Day: 3
Trajectory: Esquel – Gobernador Costa – Alto Río Senguerr – Río Mayo – Perito Moreno
Distance covered: 549 km
On the road again, with a few more stone chips in the windscreen
Apologies for the delay with this blog; it has been tougher finding Internet connections in Patagonia than we had thought, plus we have had one or two mishaps – to be blogged in good time, but we and Silver (the Jeep) are all fine. But a warning to people thinking (like me) of blogging their way – we have had only occasional G3 access to mobile phones, and more often the Edge or (worse) GPRS. Such wifi as we have found has simply not worked well enough to get on to the Internet. This is being sent from Punta Arenas on day 8 of our trip – who knows when the next episode will come up?
Leaving the newest Ruta 40 for what is said to be the ‘old’ one …
…. only to discover an even older version alongside the new old road …
It has slowly become clear that it is not possible to follow the ‘original’ Ruta 40 faithfully. Firstly, because it is not always clear which the original route is; secondly, because the current ‘old’ route often lies alongside a ‘newer’ old route; thirdly because many parts of the route have been renamed and fourthly because some parts have simply disappeared. So we’ll follow the RN40 in spirit, if not always in fact.
This bridge on an older RN40 is clearly not going to allow us across it
Today we travelled along a variety of roads and landscapes:
The open road calls yet again …
… and again
We were lucky to see some of the Patagonian wild life as we drove:
A grey fox ….
… large flocks of Chilean Flamingos on the lagoons beside the road …
… plenty of Darwin’s Rhea (Sp. choique) …
… and numerous herds of guanaco. These two had come down to the highway and seemed unbothered by the Jeep
We stopped a couple of times to fill stomachs and the jeep: one of these steps was Alto Río Sanguerr …
Filling the tank in Alto Río Senguerr
where we saw some lovely old buildings that reminded us of what these southern towns would have been like a hundred or so years ago.
Old building in Alto Río Senguerr
The roads were not completely empty: we saw the occasional sheep farmers herding sheep in the distance and the odd gaucho riding from here to there, but they were very quiet and other road traffic was practically non-existant.
Gaucho wending his way along the side of the highway ….
We arrived in the town Perito Moreno in the evening and found a comfortable cabin in the Municipal camping site. Cheap and basic, but fine for the night. A short walk to a nearby restaurant and our day was done. Before turning in we relaxed watching the waterfowl on an attractive lake by the camping site, laid out for the town’s residents.
Ducks on the Perito Moreno lagoon – surrounded by a 1.5 kilometre illuminated walkway