22 November, 2016 : San Martín de los Andes

Finally home. Surprisingly, our eventual itinerary bears a surprising similarity to our original plan.

We spent 12 days on the road and travelled a total distance of 4,517 kilometres (2806.73 miles. Our average km per litre was 7.46 (21.07 mpg) – but this varied enormously day on day according to road surface (Silver has a six cylinder 4.1 litre appetite) which was miraculously exactly the same on my Ruta 40 (South) trip in 2014.

We kept mostly to tarmac, with about 20% of gravel roads, and engaged 4WD twice only; once on an iffy, gravelly mountain road and once when Martin reversed into a ditch.

We slept 4 nights in hotels, 4 in self-catering apartments, 1 in a motel, 1 in a bungalow and 1 in a purple cabin.

We concluded that WiFi in Patagonia is mostly crap and that finding a cash dispenser that works is like looking for gold.

We bought books on Butch Cassidy and Birds in Chile, a Welsh teapot with hand-knitted tea cosy and a ‘torta negra galesa’ (the Patagonian version of a Welsh fruit cake)  in Trelew and Gaiman, straw birds from Chiloe, a teeshirt from the paleontological museum in Trelew and a bunch of other stuff

We saw penguins, sea lions, seals, dolphins, elephant seals, rheas, armadillos, guanacos, red foxes, grey foxes, hares, rabbits, a mink, a number of lizards and maybe a pudu.. Lots of birds too (Caroline spotted an owl and took her first bird photo) but this was not a birding trip. Sadly we missed the whales and orcas (and the killer bunnies), but it’s good to have a reason to go back (as if we needed one).

We have travelled through snowcapped mountains, forests, lush green pastures and deserts, and have seen the rising and setting sun on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts

Miraculously, we seem to have kept our total costs within budget.

Monday 21 November, 2016 – Esquel – San Martín de los Andes

Finally, time for the journey home to San Martín. We pulled out of the Hotel car park and drove past the snowman (our local landmark) for the last time, driving northwards.

We also drove past one of the engines of La Trochita (the Old Patagonian Express) that once ran from Esquel to Ingeniero Jacobacci, beautifully restored for use as a roadside monument.

And we gave the car a mini-service for the final day’s drive. Oil pressure and tyres were just fine, but a little water needed in the windscreen wash to combat the dust on the road.

Our first stop along the route home was at the Leleque Museum, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Sponsored by Benetton, it houses a beautifully displayed collection of artefacts that tell the history of Patagonia from prehistoric days until the present. Very near the main Esquel-Neuquén road, it is well worth a visit.

The museum has 4 rooms: one dedicated to the indigenous people; one recording the first contacts between Native Americans and European and North American arrivals; one devoted to land control and division (and the influence of private landowners and a Federal State); and one showing the social transformations occurring in Patagonian society as a result of immigrants from so many different ethnicities.

Beside the main museum is “El Boliche”, the word in this case denoting  a general store at the beginning of the century that also served as a watering hole where people in the area could share drinks and gossip.

The exhibits in the museum were interesting and well presented; our only cavil being that the lighting was a little too dim (no doubt to preserve the textiles).

Information was displayed on people and places of all times and all parts of Patagonia.

Back on the road again, for the grandmother of shrines to the Difunta Correa, where countless travellers have left bottles of water in her honour and memory..

Travellers leave water bottles at these shrines as votive offerings to calm the permanent thirst of this unofficial popular saint, in the hope that she will perform miracles and intercede for them and their loved ones.

We had lunch again in El Bolsón (sadly no raspberry beer this time) and drove north towards Bariloche. The deep yellow of the broom was now interspersed with the various colours of the lupins coming into bloom.

We drove through Villa Mascardi, where we stopped in the same ACA for coffee/tea and filled up with petrol for the last time.

As we approached Bariloche we were reunited with snowcapped mountains and deep blue lakes that reflected the blue of the clear sky …

We took the bypass around Bariloche, aiming to come home through Villa La Angostura and the Seven Lakes road. However, something went wrong and we missed the turn for Angostura, not realising till we reached Confluencia. We drove some 30km down the beautiful Villa Traful road …

… but realised it would be terribly slow, and night was setting in. So we turned around, and drove the longer way round through La Rinconada, Junín de los Andes (where we had a pizza supper) and arrived home pooped shortly before midnight. Journey done and enjoyed; stats to follow.

Sunday 20 November, 2016; Los Altares – Paso del Sapo – Esquel

We slept once again in Los Altares; not in the ACA (there was a confusion over our reservation) but in a purple cabin behind the Comedor Emanuel, where once again we had eaten the night before.

Once again we had no Internet connection. There is supposedly a NAC station by the building below, but we were unable to get a signal at all and our blog posting fell further and further behind!

Still, we hit the road and after about 45km turned right, following the road for Paso del Sapo (Provincial Route 12).

Our first point of call was Cerro Condor, missing from most road maps but the sight of several recent dinosaur discoveries, including what has been claimed to be the largest ever found. In the last census Cerro Condor boasted 67 inhabitants, 12 of whom attend the local school run by Manon Berwyn. Manon is an amazing character and a great role model for the community; direct descendant of the original Mimosa colonists she has worked tirelessly for the community.

A few years ago Manon rode a pony and trap (Sp. sulky) the 900 kilometres from Rawson to Trevelin, through some of the most inhospitable country imaginable. The trip took 45 days, and she was creating a trip made by her great-grandfather and recorded in his diaries. Her own father had previously made the same trip on horseback. On her journey she visited schools and talked of the spirit and values of the early pioneers and founders of the children’s ancestral culture.You can read about it here.

Manon is a rural school teacher, but she is also in charge of a project –in which the schoolchildren participate– to grow fruit and vegetables for sale in nearby towns to bring in more funds for her school. Not only that, she runs a museum where travellers can see some of the nearby dinosaur finds and is currently assembling another museum of the history of the area.

We saw a small factory too for the manufacture of handmade mud bricks, cut and baked in the scorching sun and used in local construction.

We had heard of a recent dinosaur find near Cerro Condor, where the dinosaur, as yet unidentified, was found in a seated position, and Manon guided us to it. This find is important to palaeontologists as it may reveal information not found in cases where the bones have been scattered

At the moment it is covered in plaster and plastic sheeting (see above) to protect it until scientists come down from Canada in January to begin its investigation.

As we drove north we noticed several instances of family graves and cemeteries; the photo above is a more developed example. None of the ones we saw bore any markings as the occupants were presumably known to those who had interred them.

And then it was time for lunch in Paso del Sapo, in the Restaurant Las Nietas, where Martin had eaten a couple of years earlier.

The name Paso del Sapo has nothing to do with toads or mountain passes – Sapo was the name of a ferryman who once carried people over the Chubut river at this point and said to have had a toad-like face which earned him the nickname ‘sapo’.

And then it was Silver’s turn to do some river crossing, although this little ford is a little less forbidding than the mighty River Chubut.

Our next stop was Piedra Parada, where we took a turn recommended by a fellow traveller to explore a volcanic crater. We never reached the crater but we did find the most beautiful roads and were thoroughly delighted with the area – to which we have vowed to return!

We missed the Southern Vizcacha that live in the canyons around here (referred to for some reason as ‘killer bunnies’ by our acquaintance Jeremy who recommended the area), but we did manage to mop up one or two more examples of wild life that we had seen earlier and not photographed. Not great photos, but they will serve as a record.

And we finally hit the tarmac and drove into Esquel for a bite to eat and a good night’s rest. It had been a long but good day’s trip. We stayed at the same hotel as before, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Saturday 19 November, 2016; Trelew – Los Altares

We had breakfast in the Touring Club Hotel in Trelew, an old watering hole of James Ryan aka Butch Cassidy who is known to have stopped there from time to time. Other guests have been Forrmula 1 driver Juan Manuel Fangio and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who helped open up Patagonia to an aeropostal service.

The original hotel was known as the Hotel Globo and had a patio and a number of rooms at the back like the ones in the photo below. The room with the door open has been decked out as a monument to the memory of Butch Cassidy, and although there is no compelling evidence that he stayed in that room he did stay in one of them. Speak nicely to the man behind the cash till in the bar and he will take you to see it.

Although the clothes and furniture are not known to be those of Butch and his companions themselves they are all of the period. The walls are also lines with photos and documents relating to Butch and the Wild Bunch.

Trelew has two museums we wanted to see. The first was the paleontological museum (Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio), an excellent museum that contains remains of the largest dinosaur ever found, an unnamed Titanosaur, estimated to have been 40 m (130 ft) long and 20 m (65 ft) tall, with a weight of 77 tonnes.

The photo of Caroline below –standing next to the foot and leg bones– found gives some idea of just how big this creature was – the equivalent in volume to 14 African elephants.

The Titanosaur is no longer the centre of display as too little is known about it, but it is being actively researched by Argentine and US scientists. The museum, beautifully set out, has a great deal  more paleontological goodies on offer too …

… while research goes on behind the scenes.

The other museum was the Pueblo de Luis Folk Museum, opposite the Paleontological museum and housed in the old Trelew railway station. Not dissimilar to the Gaiman museum it seems to have been revamped since Martin’s visit two years ago, and is certainly worth a visit.

Among the many exhibits in the museum we were both taken by this colourful old petrol pump.

Before leaving Trelew we wanted to see the biggest and most known chapel, the Capilla Moriah. Sadly it is kept closed most of the time but we did manage to see the outside and were able to peek at the cemetery at the back where many settlers were interred.

The cemetery was locked too, but we could peek through the wire fences surrounding it.

Beside the church was a bilingual school where Welsh is being taught. The school is doing fine, but funding for the language across the region is dying – sponsors please note!

And with that it was time to head for the hills following the path that the early colonists took across the country to the Andean town of Trevelin. The road is decorated with bilingual signs that record some of the signs of the traverse: the one below commemorates Edwin C. Roberts, who with two Englishmen made a hazardous trip around this area looking for gold. Edwin’s story (and others) are mentioned here.

Friday 18 November, 2016; Trelew – Valdés Peninsula – Trelew

This was to be our ‘wildlife day’, and we drove from Trelew up to the Valdes Peninsula, where we did see a good number of sea and land mammals (and the odd bird). But first we stopped by Puerto Madryn, the place where the Welsh Colonists first touched land.

We liked the flag! The sign says (rough translation): In 1865 when the Mimosa arrived … The Argentine flag -with the Welsh dragon in its centre– flew from the hill above the caves. It had been raised by Edwyn Roberts on a flag post erected to show the place where the ship had disembarked its passengers. Although a very special flag, it was in fact the first flag bearing Argentine colours to be raised in Puerto Madryn.

The bay at Puerto Madryn had shallow beaches and a relatively sheltered deeper area for a ship to moor, but conditions on shore were poor for a setlement and after a few days the community moved further south to Rawson – the men on foot and the women in the boat.

The history of the Welsh colonization is fascinating, but is mostly recorded in Welsh or Spanish. A flavour of it (in English) can be found here.

The Welsh soon encountered an indigenous people, the Tehuelche, with whom they promptly established good relations and were able to trade to mutual advantage. In Madryn there are two statues, one to the Welsh people (not pictured here as the area where it stands was under repair) and one to the Tehuelche (above).

The Welsh flag still flies over the Madryn landing site, but accompanied today by the full Argentine flag and the flag of the Tehuelches. The City of Puerto Madryn can be seen in the distance.

We drove north from Madryn to the Valdes Peninsula, a World Heritage List site. Our first stop was Puerto Pirámides, a charming port village with a real hippy feel.

Our first objective was food, and we found La Estación, a delightful bar bistro with excellent food and very laid back staff in attendance.

We had an excellent lunch here, …

… but our main reason for being here was the wild life. We drove to the Caleta Valdés, on the east of the Peninsula, and found a penguin colony there:

The penguins seemed oblivious to human presence and just went about their daily business, which seemed to be mostly chilling.

We also saw elephant seals, equally bent on doing nothing very much

Although we’re not supposed to be posting birds here, it is appropriate to include a martineta (in English elegant crested tinamou). We saw these all along the roadsides and often in the road, their little legs scuttling to get them to safety.

The sun was setting as we drove back to Trelew, a longish drive but the trip was well worth it.

Thursday 17 November, 2016; around the Chubut Valley

Today started and finished in Gaiman and was devoted to learning about the Welsh colonisation and the development of their settlements. But the first event turned out to be the arrival in Gaiman of the Rally of the Incas, a 10.000km drive from Buenos Aires to Lima  that took in a good part of Patagonia too.

We had known about the rally beforehand, and had arranged to be here at this time. It was lovely to see the fifty or so old cars driving through the town. Many of them were from the 1920s, and there seemed to be a predominance of Bentleys. The full list of participants can be found here.

The organisers had come prepared for Gaiman with a suitably clothed Welsh mannequin that everyone wanted to pose with. The woman in this photograph was one of the waitresses from the Ty Gwyn tea house, where all the drivers had stopped for early morning tea and cakes.

As the dust from the last cars settled we began to explore the town and its environs. Below you can see a rather lovely tree carving that grabbed our attention  …

… and one of the many irrigation ditches that keep the Chubut valley so fertile. Not one of the original ditches, obviously. Huge tracts of the valley were irrigated by the early colonists without the use of modern technology and materials: a monumental effort that made the land possible to farm and live in.

The picture below, showing a wall built much as they are today in Wales, was one of the few stone structures we saw (although we were told of one old stone house in Gaiman which we didn’t see ourselves). We heard that the original settlers had left the first settlement at Rawson (named after Guillermo Rawson, a C19th politician)  because there was no natural wood or stone there (their first homes had been constructed with wood brought over on the Mimosa), and presumably Gaiman was in some ways better for construction. We know that stone was to be found in and around Gaiman to some extent:  the name Gaiman, refers to ‘sharp’ stone, or perhaps a ‘whetstone’; the word has never really been satisfactorily translated from the Tehuelche.

We visited the nearby Bryn Gwyn Paleontological Park; Bryn Gwyn in Welsh means ‘white hill’. Although it was scorchingly hot, Caroline ventured a way along the trail while Martin watched a few birds playing near the [shaded] visitor centre. The Park is currently semi-open (all structures have been dismantled though you can still walk the trail) and it seems unclear when the new structures will be in place.

We were looking for old buildings from the Colonists era. Very little remains of the first settlers, but we did find Bod Iwan (see below). This house was built by the Welsh colonists for the family of Llwyd ap Iwan, who was shot dead by bandits in 1909.

The Chubut valley is peppered with chapels, many of which are still standing and quite a few in use.The delightful Glen Alaw (below) is the smallest.

Of course you can’t leave Welsh Patagonia without a traditional Welsh Tea. Gaiman has many tea houses to choose from, and we plumped for one of the oldest, Plas y Coed, in the Centre of town. Welsh teas really are something else; one should go when really hungry and be prepared not to eat again for the rest of the day.

As we left Gaiman for our apartment hotel in Trelew we passed the  Bethel Chapel and pulled in to take a photo. We were hailed by a very Welsh looking lady, Luned Roberts de González, who turned out to be the mother of Fabio whom we had met a couple of days earlier in the Gaiman Welsh settlers’ museum. We also met Jeremy Wood of WelshPatagonia, originally from New Zealand, who we had met an hour earlier in the Plas y Coed tea house and he invited us to a talk Luned was giving to the people on his tour.

Luned’s talk, given in the older of the two Bethel Chapels (a larger one  was needed for the growing congregation)  was a fascinating mix of history and anecdote. She and her recently deceased sister Tegai are direct descendants of the first settlers and she knows all there is to know about the Welsh community.

We must have spent a good hour, perhaps longer, listening to Luned before we headed back to Trelew, our bellies so full of Welsh tea that more food was not possible. Wine and beer helped us through till bedtime.

Wednesday 16 November, 2016: Los Altares – Trelew

We left Los Altares after a basic breakfast in the ACA cafe and drove east towards the Atlantic. Today was not supposed to be a wildlife day, but after a couple of hours driving we came across a herd of guanaco in the distance and then two splendid animals quite close to the road. A lovely sight, and a first for Caroline.

We stopped for a second breakfast in Las Plumas, where we were yet again served undrinkable coffee and made a note to carry coffee and filters with us in future. Perhaps expresso machines are expensive for smaller establishments like this.

On our way to Trelew we made a short diversion to see the huge Dique Ameghino dam. We drove over the top of it, not without a sense of vertigo, and looked cautiously down into the valley below.

The water in the reservoir and also in the stream below was a beautiful clear greeny-blue, although to save time (we seem to be always on a tight schedule!) we didn’t drive down to the small settlement at ground level but turned round and back to the main road east.

Soon we were in the Welsh town of Dolavon, where we had a huge lunch at the El Rayo restaurant, perhaps (?) the only restaurant in town and at least the only one we could find. Welcome beer and good wholesome food put us in a good mood.

We drove around Dolavon, which was an attractive if sleepy town, with (apparently) a Welsh butcher …

… and more than one pretty bird (though Martin is rationed in his bird shots on this trip). This little beauty is a red-crested cardinal (Paroaria coronata), his gorgeous headgear a perfect match for the painted kerbs of Dolavon.

Irrigation streams ran through the town in Dolavon, some with quite ingenious mechanisms for raising water (see here for video clip).

The Welsh belt, especially in farmland alongside the river Chubut around Dolavon, Gaiman and Trelew, is known for its Welsh chapels. Above is one we saw on leaving Dolavon for Gaiman.

In Gaiman we asked a student the way to the railway museum; she is wearing a teeshirt that comes from a school where Welsh is taught. In Gaiman the teaching of Welsh is on the increase, but funding is precarious and the future seems uncertain.

The young lady directed us to what had in another life been a railway station, but now was the local museum and housed many photographs, documents and artefacts  of settlers who had come to the region. Here we met Fabio González, who has curated the collection for the last six years; his aunt Tegai Roberts had done this previously and was there when Martin visited in the 1980s. Fabio was a wealth of information and a pleasure to chat with.

Obviously there was a Welsh dresser in the collection, along with harps, harmoniums, cooking utensils and a wealth of other items, together with scores of fascinating photos and documents.

On one wall in the museum was a map of Wales; the extract below shows the area Caroline and Martin know so well – Martin through childhood and university days and Caroline also through some thirty years living there as an adult.

Gaiman is perhaps the most Welsh of the towns in the Welsh belt, and there is a real Welsh feel; many of the people simply look Welsh and would not be out of place in the streets of Machynlleth. Yes, we were definitely in Welsh Patagonia now, and enjoying every minute of it.