My legs are really hurting, it's primarily the left, but the right one hurts a bit too. The area usually shows my achilles as being skinny, but they're swollen. Tori investigates the possibility of taking the historic landmark train down to Esquel, but it doesn't sound like it runs till January. I try to set my cleats back further, I have success on one left shoe which is good. Right has a stripped bolt, will need to drill it out sometime. Should be easy at a mechanics garage, but it's not exactly the time of year when things are open. I do have two sets of cleats and an extra set of pedals with me so am not worried about drilling out a bold once the opportunity arises.
We pedal south out of town slowly, and pass through a beatiful rural valley. El Hoyo isn't much more than a blip in the road, and we decide to stop for a coffee at the top of the next hill, which has a quaint little cafe cabin at the side of the road. I decide riding isn't really in the cards for me today. It's beatiful, sun is shining, the Andes surround us, and my body has energy to burn... but the transmission isn't working!
There's a fork in the road/plans. It'd be nice to ride/hitchhike on the gravel road through the mountains, which the coffee shop guy says has lots of camping and cabins. Hek4 helpful, and speaks pretty decent english but continues to apologize that it isn't great. He's probably 35, sorta round and jolly looking like Santa, but with dark dark brown beard and hair, as dark as it gets without being black. Two funny dogs are on the lawn, one we feed our non-choice cherries to, to his great delight, and one that's a bit of a chicken. But it's longer, we go slower, and risk flats. Or there's the paved route which he says "has nothing" (map seems to indicate it borders desert/more arid area instead of lake country).
We decide to try taking a bus, which should be about $3 for the 100km left to Esquel on the paved route. We make our way into Epuyen, which is 6km from our coffee stop. It's surrounded once again by picturesque Andes in all directions, and doesn't seem to have too much going on... just few houses and a bus stop along a gravel road. Total distance on the day was only 47km in 2:45. Tori knows I was hurting as I'd coast every hill instead of pedalling faster.
If the bus doesn't work out, we'll head down the gravel and try to find either a nearby camping spot or hitch it with a pickup down the road. Turns out the bus worked just fine. We skipped a lot of Nevada type riding through the arid areas east of the mountains. Vast open arid area to the east, sort of a wasteland. You could see 30 miles and not see anything but low lying desert type brush and the odd bird of prey. The gravel road through the mountains definitely would have been the riding choice.
Esquel is surrounded by steep, huge mountains. Last week I was skiing at Lake Louise and admiring the mountains across the valley, and they just feel accomodating with broad treed bases that slope up to the rocky crowns. Here they look more intimidating. It feels like you're in serious country here, not girl scout stuff. The mountains are acually furthest from town to the west, but those are badass steep, jagged, snowcovered Andes that look imposing even from a distance. I love it. I'm sure you could do some mountain bike hill climbing around here that would make my 10km 10% average ascent up a forestry road in Fernie look like what the grade 3 class does at recess. All the town publications for these various cities say that they're great staging grounds for true wilderness experiences, and it doesn't look like they're kidding at all. I don't know the comparative age of the Andes versus our Rockies, but these must be younger as they're so steep and jagged. I haven't been to Alaska (yet), but I suspect it gives people the same feeling - you're in a place where nature rules and man survives, true wilderness. It may be only a day or two modern hourney from the lower 48, but in terms of mindset it's vastly more seperate.
The bus station in Esquel is an impressively modern building. We ended up staying at a cabana that's only a few blocks away, it was the first place we stopped at, but then checked out three other places before coming back. We've got a 2 level, brick walled, log roof construction cabin that sleeps 7 and has tile floors, a granite kitchen countertop and fireplace, TV and DVD player. We're splurging again, this works out to $21 US out of both Tori and my pocket. We decide we can afford a $40 place for Christmas. In Fernie this would probably be 10x the cost. One of the hotels we investigated was $100 per night, I have no idea what they can offer that would be any better than this. We haven't figured out yet if they expect you to bargain with them, once they quote a price they ask if that's ok and if you'll be staying with them. Compared to the other places here this seemed like a fair deal, and compared to home it obviously does too. If we're overpaying, I can't say I mind. This guy and his wife have built a beautiful house in his back yard, divided into two sides. He's entrepreneurial and the construction is top notch, and could have just had a back yard for himself. I hope he can make the economics work such that he can buy the open lot next door and do the same thing, if he doesn't own it already. He's nice, brought us some little local sights brochures, and showed us where to knock on the door of his house if we need anything.
Once again this is a modern town, I thought this entire trip would be much more "mainstreet is gravel with little modernity". I surmise Argentina didn't have a great landline infrastructure for phones, and took that opportunity to go for good wireless networks. I've seen a lot of public phone cubicles - post offices, stores, etc. have the little rows of cubicles for public pay phones, and they seem to be used quite a bit... which leads me to believe that line penetration hadn't made it as broad as we're used to. And the little girl on the horsecart talking on the cell phone is a vibrant reminder that cell phones are a great technology - age and locale are no longer barriers.
It's a perfect setting for Christmas dinner. We stocked up on groceries not knowing if we'd have access to stores today, and have a fruitcake type loaf that's fairly breadlike, a loaf that I think is sourdough but a little different than what I've seen prior, sausage, a couple little squeeze packs of normal mustard (I haven't seen that translucent stuff again since the first meal) salad and cheeze. We've got a mid-range chardonnay at $3 for the bottle, and a bottle of what I'm pretty sure is fermented apple cider, that was $1.
It's easy to fall in love with your most recent vacation spot, but I don't think I'm being too quick on this one. I love patagonia. It's beautiful, hospitable and friendly, has great traveller/tourist services, and is cost effective. It's not filthy, there aren't annoying bugs, and people don't make you feel unsafe or try to rip you off. You may need a cyclocross bike or mountain bike instead of a road bike to take advantage of the best routes, but that shouldn't be chalked up as a negative. It's a positive because you know you're on a route slightly less travelled, a bit closer to the edge of mankind's footprint and a bit nearer to nature. Picture riding along the Spray lakes road up above Canmore, but with services along the way, for days on end. The only complaints I have so far about the Argentine side is a distinct lack of alpacas and llamas, guess they're more on the Chilean side?? All I can say is that if I travel from the 49th parallel north down to the 42nd south, I wanna see alpacas and llamas galore, I love those critters! Other than that, they could use more ozone layer. My forehead wasn't really out for that long and I got seriously roasted!
Still it's perfecto in my books. Feliz Navidad!
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