Ruta 40 to the Patagonian Express

Ok, I’ve put off doing a blog for far too long! We’ve been moving slower, and relaxing more, but for some reason that didn’t translate into more time to write blog entries. So, leaving from Los Glacieres national park, we took the famed Ruta 40. Because of it’s remoteness and the variety of landscapes it passes through it has a kind of mystic about it, a little like Route 66 in the States, it even has several songs about it. The photo shows what much of our view was heading north through the Patagonian steppe. It reminded me a lot of my time driving Dave through Australia.

At one point the driver of the bus pulled over because the bus had separated a mother Guanaco from her kid, and the kid was confused running alongside the bus. He decided it would be fun to catch the baby, who was probably only a few days, or even hours old, to show it off to the tourists. He was actually pretty careful but let several of us take photos of the little guy. They were very common along the entire route, which I was a bit surprised at considering all of the sheep. They must be competitors for the pasture. Still the government has protected them, and maybe people are actually going along with it.

The bus was continuing on to Bariloche, but we weren’t ready to get there yet so we got off in El Bolson. Unfortunately I didn’t really find much to take photos of in El Bolson. It’s a hippy town, both Argentine, and from other parts of the world, apparently even California (as we were told several times, though we never met any). The biggest deal there was a thrice weekly crafts fair. It was more or less as you’d expect, though less tie-dye, and more micro-brews. Coming for the land of sucky beers (El Salvador) we took advantage of the beer. We also did lots of walks and bike riding around the outskirts of town. We’d hit a whole new climate zone and it was pretty mountains with pines and firs everywhere. It also is the main hop-producing region of Argentina.

Next we moved south a bit to Esquel. This is interestingly enough, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid country! Yep, this is where they came when they fled the US. It looks a LOT like much of the west that they’d come from. Dry and desolate with ranches along the river valleys. Esquel is a very pretty town, quiet for the most part, though they do drive around honking their horns if there is a soccer victory or a wedding. We used it as a staging point for going up into Los Alerces national park.

Los Alerces is our first real look at the true Andes, and it is no disappointment. It was beautiful dramatic landscapes with forested slopes heading quickly and steeply up to rock and glaciers.

It also, conveniently enough, is the start of all of those amazing trout’s streams I had heard about! The waters, both lakes and rivers were transparent, deep and strong, and full of fish. The rivers were lined with Arrayane trees, something like looks just like a madrone, and the Alerces are the Giant Sequoias of the Southern hemisphere. Look just like them, and live to be 4,000 years… of course they are doomed due to climate change. Not the current craziness, but just the fact that the climate has been changing for the last 10,000 years, and the habitat that they were evolved for doesn’t really exist anywhere down here anymore.

Ok, the last thing we did from Esquel is take the train made famous by Paul Theroux when he wrote the Old Patagonia Express. (Plus I think that Chawin wrote about it as well, but I haven’t read that yet). Anyway, it is a narrow gauge steam engine that really was still running up to 1993. Now it just runs for tourist, but it is trying to make a comeback and increase the route.

It was a fun trip, and would be a really great way to travel through the Argentine steppe. It’s too bad they really don’t have more train services… I have always enjoyed traveling by trains where we could. Next stop, Bariloche!