So I woke up this morning to a perfect campsite...oh so sweet!!!
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| Good Morning!! GoPro selfie stick in Torres Del Paine camping. Oh yeah! |
While this doesn't make sense, I slept so great because I was excited to be there and not driving anymore. When I went to sleep, it was little bit cloudy and breezy. When I woke up it was totally cloudy in look like it was about to rain. It wasn’t raining so I cooked my breakfast as usual. Porridge, hot chocolate, and chocolate spread on bread was on the menu! I really wish I could get some fruit for breakfast but I have not seen fresh fruit anywhere in South America yet. The only fresh fruit I have eaten was on my recent Antarctic cruise out of Ushuaia, Argentina. This is probably most likely because the ship ordered in the fruits in from overseas(?).. Anyway the best part of the morning was that I was able to get a hot shower. I had a very long shower in it felt good despite the dirtiness of the showers and hundreds of spiders everywhere...soaking up the moist air!
After that, I headed out to the park towards the Argentine border. I ran into, not literally, a couple of adventure riders.
I was jealous, but realised still I was not ready enough to do a Patagonia ride. On the way out I saw a nice place to go for a hike, so I turn left to a place that I cannot remember the name of it.
My hike lasted about 45 minutes return and I took a lot of good pictures & a view good videos of raging waterfalls.  |
| Adventure Motorcyclists in Torres Del Paine National Parque |
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| Pano photo from my hike of the area including the waterfalls |
Someone on this hiking trail told me that the Argentinian border was only 40 kilometres away from where I was parked at the hiking spot. They didn’t know what they were talking about. The drive to the Argentinian border to Camille was over two hours of driving through some of the most remote lands I’ve ever seen. Besides A few massive 4x4 tour buses
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| Massive 4x4 tour buses to handle any terrain! |
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| After 2 hours of driving on remote roads of nothing headed East from Torres Del Paine National Parque to the Argentine Border. |
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| What looks like wild deer graze along the side of the remote roads just East of Torres Del Paine National Parque... |
Before getting to the border called Cerro Castillo, I hit some sealed road which was very nice. I was able to drive on a sealed road for about 30 minutes until I saw the actual border crossing. Occasionally I saw herds of wild deer as well.Before I went to the border building, there was a little café just before the border. And when inside and looked around. I buy some candy, A sticker, some chewing gum and a postcard. I parked the car near the border building and went inside. The process was easy. The officer stamped my passport for leaving Chile and stamping my rental car papers. After getting that done, I then jump into "no mans land" where I casually was not in Chile or Argentina; this is quite a weird feeling.
Anyway I got to the Argentinian border, in there was nobody there except 2 security guys with nothing around them except the desert roads Rolling hills and a few green bushes. The guy smiled with me to come into the office. I showed him my New Zealand passport in car rental papers. He said he never saw a NZ passport before. How exciting for him! He’s stamped my passport
Luckily I realised my mistake in turnaround and made the road. This road was about two hours of rough gravel road. This was Rte 40. Is more resembled a rocky-let's-destroy-this-tourist's-rental-van farm road more than a highway.
I was hungry & tired there was hard to concentrate on this rough gravel road in front of me. It was also hot, but also a little rainy too. Unlike a sealed road when you don’t need to worry about potholes and rocks, on this road every rock on the road, if run over anything the wrong way it could cause me to have an accident.
So I turned the music up louder and ate some food to wake my sorry ass up. Eventually I came to the end of this deathly gravel road & found a fresh sealed highway. This was also named "Ruta 40 Norte" which is all very confusing. Anyway at about 40 kilometres is where I need to go to the next petrol station. When I finally got to this petrol station, the station owner came out of a rusty old house to tell me there was no petrol left. He told me I had to drive 80 kilometres more to the East to a little outpost called “Esperanza”. So here I go, but at least it's a sealed road...right?
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| The "sealed" version of Ruta 40 North |
As I approached the entrance to the small outpost Town, there was a police barricade stopping everybody coming into the town. This was strange I was thinking. It is not Argentine customs so what the fuck? As is my turn to go to the front of the line, an officer hand me a plastic rubbish bag, some adverts/flyers and a map of El Calafate inside it. I’m thinking,” do cops do marketing work as a side job?”. As you realise that there is something happening in the city.
There’re cars everywhere, people walking down the street, Et cetera. It was getting dark so I tried to find a backpacker actually because there’s no way to park my van. I saw a YHA backpacker immediately stopped them inside to ask if there was a bed available. The girl smiled and said no sorry we are fully booked until three days from now. I asked what was going on, she said, "there’s a big music festival in town for the next three days.". I told her, "I’m just driving through here and not staying".. She smiled again and said "you picked the wrong weekend to drive-through" -- figures this town is crazy. She recommended I’d drive down the street in try to park in a camper van area. I pulled into one campervan area in in it said it was full, but I tried anyway because I was so damm tired (& hungry too!).
After the struggle of English/Spanish language thing for 10 minutes, I realised the Spanish girls inside said I could pay 80 pesos to park my car right beside the building. Wow this was very nice of them, I was parked right by the bathroom in the right by the front gate. I was so tired any didnt care I said yes. I gave them the 80 pesos in back my van into this but they told me to. At that point the rain started coming down very hard. So I took off my shoes put underneath/ inside of van & sealed up for the night. In a quick 5 minutes I ate a cheese sandwich (disgusting) and drank some water. I do recall noticing this massive German made SUV/survival vehicle parked beside me. I need to check this out tomorrow morning for sure (see my blog entry for 21/2/2015).
I began my nightly ritual of copying over my videos and photos for the day to my external hard drive, and then started writing this blog entry. I was lucky enough to have Wi-Fi access here to be able to send my sweet Rebecca a few texts back and forth over WhatsApp. It is now 2357 in the evening, it’s raining hard and I’m very tired.
Tomorrow I’m going into the park to find a nice quiet spot to organise the rest of my trip with regards to day and schedules. Even though I am 21 days left on my trip, I have a shitload driving to do it mostly on gravel roads so I need to be careful on how I plan this out. Now let the sound of the rain put me to sleep.
For anyone staying here, here's the password to the WIFI there:
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| The password is "moscow4367" |
Sorry I don't recall the name of the campground, but it's easy to find.
Zzz
Daily Summary:
It was a pretty good day today with a very good beginning. The Scenery in the national park was amazing, but after that it was very mind-numbing. The long gravel roads I drove today really tested my sanity as well as the stamina of the vehicle. Getting into El Calafate was nice, but I was very tired when I got there. Looking forward to tomorrow and more adventures. In my mind I'm slowly getting into this road trip feeling my way through Patagonia if that makes any sense...
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