December 10, 2015
Esquel: Planeta Hostel.
"So you're the one on the bike" says the German woman with alluring grey eyes, but with one eye looking off over my shoulder "how can you cycle with the wind?" I reply "I haven't really had serious wind yet".
She is already sat at the hostel breakfast table when I enter, talking with a young French woman, the same woman I met in the national park along with her partner who's also sat at the table. While I fill a bowl of cornflakes, the German is relating how hungry she was in the national park and having arrived at the same fishing lodge restaurant, where the owner wouldn't let me sit at his picnic table, pleaded "Tengo ambre" (I'm hungry) and buys a sandwich costing a colossal hundred and fifty pesos.
"I asked him can you make a living from charging a hundred and fifty pesos for a sandwich. He answered not really. Then I suggested if he charged less, more people would stop and eat at his restaurant and he would make more money."
The French woman adds, her and her partner having camped in the closed campsite nearby and having gone to the restaurant to buy wine.
"He say to me, I only have expensive wine. And look at me like I am poor. He honly like rich people who fish that come in cars. Then ask me what part of France I come from. I say Brittan-nee. And he say, I only know Par-ris"
I saw their backpacks stashed in the undergrowth while they were away walking, by the picnic table where I lunched in the closed campsite that day and mention them to her.
"Ah yes we camped there, why not. But I didn't feel safe with that asshole near. What if he come in the night and say we cannot camp here and tell us to leave."
I am at the stage were my bike will soon need honey and love and money spend on it in maintains. The bearings which allow the crank-arms to turn smoothly, bottom-bracket in bicycle jargon, are worn to the point where they'll very soon need replacing. And my chain has done four-thousand kilometres. It's advisable to change the chain even earlier, because a worn chain wears the other drive-train components quicker.
In any case, Esquel has a good bike shop, the last place with such a shop for quite a bit. So I buy and replace the chain here; and buy the bottom-bracket bearings, then will fit them when the ones that are on the bike now start to really wear out.
Meanwhile I take myself up to see "The Old Patagonia Express" train. On Tuesdays and Saturdays it makes an outing from Esquel to the steppe town of El Maiten, when tourists from all over the world come for the ride. A few others like me have turned up to see it arriving back in station; due back at one o'clock and it appears in the distance a minute before, chugging rapidly down the track towards us. I have to scramble alongside to get a photo as it slows along the platform. Then carriage doors all open in unison and the flatform fills with alighting passengers as I, like a small boy look at the workings of the locomotive. There's a big group of excited Buenos Aires pensioners, from which, one old lady asks me where I am from. Then sprouts cheerfully "Eso es una relica de Arg-hentina!" Her voice full of national pride.
On Sunday I check out of the hostel, to ride the short twenty-two kilometres to Trevelin. The morning although sunny has a cutting cold westerly breeze. The road out of Esquel rising all the way to a midway point to crest a hill, where snow streaked mountain peaks come into view to the right and ahead is a wide wooded rise to a level horizon. The village of trevelin nestled below before the rise.
On the steady descend I meet two other cyclists on the way up, riding on the unpaved gravel shoulder as if they prefer ripio. I cross over to them and we have a usual cyclist meet cyclist exchange. They are local, Chubutese with an interesting tour ahead, namely, riding to the source of Rio Chubut and from there, downstream to Los Altares.
Trevelin is a growing place with modern wooden cabins spread out the road on the way in. I ride along an unpaved avenue from the main rotunda plaza and up a steep hill to a hostel called "La Casa Verde" where I stayed previously. But on approaching the hostel see something wrong. There is no longer the hostel signs and when I get as far as the entrance drive, the wood cabin forlorn and slightly rundown since last here. I continue in along the gravel drive in the garden and am just about to lean the bike by the door, when a window opens and Vivian, the woman owner is there, says "Es cerrado. No funcion mas como hostel" with a kind of sadness at having to turn me away.
It is hard to understand as it was such a successful hostel having been reported in cultural newspaper reports both in Argentina and further afield as one of the best hostels in Argentina.
I stop for a coffee in town before returning to Esquel and checking into Planeta Hostel for a couple of nights more in preparation for route 40 south.
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