More Ruta 40 and Patagonia

We left San Carlos de Bariloche after making a stop at the gomeria (tire shop) to drop of a small token of appreciation. The road continued south through Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi and P.N. Lago Puelo. It was very green and mountainous. That changed quickly though when we left the mountains south of El Maiten and rejoined Ruta 40 once again. We had to duck into Esquel to get gas and we crossed the tracks of The Old Patagonian Express. It's supposed to be the only long distance narrow gauge railway in existence and the southernmost railway in the world. I think it only runs as a tourist train now. Esquel, along with Trevelin were Welsh settlements and it looks like a really nice area.

Scenery in P.N. Nahuel Huapi

Leaving the mountains behind south of El Maiten

Back on Rt. 40

We saw lots of this along Rt. 40.

Near Esquel. Very pretty here.

Waiting for the Patagonian Express. It looks like the tracks for the train in Stanley Park.

We were going to stop in Gobernador Costa for the night but the gas station had a line-up and the girl at the hotel was really crabby. The place looked empty but she had no room at the inn for us. She kind of got mad at me for letting myself in. The sign said OPEN and the door wasn't locked. Go figure. So we kept on going. We ended up going to Rio Mayo for the night which set us up nicely for doing the next stretch of Rt. 40 the next day. While we were having dinner another biker showed up at the hotel. We invited him to sit with us at dinner and he gave us up to date info for our route the next day. He was from Santiago, Chile (actually Mendoza originally) and told us the road was very bad. However, he had made it from El Calafate to Rio Mayo in twelve hours. That's about 750 km. I thought he was a hero.

Along the highway south of Gobernador Costa with the mountains to the west. Most of this is range land for the estancias.

Most hotel owners are very accommodating towards motorcyclists and will arrange parking so someone can watch the bikes all night. We were joined later by another Beemer from Chile.

The next morning dawned clear and calm. We were worried mostly about wind as Patagonia is famous for high winds. The lenticular clouds over the mountains had me a little concerned about the wind coming up but hey, we're supposed to be having an adventure. Things went good for about two hours until my bike died and the back wheel locked up. Weird. It started okay but was resisting forward movement. Then there was a clunk and it was good. Somehow I think a rock got jammed somewhere in my rear wheel. So I started it up again and when I put the side-stand up the bike died again. A rock had also hit my side-stand switch and put it out of commission. It took us about 35 or 40 minutes to get everything sorted out and get on the road again. What are the chances of those two things happening at the same time? Good, I guess.
We made good progress but the wind was starting to come up. It was pretty cool to see a herd of Rheas run across the road. They're like an emu. We stopped for gas at Perito Moreno with another planned stop at Bajo Caracoles. At Bajo Caracoles they had no gas. That happens sometimes. We figured that with our extra 5 litres each we could make Tres Lagos, the next gas station. That would be a total of 460 km and I thought our range with the extra gas would be 500 km. Close but possible. When we got to the cross road to Gobernador Gregores we re-evaluated our fuel and decided against the 72 km detour each way to get gas there. We could make it. I was pretty sure. I probably figured it out in my head every five minutes for the next 5 hours.
Did I mention the wind? Holy moley it got windy. A few times it was all you could do to hold it in the rut in the loose gravel. Most of the time we were just riding in ruts in the gravel. Not too bad with no wind but we actually had to gear down in some of the gusts and really lean hard into the wind to keep the bike on the road. I found it pretty challenging. We also lucked out with the rain again. There was a lot of road construction and the detours were gross with mud. If it had rained we would have been camping. We ended up getting into Tres Lagos between about 6:30. I think Neil had under 20 km left in his tank and I had 40. Close enough. We had planned on staying the night at Tres Lagos but the gas station guy said it would be better to keep going. My guess is he wasn't the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. Anyway, we kept going towards El Calafate. Now the wind really started. If our helmets weren't strapped on good they would have been sucked right off our heads. Amazing gusts of wind. It was a bit of a workout. One thing that was kind of weird was riding downwind (with the wind) once we got on the pavement. It was like you were riding in a bubble because there was no wind noise or buffeting; just the sound of the engine. It gives you an idea of the wind speed as we were doing about 100 or 110 kph. The scenery was awesome though and we made it into El Calafate at 9:00 pm. It had taken us 13 hours to do the 735 km for the day. I just knew a beer was going to taste really good.

This was right after we fixed my bike. This was a good section but you get the idea with the ruts. On corners the ruts kind of all merged together and you had to get all sorted out back in a rut after you got through the corner. It got more interesting later with the wind. We still managed to do 60 or 70 kph most of the time.

The gas station at Bajo Caracoles. We weren't the only disappointed bikers. See those clouds in the sky? That's not usually good news if you're hoping for calm winds.

Some heavy showers across Lago Cardiel. Again we were lucky to avoid the rain. The last bit of road north of Tres Lagos would have been impassible for bikes in wet weather. Just after I took this picture an armadillo ran across the road. They can run pretty fast considering they aren't built much different than a turtle.

I didn't get many pictures for the day but this is a bit of scenery between Tres Lagos and El Calafate.

El Calafate is on the shore of Lago Argentino. It is a large glacier fed lake that backs onto the Andes in the west. The Glaciar Perito Moreno is quite famous and very accessible to tourists. We decided to spend an extra night here so we could go see it. It's very impressive.

Along the road into the Glaciar Perito Moreno from El Calafate.

We thought this looked pretty cool...

...until we saw this. You can see the crowds on the edge of the dark foreground.

It was well worth the visit.

Tomorrow, Sunday the 27th, we're off to Rio Gallegos on the Atlantic coast. This will set us up for crossing into Chile the next day. Talk to you then.
Chau.