2. Awful Road
DAY 187
For some reason, I felt like somebody was beating me up all night with a baseball bat. I guess it was a long day yesterday and I was really tired. But that's nothing that couple Advils won’t fix. The plan for today is to get to El Chaltén. It is a small town in the middle of the mountains.
Quick breakfast and a visit to the gas station and I am on my way. It is nice and sunny day but it definitely feels like the summer heat is over. I don't have the windscreen on my bike anymore so I can feel every degree of a temperature change. I better get used to it because I won't get it fixed anytime soon. The scenery along this route is really nothing to write home about. It is all desert with no trees, pretty much featureless. At least the road is nice and there's almost no traffic. I passed the sign telling me that the next gas station is 130 km away. The problem is that the next gas station behind me is 60 km. I'm not sure who decided to put the sign right here.
And as soon as I was getting comfortable on a bike and settled into a nice pace, I see my favourite sign, “end of pavement”. I'm not sure how long the dirt is going to last because sometimes it's only a few hundred metres sometimes a few kilometres and sometimes a few hundred kilometers. It was OK in the beginning but it was getting progressively worse. There was a lot of deep gravel everywhere. The road is wide and there are many tracks I can take. The problem is that I have a track about 20 cm wide to ride on. If I go left or right, I'm in deep gravel. An excursion there wouldn't be pretty. I have to be very precise with my steering. It is very mentally and physically demanding. I have to ride standing up so I can see a little bit further down. The road is very dusty but it is also very windy. The wind is no fun, but at least keeps the dust off the road. This is no fun. I am concentrating hard on riding, and I don't even have a time to look around. At least I am not missing anything because everywhere you look there is nothing. Absolutely featureless terrain. Well, this sucks. If I knew about this I would find another route around. But that would probably be a dirt gravel road as well. Good thing I have a lot of gas because I am not making any quick progress. I'm riding in the first or second gear. I'm doing about 30 km/hour. I am not going to break any speed records this way. I am wishing for this to end, but that is somehow not working. I am in this mess for more than 120 km. This was brutal. I joined another road just before the first town on my route today. Actually, it is not even in town on a few houses. And that's the only town today. But, I am on a pavement again and I'm very happy about it. I've had more than my share of riding on dirt roads in last couple weeks. I wouldn't mind some nice pavement for a change.
I have to be careful with my fuel planning in Argentina. In the most countries in the top half of South America, there are gas station every few kilometers. In Argentina, it is every few hundred kilometers. I like to start my day with full tank. I either get the gas the night before or the first thing in the morning. That way I know I have almost 600 km range which is more than I ride most of the days.
I'm enjoying nice tarmac and I hope it will stay like that all the way to my destination which is about 150 km away. Then I noticed strange thing. Most of major roads here have a fence parallelling the road. This is to keep animals off the road and preventing accidents. It is good for animals and drivers alike. It is the same practice in North America and Europe as well. However, there are some flaws in the system. The fence is not high enough here so some animals can jump over it. Also, there are some breaks in the fence as well. All that means that animals are quite often inside the fence. Mainly big guanacos and ostriches. And the fence which is meant to keep them out, keeping them in. And when they get spooked, they just run towards the fence and jump over it. But many won't make it and end up getting snagged in the barbed wire fence. And it looks like lot of them couldn't get out of it and died trying to free themselves. There were literally many dozens if not, hundreds of carcasses hanging on the fence. Sometimes, it is only a skeleton hanging there. It is a pretty gruesome sight. I don't even want to think how the animal must felt. Absolutely brutal. Not a happy thought.
Anyway, life goes on. I start seeing the mountains from about 100 km away. I'm driving westbound towards a massive mountain range. It is very similar to when you driving westbound from Calgary in Canada. I'm driving directly towards the mountains on a beautiful road. There's a lot of traffic here. El Chalten it's one of the top tourist destinations in Patagonia. I'm getting closer and closer and the mountains are growing in front of my eyes. I get closer and I start taking pictures. There are some really stunning views. I see some guy on same bike as mine who pulled over and taking pictures of the mountains. I stopped right behind him and I took a few pictures of him with the mountains in the background. Hopefully they will come very well. The most impressive from the mountains is mount Fitzroy. It is a very imposing spire made out of pure granite. There are also a lot of glaciers around. There are some clouds around and it is late afternoon so the light is not in my favor. But the scenery is beautiful, nevertheless.
I get into the town and the first thing I have to do is to find a place to sleep. I didn't book anything because I didn't know exactly when I'm going to be here. It is a small town with a lot of tourists. The majority of them are backpackers. This place is a Mecca for hiking. I hope the weather is gonna be good enough so I can go on few hikes myself as well. After a while I found a big campground. It looks like everything is either full or extremely expensive here. I went to reception to check in. I will be OK camping but it wouldn't be my first choice. It'll be nice to stay here for a couple days but the weather is very unstable. Well, I got lucky this time. They have small cabins as well. Nothing fancy just two beds inside an A-frame. But there's enough room to store all my luggage, there is a light inside and a few electrical plugs. Good enough for me. I’ve decided to stay for four days. Hopefully that will give me chance to go in a few hikes and to take some great pictures.
There's an interesting thing going on in Argentina right now. The economy is in a tailspin. Nobody trust the government or any institutions. You are a hard press trying to find anybody who takes credit cards. Cash is KING over here. Inflation here is crazy. Everybody wants to get paid in US dollars and everybody wants to buy your US dollars. Official rate in the bank is about 350 pesos for one US dollars. When I first came to Argentina about six weeks ago, I got 950 pesos per one US dollar. Today's rate is 1200 pesos per one US dollar.
Anyway, I'm here and I have a roof over my head for a few days. I will see what the weather is going to be tomorrow and I will decide on the plan in the morning.