Blogpost 15 - Puerto Guadal to Chile Chico, into Argentina and on to El Bolson

We awoke in Puerto Guadal to an improving day and headed out to Chile Chico which is the last town before you cross the border into Argentina. The travel guide indicated that the road was treacherous with nowhere to stop. It clearly was quite narrow with tight corners in places but we had plenty of places to pull over a fill the camera with more photos. The road was so much fun to drive and the views terrific that I would happily drive it again.

Once agin the supposed 2.5 hour drive took us about 6 hrs.

We stopped and talked to a couple about our age who were driving a 6 wheel 6 wheel drive Mercedes Camper. They had shipped it over from Europe for then trip. It has got us thinking again about where to next.

Driving a camper around this part of the world would have been great. The towns, both large and small leave very little to be desired but you are forced to stay in them. In a camper you could free camp in so many great spots, it would make the whole Patagonia experience even better than it has been.

We spent two night in Chile Chico in a nice cabana that was a little difficult to find. It was hidden away down a very rough gravel side road that had lots of other small houses along it that have either been very badly built or never maintained. We found our cabana right at the end and it was a different story altogether. The owner clearly new how to make it attractive to tourists. Even the Netflix worked the first night. We watched half of a movie the first night but unfortunately could not figure out the spanish instructions to get it going again on the second attempt.

On out second day in Chile Chico we headed off on a long drive and a walk into some very interesting volcanic mountainous terrain. It was however very cold when in the wind and i suspect it blows 24/7/365 here.

Our next challenge was to change money for Argentina. Inflation in Argentina is so bad at present that they have a black market exchange rate for the American Dollar. Officially you get about 350 Argentine Pesos for the $US but if you have US dollars, you can enchanter them in the street for about 900 Argentine Pesos.

We found a money exchanges place at the bus depot in Chile Chico that would sell us US dollar bills so we withdrew Chile Pesos from the bank, exchanged them for $100 US notes and headed off to Argentina. The chap in the money exchange pace in Chile Chico had a mate in the first town we reached after crossing the border who would exchange the $US for us. We handed over 2 $100 US noted and got 180,000 Argentine Pesos. That is a huge pile of 1,000 peso notes. The effective exchange rate for us here is now $NZ2 = 1,000 Pesos. Top shelf bottles of wine in the supermarket here cost less than 5,000 pesos or $10. But don’t worry, we are not drinking and driving.

So we hit the road north on Ruta 40 which is the main road that runs the full length of Argentina. Most of the road is just perfect, smooth and well aligned but every now and then you run into a short section of the worst potholes imaginable so you have to keep a close eye on the road.

This wasn’t too much of a hardship however as there was very little to see on the way. I have attached 3 photos that Gaye took out through the windscreen as we were driving. They were taken about 1 hour apart. A bonus point to anyone who can spot the changes.

We drove about 450 km that day and only passed though one small wind blown town. I cant imagine why anyone would choose to live there. It was at least 200 km in any direction to the next town.

We finally reached a town called Gobernador Costa and found an OK Cabana to stay in the night.

Yesterday it was back on the road which got a bit more interesting after a while with some more hilly terrain and finally some trees, yes trees, to a really nice resort type town called El Bolson. The Main Street and the closely surrounding streets are nice but any further back and the streets are gravel in very poor condition along with many of the properties.

We booked into a nice cabana here for two nights. We went for a short walk today and a wander around the local Saturday craft market but nothing caught our fancy so we are still traveling light.

Its been very cloudy and windy here but when the clouds clear a bit at times, you realise the town is surrounded but jagged high snow capped peaks. They have ski fields here and i think in the winter it would be very busy. There is heaps of accommodation that is probably also used in the warmer summer months.

The food in the restaurants when buying it with our black market money seems to be so cheap, we are planning a night out. Let’s hope we can find a suitable place to eat.

Tomorrow we move on an again to Baraloche which we understand is quiet a large place so we will see how that goes. We haven’t been in a large town for many weeks now. There are some good hiking areas there which we plan to make use of.