Raining Trucks: Serra Ventana to Bahia Blanca.

November 18, 2015

For the second time I fall foul of local traffic regulations, but more later, lets settling on where I am.

As said I camped in the wooded picnic area to the side of the road peering out at "Serra Ventana", a mountain to the side of the valley with a hole through a narrow ridge at the top. From down here it looks but a pinhole, hardly a window (ventana) of the name. But close up, if I where to spend a few hours climbing what is nothing more than an Irish mountain, it would be an impressively big gap through the rock. But this is strictly a cycle tour. I am happy to have camped in such a peaceful place and gaze up at it while breakfasting on tea and biscuits, sat here at a picnic table, the straw having gone missing and yerba mate dearly missed.

Like a pinhole, though perhaps viewed from above, impressively large.

The whole area around the mountain is a national reserve, named after an "Ernesto Tornquist", who was perhaps a geologist that first explored the area. He has also given his name to the next town, Tornquist, a steady twenty kilometres downhill toward level, far as the eye can see plain, where this morning it is overcast and dull and darker still further south, the rain pouring down.

I turn left and ride the four kilometre access road into town, with memories of when I was here in 2011. Then it was afternoon and shops were shut for siesta, the plaza and streets deserted and the rain came on heavy and bounced off the pavement outside of where I sheltered under a shop awning. Then an ice-cream parlour opened, where I sat in using the wifi until a supermercado opened so I could buy food. Today, there is the usual flurry of morning activity there is everywhere, as people hurry to places of work and chattering children with less urgency go to school. And the banks have the usual queuing customers outside.

I make an attempt at finding the access road out of town the other way to route 33, shown in the map, which will save me cycling all the way back on the access whence I entered (33 crosses the road I turned off further on). I spend fifteen minutes or more cycling around trying to find it to no avail. All the streets end on a way along a railway line without any obvious level-crossing; and the streets crossing them, end at open plain off to the left. So I return back the way I came into town, back onto route 76, where it is six kilometres more to the empalme with route 33, south to Bahia Blanca.

About ten or so kilometres on 33, a narrow shoulder-less road with a steady stream of trucks in both directions and having just passed the other access for Tornquist, there's orange traffic cones ahead along the middle of the road: a gendarme patrol. As I approach, an officer waves me into the side.

"Adonde sos?" he asks. I reply Ireland. Then he asks "documento?" passport, which I oblige, reaching into my bar-bag and handing it to him. He scrutinizes the photo page a moment, then hands it back and says "es prohibidad a ander en bici....." it is prohibited to cycle on this road. Then he mentions that I'm not wearing a cycle-helmet. Apparently this is now mandatory in Argentina too. When empathically I start taking my map from the bar-bag to explain that there is no alternative road from where I am now, to Bahia Blanca, and hoping he won't insist on abandoning this road, because, remember I've no money for a long detour, he relents and waves me on.

The rain seen earlier is now on, dripping it down steadily, making the road awash with rainwater and in the gloom even more dangerous. I've donned my yellow hi-vis vest and have both blinker lights going on the back. I can well see why the police don't want cyclists on this trucking route. Regularly, there comes labouring along under heavy loads, convoys of two or three trucks, then I'll hear the whine of a truck approach from behind. All pull out and give me enough space when passing, except in the abovementioned instant, there's oncoming trucks. Then, the only thing I can do is ride off upon the grass and let them pass, as I am sure it isn't always easy for the driver to suddenly start slowing a heavy load down to a near stop.

It somehow reminds me here of the very north of Scotland on a similar bleak rainy day. Grey yellowish moor, which toward Bahia Blanca creases into undulating hills, the road twists to climb over.

I reach the city limits with an empalme with an outer ring road, nine kilometres from the centre, where all the trucks go either right or left, leaving only cars the rest of the way to the city-centre.

I've returned to the same hostel I stayed in the last time, housed in a hotel from the late nineteenth century. It retains much of it's period charm. A single story parapet, flat roof building on a street corner, with a restaurant reception area and internal courtyard, with colonnades with doors to rooms, like the Spanish colonial style, except, instead of arches, there's iron pillars.

From Bahia Blanca, which I leave this Sunday, it is only a short way until I'm in Patagonia. And all being well, I will go on being happy riding.

Today's ride: 109 km (68 miles)
Total: 889 km (552 miles)

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