Burrs: Esquel to Culvert Camp.

December 16, 2015

Tuesday I had to part with a lot of cash for a new chain and bottom-bracket bearing here in Esquel, which I didn't much like, but then they are a necessity. I will fit the latter when the need arises. The chain I fit on returning from the bike-shop.

I have never quite understood the reason for the pin provided with Shimano chains to link them up. They just don't make sense. And so I link the chain up the old fashion way, using the chain-tool to push the rivet pushed out when shortening the chain to fit (it is important to have left a millimetre of rivet protruding on the inside of the link-plate, so the link clicks back in place and is sitting square), back in place through the link, until the head of the rivet protrudes a little above the hole in the link-plate. Then flex the re-joined chain-link from side to side, to release any stiffness, that normally occurs when pushing the link in and I'm done.

I take the bike out for a try, hoping the chain meshes well with the four-thousand kilometres of wear in the cassette, riding up a steep switch-back hill upon an unpaved road to the north of town does the job of checking there's no slip under full load. The hill so steep that I've to come back down with the brakes well on as not to run away and skid off on the small loose stones to the middle and sides, so the brake also get a good try out.

My next stretch of road is about twelve-hundred kilometres south on route 40 to the small city of El Calafate, with only a few small places on the way, so the bike has to be sound as there'll be no bike-shops until Calafate. There will be food shops at roughly two day intervals if I ride fast, or, am not brought to a halt by the wind.

The one good thing is it is nearly all paved road, unlike in 2004 when I did the same route. Then it was mainly unpaved, improved earthen track with lots of little stones and embedded bigger stones making the going slow and arduous.

Another version of Esquel photo of the previous page, from that steep road I tested the bike on. My road south is up the valley to the left.

I'm awake and look at the watch, seeing 06.57, but can't get up as the two Germans sharing my dorm are already up, one in the shower and the other filling the small floor space with his gear packing his backpack, so have to wait until they've finished and I can shower. My last wash for a while.

I eat more at the breakfast table too. The bread is freshly baked in the hostel every night, making such a wholesome start to the day.

I should mention, for the first time today I'm kitted out in Winter clothes, full thermals and fleece, gloves and warm hat. It's sunny but there's a sharp breeze and it's frigid whenever cloud blocks out the sun. The climate here resembles Iceland and it'll only get colder the further south I push.

I try getting cash at an ATM, but the transaction fails. I try a second bank and it fails too. So now I'm left with thirteen-hundred pesos, about £80, to do until Calafate, which may take two weeks. In any case, my pannier is full of road food; plenty of rice, polenta, cans of tuna and the like and of course mate to drink. I won't starve.

And dropping down from the mountain basin location of the city.

A derelict estancia (house with land) in on the left, with Alamos, or popular trees originally planted as a windbreak. The usual sight of Europeans who started settling in Patagonia around 1900.

I am heading out of town around half nine. Although not a big place, it is about five kilometres before I reach the last of the built up zone of single story wood cabins with corrugated iron roofs set in garden plots of trees with the constant squawk of pairs of big ibis birds walking in the verge or flying overhead. Further out pine trees have been planted along the road which gradually climbs for twelve kilometres until meeting route 40, where it continues up for a few kilometres more out of the mountain basin where the city is located

Like all of Patagonia, Esquel, the place of the burrs (small buds which stick to socks in dry grass) in Tehuelches language, is a recently founded urban settlement. I think they started to built in 1907. I've seen an old black and white photo from a few years later of a new La Anonima general store and two or three other houses with wool bale loaded wagons and an early motor car out front, set in open country. And there's a Welsh chapel from about the 1920s, which is now one of the oldest structures and therefore a tourist attraction with a photo on an interpretation board from the 1950s of Welsh chapel goers by the entrance dressed in Sunday best, when it still hadn't grown to much more than a village.

So what basically happened a few generations ago was, Argentina went into an economic boom time with the invention of refrigerator ships and export of beef to Europe, principally Britain and saw the need for territorial expansion south into Patagonia, which until the 1870s was the domain of nomadic native americans. They used military force and annihilated the natives and opened the southern lands to European immigrants, that established sheep farms and service towns and villages linked by wagon tracks.

The road continues straight ahead for a while into infinity with an ochre horizon blending into big cotton wool clouds. Then about midday swings hard left and sharp downhill into the Rio Tecka valley, with it's level green cattle pasture and river enclosed with pale willows and far side rising in steep brownish grey barren hills.

Beyond the fence posses of woolly rust and white cattle muse at me approaching and charge away in fright as I pass. And I pass a black bereted gaucho on horseback leading two other horses along the fence.

A tributary with an old bridge from loose earthen road (ripio), which preceded the tarmac road.

An abandoned petrol station being reclaimed by steppe.

Rain moving in ahead over Tecka village.

I stop for late lunch in the shelter of an abandoned petrol station, the wind having picked up, mainly on my back which chills every time I stop; and the cloud having thickened with spots of rain.

I cross rio Tecka and ahead it is blowing a storm with drizzly rain in Tecka village, a small place of uniform rows of white box municipal houses and a large YPF service station, where most of the few vehicles which had passed me during the day have pulled in. But the sky being clear to the south, I continue on by forgoing the chance of a coffee.

The road on follows an arroyo (seasonal river) for a bit before climbing for near ten kilometres up and out upon open steppe, where the wind become a strong crosswind. I struggle on to a point where the road dips down and swings right; beyond which, I'd have an impossible headwind. In the dip is a large culvert, the steep bank down on the left of the road providing a fair degree of shelter to pitch the tent, but at the mouth of the concrete conduit would be impossible, the wind howling through and the air icy cold, it always being in shade.

The culvert bank provided a buffer against the strong wind which picked up late afternoon.

Note to Chris White: soup with polenta mixed in; easier to cook and tastier than pasta with ketchup. I also put onions, carrots and whatever other vegetable I can get to enrich the nutritional content.

I have pegged the tent well and it stands securely against gusts that make it down off the road as I cook dinner of polenta.

Ten minutes pass and the wind has dropped leaving a still evening with clear sky. I hope it's as still in the morning.

Today's ride: 114 km (71 miles)
Total: 2,305 km (1,431 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0