Perito Moreno To El Calafate

Monday 23^rd & Tuesday 24^th January

To stay on paved roads we have 2 long days of around 1200km in total, at this time of year however there is close on 15 hours of daylight (a bit different from the UK at the moment) so fairly easy apart from the pain in my butt! Not much to see on the way via Route 3 & our overnight stop at Puerto San Julian on the Atlantic coast, they do seem very proud of this museum in a replica galleon.

 

This area is where most of the attacks on the Falkland Islands were launched & it’s easy to see what the locals think, this Mirage 5 ‘Dagger’ has the kills of HMS Arrow, Antrim & Avenger painted on the nose.

What a waste of lives & money that conflict was, politicians & their egos have a lot to answer for.

 

The landscape continues to be mainly flat & barren but also strangely beautiful.

 

This is a common sight to all those who have travelled this way, it can’t be too bad at the moment as the bike has stayed upright while I took this shot, why do they use an image of a tree as there aren’t any here?

 

We are again back on Ruta 40 but a paved section, looking at local maps in service stations it should be tarmac all the way later this year, those travellers that did it when it was 100% ripio deserve a medal or they had a better bike.

 

The boys on the road, not much scenery to see though except a few animals such as Rea, Guanaco Deer plus some dead Armadillos & a few birds.

 

Finally as we get closer to El Calafate the scenery starts to change with mountains in the background, from here we will visit the Perito Moreno Glacier one of the expected highlights of our trip, also we need new tires sooner than expected so this is our next challenge.