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Published: March 12th 2010
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Having spent a very noisy night in Camping Municipal, at Los Anitguos, we got off to an early start with a long day ahead of us. Our route took us east to a small town in the middle of nowhere, called Perito Moreno (nowhere near the glacier of the same name) and then we began our toue south on Ruta 40, ‘La Cuarenta’, famous as Che Guevara’s route down the country in his motorcycle diaries. Ruta 40 runs over 3,000kms from way up on the northern border with Bolivia, right down to the Atlantic coast at Rio Gallegos.
La Cuarenta is an incredible road across arid steppe, stretching for endles miles of empty nothing, with huge skies and crazy-shaped clouds blown by the Patagonian winds. Every 50kms of so you may see another vehicle, but it is probably the most deserted road we’ve travelled on.
Surprisingly, there is some wildlife to be seen; guanaco, foxes, rhea (small emu type birds) and we even saw an armadillo - in broad daylight. As we approached, we could see what looked like a large stone creeping across the road very slowly. We realised what it was, but stood no chance of stopping in
time to avoid running it over, so Steve tried to steer the wheels to pass either side of it. We stopped and Sarah jumped out with the camera, but he was gone. Nowhere to be seen! He must have moved at an incredible speed.
The first few kms of the road were paved, which was a luxury after days on end of ripio in Chile, however, the tarmac ran out and we were onto ripio once again. We found the ripio particularly frustrating as they are working on paving most of the route and so we were travelling alongside the newly paved road, crossing over it, but not actually allowed to drive on it! It was hard going, the ripio deteriorated, until we were in deep ruts with the belly of the car shovelling stones as we travelled.
When we set off on the Ruta 40, we weren’t sure how far we would get the first day, but realising that there was absolutely nothing for hundreds of kms, nowhere even to shelter to have our first go at wild camping and only a few estancias, mostly signposted about 70km off the road, we decided to push on and
aim for our next major destination - El Chalten. The guide book says it is a 14 hour coach journey, but we did it in around 9 hours. Over 650 kms in one day.
The drive down into El Chalten was spectacular. From a long way off we could see the snowy peaks of the Fitzroy massif and the glacier peaks alongside the lake, Lago Viedma. The cloud formations over the mountains were incredible, making it appear as though we were driving towards a fairy tale castle in the clouds, with the sun setting behind the lake, casting a beautiful golden glow
We arrived in town and realised we were well and truly back on the gringo trail. We looked at a couple of campsites, but they were very uninspiring, close company and with no shelter from the Patagonian winds we were starting to get used to. So after 9 consecutive nights in the tent, we thought we deserved a treat, and checked ourselves into a lovely hosteria, ‘El Puma’ for a comfy bed, an en-suite and some WIFI.
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