We are in Chalten today, just alongside the Fitz Roy Range.
It is raining out and Mt. Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre are currently lost
in the rain clouds. Down at the end of the lake, where the mountains
end and the pampa starts, there had been blue sky all morning.
It is conceivable that we could have ridden right out of the rain
shower and into nice weather. However if that did not turn out
to be the case, we would have ended up on Ruta 40 in the rain.
This is the most notorious stretch of Ruta 40, where we have heard
tales of people spending a day slogging through the mud, falling repeatedly
and only making 10 miles in 8 hours. Even though I have a feeling
we would have been fine - it doesn`t rain much there because of the
rain shadow created by the Andes, we decided to play it safe and take
a day off. If it clears up enough I'm going to hike a few hours
up to Laguna des Tres which is supposed to have an amazing view.
My bike is, once again, in perfect running order. At least for
the time being. It seems every time I get it to the point where
it seems like it should be good for the rest of the trip, something
else happens. SM Motos, the Honda shop in Rio Gallegos, fixed
every known issue. They replaced my fork seals, took apart the
steering head and tightned everything back down, machined the nut
holding on the front sprocket so that the too-thick washer could be
discarded and the sprocket woudl be held on more securely and then
replaced my rear tire with the Metzeler Enduro 3 Sahara, which looks
really stylin'. We got out of the shop around 7 in the evening
and went into Rio Gallegos looking for a hotel. They were all
full. All of them. We started circling around the center
of town further and further out looking for places. It was pretty
grim. Eventually hunger took over and we stopped at a Parrilla
for a late dinner, and asked how to find the campground that we knew
was somewhere nearby. It was very close. And they happened
to have a hotel there too with available rooms, probably the only
one in town.
The next morning dawned relatively fair and calm. We rode the
same road back almost to Calafate and then headed north about 30K
before town towards Chalten. The road is under construction
and looks like it will be all paved within another year. Route
40 won't seem the daunting challenge it once was when they finish
paving all these new sections, it will be the end of an era.
The weather to the north of the valley leading to Chalten looked a
bit threatening, but not too bad up in the Fitz Roy Range. The
views coming up along the 50 mile long lake were the height of Patagonian
mountain magnificence. The highest of the peaks were being grazed
by white puffy clouds, the lake was an otherworldly turquoise, an
aqua colored glacier spilled down into the far end of the lake, hanging
glaciers covered almost every peak with minarets of stone puncturing
through many places in defiance of the ice. The town is small
and unpaved, every building new or not yet complete. A sign
on the main street gave the history of the town - it was founded in
1985, thus making it about the youngest town I've ever visited.
Could this be another superlative? Youngest Town in South America?
By the way I forgot one some weeks back, we went through the Highest
National Capital, La Paz, Bolivia. Bolivia had lots of Highest
This´s and That´s.
Dammit! I just finished this post and the browser crashed in
the middle of the post. Therefore I have lost yet another piece
of a posting. At least not the whole thing this time, after
the experience in Calafate I have learned to save mid-post a little
more often. However I did type in a few more paragraphs, and
don't remember exactly what I said and most of all really hate retyping
things. Let's see, I wrote about meeting Ted and Sandy from
Australia who are riding 2 up on a BMW 1150 GS which Ted learned to
ride just for this trip. Then I had a rather long section about
rain karma, and if today as a rain day means an end of the rain karma.
I wrote about all the rain storms we have been miraculously going
straight towards lately, only to end up finding the road to wind right
between the heavier cells and keep us relatively dry. It has
happened over and over again in the last 2 weeks. And then the
fact that we didn't actually ride in the rain today, we had the option
to bag the day before beginning, whereas the rain had come up mid
ride on other days. And then it looks like we *may* have been
able to ride right out of the storm this morning and into a non-rainy
valley. So I don't think the good rain karma has ended, but
this doesn't bode for the best.
Tomorrow we will, weather permitting, ride down out of the mountains
and onto Route 40 and head north. If it isn't muddy then we
should be able to hit the Chilean border in a couple days. We
will then head up the Carreterra Austral for 3 or 4 days, take a ferry
to Chloè and then another ferry back to the mainland a couple
days later. From there it should be about 3 days to Santiago
or Valparaiso where we will ship the bikes back to the states.
Then ourselves. Then I'm going snowboarding.
That was a little more brief and dry than the original attempt at
a post but like I say, I hate writing the same thing over again!!
