Day 9: To Calafate AR
Today we rode the most challenging dirt road of the trip. It is 70 km and our Chilean guide says they refer to it as "The Road of the 70 Mother F**kers". It lived up to its reputation. It is gravel in places. But the gravel has deep wheel ruts from cars and trucks. This means we are driving down a rut of loose gravel. The bikes tend to slide and drift around. Make a mistake or drift to far to one side in a rut and a spill can occur. Mike after mile of these deep gravel ruts. The other challenge is the mud from the rain a couple of days ago. This mud is very slippery, even when it looks like it is just damp. The mud also has partially dried ruts from cars and trucks. These ruts in the mud combined with how slippery it is also conspire to try and cause a spill. With a lot of concentration I avoided taking a spill. I got in a big slide in one large mud area and after a couple tank slappers and big slides managed to not drop the bike and get it going straight again. I may have said a mother F**ker or two in that maneuver.
Here is a picture of the road. This does do justice to how challenging the road is since we did not stop at the really muddy parts or the deepest gravel ruts. Watch Juan's video at the end of this post for a better idea of this road.
Some pictures from the day. Sunrise at the sheep farm hotel.
an Alpaca standing watch. Next picture is the herd. In a video at the end of this post you can see Alpacas moving at speed. They are graceful. We are not sure if these are Alpacas or a smaller cousin.
A solar powered SOS station
Some Gouchos with their dogs herding sheep. We later saw a herd of about a dozen horses cross the dirt road and then gallop off towards the top of a nearby hill, led by a majestic white horse. We did not get pictures of this. All we could do was appreciate it as we rode down the road.
Finally we came to the end of the 70 mile "MF" dirt road and hit pavement again.
At a gas stop we met these Brits. They just finished university and are traveling in this rented camper for five months across South America.
Eventually as we rode through the Patagonia desert we saw the peaks of the southern Andes in the distance. Here is a pic of that.
We crossed this river, which flows out of the huge lake we just rode all the way around, and after about another 10 km arrived at our hotel.
This is the view from our hotel room.
