Well my apologies, confusion on my part between chalten and chaiten, one is a glacier and the other a volcana, not a lot of difference apart from temperature. I said that today we would be going to El Chalten as I had confused that with El Chaiten, which is much further up the country.
At El Chalten there is another glacier and Mount Fitzroy and although I am sure it will be absolutely beautiful we decide to bypass it as we really need to start moving up country. It would be great to spend weeks discovering these areas but we have to budget our time as well.
So complete change of plan, move on up to a place Alexandro recommended. We start the day late, as usual, as I need to update the blogs and write yesterdays and also upload that.
We have fabulous roads and speed along through some interesting mountain roads with curves. We stop to take photos of Mount Fitzroy which we can now see clearly in the distance. The road is great for about 90 miles and we are travelling quite quickly when suddenly the road ends and we are on ripio, it is almost emergency stop time, wow.
We do a fuel check and decide to top up, we still have 250 miles left according to the computer, but.....
There is a gas station in Tres Lagos in 0.2 miles, well 1.5 miles in and we haven’t found it. We have double what we need so lets just crack on. This is Route 40 in classic style, relly difficult with large stones and no distinct tracks. It doesn’t improve much because there are diversions as they are, allegedly, we saw no sign of it, building a new road. We are now running on what can best be described as a tank testing ground, massive undulations, holes, dips, sand, you name it we rode over it. We came across a sign stating that the road construction started on 1st July 2009, well we did not see any workers adn over 60 miles we saw on e digger.
The temperature has risen quite considerably, it is now 33 degrees, well as it is a challenging road we stop a couple of times for a breather. One time I decide it is chocolate time, a nice big bar we bought the day before yesterday, I hand Martin half of it and mop up the other half out of my pannier. Where it had melted literally half of it had run into the bottom of the pannier, so Martin drank some of what was left whilst I cleared up and then I drank what was left.
After about 85 miles hawkeye Martin spots a sign for Estancia La Angostura. We are now on a farm track for a few miles and finally come to a gate with a group of buildings beyond. We are greated by a wonderful smiling gent who tells us to park our bikes and then shows us around, somewhere to camp, toilets and showers, it looks great. There are other bikers there, 2 from Austria and 2 from Italy, also a couple from Holland in a car and a Spanish couple, I do know where they are from.
First good news is they have beers, soon followed by, they are cooking dinner, we deserve a decent meal after our ride.
Having pitched our tents dinner is at 8 and what a fantastic meal with great company. The final good news is that they have fuel here so hopefully we will be starting the day with full tanks.
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