The morning sun adds colour to the day, just like Duff erases it from his arty photos. Dark slides into pink, then grey and then light blue. While we watch, we enjoy a hearty ranch breakfast of eggs and fresh orange; maybe not ranch then, no beans. Plenty of road kill possibilities though with the kamikaze llamas and rheas that jump into our paths later in the day.
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| The Art of Duff |
The gravel track from the ranch evolves into a gravel road and then a wide gravel dual carriageway. We are the only traffic, so can take any line we choose, weaving from one rut to the other, depending on which looks less bumpy. Although with a ridge of gravel between the ruts, changing 'lanes' is not always straightforward and has to be planned well in advance; even then, the bars wobble nervously as you cross that small gravel ridge. Keep your nerve, and the throttle open, and things soon settle; close the throttle and it's not so nice. You'll learn in time: if in doubt, gas it out. Just like sand, only bumpier. Making this more difficult than usual, is the strong cross wind today, gusts see us swaying unsteadily.
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| Strong winds - but not the beans this time |
The weird thing is that these roads are just like real tarmaced roads, complete with armco barriers and road signs, just without the tarmac. They've obviously been prepared to be laid with the black stuff, but it hasn't happened yet. 100 km later, we see the machines doing this work and shortly after, the tarmac road starts. No ceremony, it's just open; and virtually steaming fresh. And then we turn back onto the famous Ruta 40.
As we speed up, the effects of the cross wind increases, sending us from one side of the lane to the other, and all the while we're leaning over to counter its effects. This is a different kind of sideways action to the one we had on the gravel a few days ago.
Along Ruta 40, we periodically pause to take photos and at one vantage point we can look across Lago Viedma to see a long way in the distance what we think is a glacier, but not the Perito Moreno glacier, which we plan to visit tomorrow. In this same general direction are the peaks of Fitz Roy and Cerros Torre, standing tall and regal beside the glacier. Pictures rarely do justice to the scene, so we take a few moments to soak it up.
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| Hotel Leona - this far from home |
The lunch stop is at Hotel Leona, on the banks of a fast flowing glacial meltwater river. The river colour is milky green and it swirls and churns as it goes. You can see the previous attempt at a river crossing downstream of the concrete bridge we just crossed; all that remains of that is the pier stumps, as the bridge itself was probably washed away. The hotel itself has wifi and we all eagerly feed upon our social medias after our forced abstention.
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| You can just see the posts of a previous river crossing |
A final run into Calafate sees several of us well into our reserve tanks and a few run out. These are filled by Cory using supplies stashed on the jeep, and later we all fill up at a petrol station.
The hotel is pleasant enough and it has a decent wifi connection. Steve and I go for a quick run which turns into yet another adventure as we have to take off our socks and trainers to cross a water inlet which reaches up to our crotches. I doubt he'll do that on the Marathon des Sables in a few weeks time.
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| An adventure run - my fault, I started him off |
Calafate itself I've decided I don't like. Too touristy and too many tourists. But as we are tourists ourselves, there's not much I should complain about. I think the town only exists or prospers because of glacier tourism. It's the most important attraction in the area and rightly so. Tomorrow we'll see it for ourselves, up close and personal. But we won't get a chance to walk on it as all the tours are fully booked days ahead.
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Sent from the dusty road using my rusty BlackBerry
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