Hello everyone from a nice little town of Esquel. For more than 10 days we were on the road, being not really too far, but at a distance from some benefits of the civilised world, not having a possibility to use Internet or charge our devices. Now we are taking a rest from the camping way of life in a small but very cosy town on the southern end of Argentinian Patagonia Lake District. We are staying in a hotel and are enjoying sleeping in a bed, being protected from wind and rain, having access to hot water 24 hours a day and having sockets at hand 🙂 Everything that the camping life lacks.
We have cycled a little less than 400 km by now, most of them along Ruta 40, the paved road which runs through the west of Argentina from north to south, and 70 km on a gravel road, Ruta 71, which goes through Los Alerces national park.
I have told many of you already what it is like to cycle on a gravel road. We felt overwhelmed with joy and happiness when we saw asphalt again. Ruta 71 has become a game changer for us – it changed our plans big time. Before my ideas about an unpaved road were limited by my childhood memories, when every summer we rode bikes in the countryside, and it never occurred to me that a road may be in much worse condition than in that village in Kaluzhskaya Oblast where I used to go as a child.
But it turned out that the roads in that village were like a highway as compared to Ruta 71. We knew that Carretera Austral which we had wanted to cycle, was also gravel but had no idea what its condition was like. I am thankful to the chance which led us to Ruta 71, to the German cyclist who had recommended us to take this route (as we had planned originally to go on Ruta 40 all the way to Esquel), and to another cyclist, also from Germany, whom we met in the national park, who had cycled Carretera Austral and confirmed that the road was in absolutely the same horrible state.
Having finished Ruta 71, we realised absolutely clearly that first of all, we went too slowly to get to the south before April when it would start getting colder, and secondly, alas, we didn’t take any pleasure in this kind of cycling. All we were focused on was potholes, stones, “washing board” and the suffering of our bodies, instead of beautiful landscapes around. It is literally impossible to take in any surrounding beauty when you suffer. This was not what we had wished for at all.
Having thought of different options, we decided to rent a car.
The situation with car rental in Esquel dictated us our plan of further actions: we can rent a car here, but we must drop it off here as well. Only in one agency they told us it was possible to return the car in the south: for extra 800 USD in Perito Moreno (town half way to El Calafate where we want to go) or 1500USD in El Calafate itself. In other agencies they said it was not possible at all. So the plan is as follows: we rent a car here in Esquel, go to Carretera Austral and ride it to the south (fully or only part of it – we will decide on the way) after which we return to the Chilean-Argentinian border next to Buenos Aires lake and return to Esquel on Ruta 40. After that we continue to the far south of Patagonia by bus. This way we will have the whole March to see everything that we want to see in the far south: Fitz Roy mountain, Perito Moreno glacier, the famous national park Torres del Paine in Chile. If the weather permit, we can return to cycling there.
These are our plans as of today, we have booked the car for tomorrow, 18th of February, for 7 days (with possibility to extend).
As to the previous days of our trip, it is impossible to describe them all, and there is no need. Instead I wrote down the most memorable moments and are going to post them separately so that you could read them going forward, while we won’t have access to Internet again.
