5. Out of Patagonia
DAY 223. San Martin
It is time to hit east on the other side of the continent. But I will stay in the mountains for one more day. The morning is nice, clear and crisp. I don't have a particularly long day ahead of me, but there will be some direct route detour.
It was easy to get out of Bariloche and I am heading northbound. good route. Nice scenery, along beautiful river, at the bottom of narrow valley. Not too much traffic so I am enjoying the ride. It doesn't take a lot and there's a turn off into the hills on a dirt road. gorgeous valley with some very interesting rock formations. The road is quite wide and mostly gravel and hard pack surface. there are many washboard sections, but my suspension is tuned perfectly for this, so I can hardly notice. But looking behind me, or I can see is dust. Luckily, there's almost no traffic this morning over here. But as soon as I said, the first car appears. Then another one and another one after that. Then it becomes nonstop. I am riding in a dust cloud. Not much fun eating tons of dust. My helmet visor became useless after being totally covered by dust after just five minutes. It was awful. The riding I mean. The scenery was beautiful, but it was impossible to enjoy it. Took me along beautiful lake with turquoise water with gorgeous views. But I didn't even take my Nikon out of the bag. it would be covered with dust in seconds. there was no way around this. I have to just keep pushing and get out on the other side.
There was a small village right in the middle of this dirt section right on the side of the lake. Beautiful modern Alpine style houses where everywhere. They were adventure, companies, offering all kinds of adrenaline sports and outdoor activities. I wanted to stop here and look around but the dust was just too much for me.
If I thought that the traffic and the dust was bad up till now, I was in for a rude awakening. There was practically a lineup of cars coming towards me. The visibility was barely 50 m. Despite the beautiful scenery, I was only wishing for this to end. That took another one and a half hour of eating dust.
I finally got on the pavement, which was famous the Ruta 40. This is arguably the most famous route in Argentina. It goes through the entire country, north to south and it's over 4,500 km long. Every Argentinian is very proud of this road and tell me how beautiful it is. I strongly disagree with that statement. 90% of the road is in bad shape and half of it is a dirt road. The scenery is dismal, mostly desert like in featureless. Only exceptions are in the mountains by the border with Chile. Talking to other adventuristas they pretty much confirm my sentiment. Nobody loves this road.
I joined this road at one of it best part. It winds around lakes and the mountains. There are seven big lakes that you drive by and this part is called the route of Seven Lakes. The scenery is pretty, but not as pretty as what I have right behind my house. I know, I'm spoiled that way.
Anyway, I didn't stop to take many pictures as there was nothing special about this place. I get to my destination in the early afternoon. The towns, full name is san Martin de los Andes. It's six on the shore of beautiful lake. It is beautiful out by character with trees lining every street. It is a holiday resort, and it appears that main sport is skiing. There is a small scale not far from here. The town has a very late back atmosphere with many tourists milling around. I was working around having a few beers and trying to soak up the atmosphere. This place is much smaller than Bariloche but it has much nicer character. I really like it here.
DAY 224. Neuquen
I'm definitely leaving the mountains and hills today. I don't expect any excitement out of two days ride. And I was not disappointed. the ride was boring and the scenery was featureless with nothing to look at. The road itself was good, but it was straight as an arrow. it was brutal. I was just converting gas to noise. I didn't take one picture today. At least the weather was nice. I have the cold places behind me and I can pack my heated gear all the way at the bottom of my bags. Temperature wise, it was perfect. Other than that the road sucked. I just wanted to get to my today's destination as fast as I can.
Town of Neuquen it's a big town. There is a beautiful park right in the middle of the downtown. And I found out they have Starbucks here. I haven't had a Starbucks coffee in over two months. I don't even know how it taste anymore. Luckily, it was within walking distance. Venti mocha Frappuccino tasted so good in the afternoon heat. This was the highlight of the day.
DAY 225. Rio Colorado
The next three days are absolutely the most boring days of my entire trip. The road was straight. In some instances they were hundreds of kilometres without a single turn. Brutal. Landscape was as flat as a pancake. Traffic was heavy with long-distance trucks. This is one of the major routes that connects east and west side the country. There was really nothing to see along the road. I had to be really creative to keep my mind occupied. I was still technically in Patagonia all the way to the town of Rio Colorado. The river with the same name flows through town. this is the northernmost border of Patagonia. I rode across the bridge and just like that, I was out of Patagonia.
The scenery started to change bit by bit. at the end of the day I was riding through huge farm fields full of crop, ready to be harvested. There were trees and different colours. it was nothing special but after riding through boring hell the last few days, it was spectacular. It was still a flat though. It was so flat that even though I was riding on a 2 km from the shore, according to my GPS, I could not see the ocean. It took few more hours before before I saw the Atlantic again.
I joined the road Ruta 3 we basically parallels Ruta 40, but on the east coast of Argentina. But this road was even more boring than the road I took over here. The traffic increased significantly. I was along the coast with endless beaches and beautiful surf. The weather was perfect. As soon as I could, I turned off the main road and continued on small side roads. The view wasn’t much better at least there was less traffic. This part of the country is very flat. I was hoping to see more of the ocean, but even though I was max 1 km from the ocean, I couldn't see the water. But it was very relaxing ride. Except the bugs. My helmet visor was completely covered after only a few minutes. I had to stop many many times to clean it so I can see where I'm going. But there was a small price to pay for not riding on the freeway.
Soon enough, I was riding through sprawling suburbs of Buenos Aires. I joined up with the main road again, which led me to the city. The traffic infrastructure is absolutely amazing here. Freeways with 10 lanes in one direction, you better pay attention to your exits which were actually very clearly marked. The approach to my hotel was easiest from any approaches to any big city I've been to. Freeway all the way to downtown, and a few turns and I was standing in front of my hotel. It was way too easy but I wasn't complaining.
This rote across Argentina was incredibly boring. I kinda expected this was worse than I expected. Very good barometer how interesting the place is is the number of photographs I take there. There are many days on this trip when I took way over 500 pictures in a day. Well, in the last five days I took only 32 photographs with my Nikon. That pretty much describes it.