Monkey's bum yet again

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So true to Argie standards I went to fuel up the bike and then on to the next town, 400 km or so, Gobernador Gregores flat, flatter and flattest but and this is a big but NO wind.

Well a little but the bone wrenching howling madness that had followed me so far, just a little breeze the landscape remains brown grey and boring but the blue sky is without limits and lovely to behold and guanacos and some nandus are my only companions.

The nandu is like a little ostrich basically grey and quite hard to spot, the gauanaco trots around looking majestic and debonair, it would be nice to have acouple at home running around in the fields scaring the living daylight out of the horses.

You know when you're in the middle of nowhere when the ever marching line of power lines is no longer with you I met up with Eloi and Raul two guys from Buenos Aires going south as well, one on a Jawa 400 cc and the other one on a Honda clone 250 cc, together they have less than half my bikes horse powers, so with front wind and up hill they have no fun.

We stop in the petrol station in Gob. Gregores and chat for a while, they heading on but we'll meet again, I get a nice room in a brand new motel and share a table with what to turn out to be my neighbours in the hotel.

I wake up to a howling wind, the newly planted trees are bent to a 45 angle, and I moan to myself knowing that there are 80 km of gravel ahead and some of it's supposed to be BAD.

So should I stay or should I go, well I ain't no chicken so off I go into the wind waiting for the bad stretch to come and it does come.

The thing is that you hear about the gravel of the Cuarenta and horror stories about people falling and shit, so I'm a bit apprehensive but accoring to my plans I will adapt my speed to the gravel and go slow and easy.

The gravel here is river stones nice a round and slippery, like marbles so the bike sort of move about the whole time, supposedly if you go really fast it should be ok.

I don't dare so I go slowly buy anyway faster than some cars, in the really bad part where they've just gouged out a temporary road next to the one being paved it's bad, rally bad.

But when no one is looking I sneek up on the new bits and whizz by the cars I see struggling on the gravel below me.

I miss the petrol station and have to stop at a farm and buy some petrol from them and finally I arrive to El Calafate, close to the Perito Moreno Glacier the only attraction there.

That and some startling beautiful lakes with an amazing green colour.

Got a room and went of to see the ice, very nice indeed

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Photos

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Perito Moreno Glacier

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Being a refrigeration tech, I appreciate the quality of the ice.

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My newly wed companions for dinner