December 22, 2015
Hitchhikers Glance To The Galaxy: Rio Chico to near Lago Cardiel.
All sorts of birds and water-foul rustle about in the bushes around my tent this morning. There are big pink legged ibis, or banderias as they're locally called walking by on the gravel in front of the tent making their usual high pitched squawk; also, tauros, a grey bird with a frill at the back of the head. I spot something strange moving under a pile of cut branchs. I thought it was an old carrier-bag at first, but then see it is an animal's white fanned brush tail standing erect; it's body like a short badger with a single white stripe along both sides of a brown fur body, meeting at a point on the nose.
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It is dead still as I climb away from Rio Chico. Then the road levels out and follows the top of the slope up from the river for quite away, before turning away and up over the shoulder of a hill. Then come a long descent back to the Chico valley further on, skirting a great tan coloured dry lagoon on the right, with a striking pointed dark brown hill ahead, around the corner of which, I'm back in greenery of the valley with tall Alamos windbreaks on approaching the town of Gobernador Gregores, where suddenly the wind has picked up.
A group of three hitchhikers attired in warm jackets against windchill sit on the opposite side verge as I enter town. They look across at me pass with interest, wave and I give a return wave while continuing into town along the main avenue trying to remember where the municipal campsite was. Not that I'm considering stopping early, but it was where I camped in 2004, and so I am retracting the ghost of my younger self. I know it was along a side street on the far side of town, but which. Anyway, I take a photo of an old tractor owned by one of the town's pioneers, donated by a descendent to sit in the main avenue. Then go to an La Anomonia supermercado to buy bread and cheese and lots of other goodies for a late breakfast-early lunch. Afterwards wheel the bike with box of shopping across to a tree-full plaza opposite, where I picnic on the sheltered side of a boarded up kiosco, watching the wind whip through treetops.
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Actually the hitchhikers on the way into town weren't the only foreigners I see. There were lots of other backpackers along the street weighted down by heavy packs. And outside the supermercado too, there was a French couple and a group of Israelis.
The town is quite a good service centre, except there's only a local Banco Santa Cruz, whose ATMs don't work with my card. But I'm keeping the town in mind as a stop point on the road north in a month or so time.
I continue watching the trees wave away in the wind. It is warm in the shelter here, but if I step to the side of the Kiosco, it's chilly.
I delay until one o'clock before packing all away and setting off along the avenue. The three hitchhikers are still there, three hours later, not having got a lift. One holds a card "Perito Moreno" written in marker pen. Being on the same side this time I stop. They are German and the girl doing the talking laments that this town is a bad place to get stuck, as there are few buses and not many willing to give them a lift.
The afternoon is an arduous battle with the wind. For a long way I'm going gradually uphill, before continuing out upon a wide plain with wind half from the side and head-on. I want to reach Lago Cardiel by sunset. I can see the cleft of the lake ahead and hills rising beyond, but I never reach it. I do reach the end of the tarmac with a sign "200m. Fin de Pavemento" and another sign "Ruta en construcion la proxima 72km" The loose gravel road on is empty of traffic and banked and as it is nightfall, I wheel the bike down on the left, the sheltered side and pitch the tent: there being no alternative shelter out here.
Today's ride: 133 km (83 miles)
Total: 3,150 km (1,956 miles)
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