Road Trip on Route 40

Trip Start Nov 01, 2006
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Trip End Mar 26, 2007


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Sunday, December 24, 2006

From El Calafate we embarked on a four day road trip on Route 40 which would get us to Bariloche on the day before Christmas Eve having covered 1600k with 700 on the last day alone. So Iīd be celebrating my 30th birthday somewhere in the middle nowhere in Patagonia with Paul and some people Iīve never met before. Which didnīt really bother me but I was wondering what it was going to be like. Turned out it was great - aprart from the whole turning 30 thing! We had a guide called Marcos and a driver called Wally (Walter) who were both really really sound. Marcos was one of these lucky people really into his job and went out of his way to explain as much as he could about the wildlife and landscape we saw on the way. Several times the breaks were slammed on as he piled out of the van to look at some fox, or bird, or in one case to chase this armdillo type of thing. His enthusiasm was brilliant. The driver Wally never stopped messing and joking and laughing at his own jokes - he was great craic and between the two of them the hours we spent in the van were never a drag 1 Starting out from El Calafate
1 Starting out from El Calafate
 . The other people on the trip were a couple from Ghent called Laurent and Karen who really nice and a girl from Holland called Malou who was a little odd and got more and more strange as the trip went on which was a great source of entertaining for meself and Paul.
The fist day was more or less driving and that night we stayed in an Estancia in the middle of nowhere called Estanica Menelik which had been founded by German pioneers in the 1930s - there was a little museum which had some of the family posessions in it which was interesting. We had all clubbed in together in El Calafate and bought provions for the four days since we wouldnīt be near any supermarkets. The mountain of food we bought was ridiculous but needless to say we worked out way through it by the end. Dinners were communal affair and we all helped out and the lads cooked. The Dutch girl Malou had a penchant for trying to put everything in the salad she was making which became a bit of a running joke between myself and Bosco by the end of the trip but in her defence she knocked up some serious salad.
Day two started off with a hike around Lago Belgrano which had water so blue you nearly wanted to jump in except that the wind was so cold there my hands were turning the same colour. That night we stayed in another Estancia and near Cueva de los Manos and at midnight when I left my twenties behind me I got happy birthday sung to me in 3 langauages 2 Route 40
2 Route 40
 . The following morning we did another hike around Canyon de la Pinturas and saw the thousand year old hand painting of Cueva de los Manos (cave of the hands). That night we actually stayed in a hotel in some one horse town and I got a second birthday dinner and a cake. The lads had rang ahead and they made this cake that must have weighed four kilos. We ate about two kilos worth and brought the rest with us in a plastic container! I got the multilingual happy birthday thing again then.
The final day was a 700k run to Bariloche but it wasnīt so made because the gravel road became a paved road and as we approched Bariloche the scenery changed. Gone were the flat endless horizons of the steppe as the terrain gradually got more mountainous and the odd tree stared appearing. As we got closer there were more and more trees and higher mountains until by the end you would swear you were in the Alps. It was about 8 in the evening when we got to Bariloche after four enjoyable days on the road.
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