains that were just starting to change to autumn colours; it was already mid-March and fall comes early at these latitudes. At the end of a few hours, we entered Ushuaia. Beautifully set at the southern end of Tierra del Fuego, between its harbour and the snow-capped mountains behind it, it was a fitting place to celebrate the end of the trip.

After celebrating our arrival with champagne, our thoughts shifted ahead to the next problem: what are we going to do with the car now that we’ve made it here? We were further convinced of the urgent need to sell the vehicle due to the increasing frequency with which seem to need to ask for jump starts (alternator or battery trouble?).

We inquired around town to see if we were perhaps able to sell it there, since Ushuaia is in a duty-free zone. It didn’t seem like it was possible, but people seemed to think we could do it in the free trade zone in Punta Arenas, Chile.

Although Ushuaia was beautiful, it was at the same time rainy and cold and there wasn’t much reason to hang out there any longer, so the following day we headed back out, and on to Punta Arenas to see if someone there would purchase the Safari.