December 4, 2015
The Limit: Bariloche to El Bolson.
I don't remember names too well, so the unusual Swiss names of the Bariloche hostel owners eludes me. I only remember the dog's name, easy enough "Doogee". He was fond of me. Provided I'd give him a little to eat, whenever I ate. Given he didn't like the bike, something with wheels turning baffled him. The people though not being cyclists threat about how hilly and difficult it is to ride a bicycle from Bariloche to El Bolson, my next destination. Basically, anything that isn't level, is terrible arduous from their non-cyclist perspective.
They say they'll miss me, as I and three Israelis were the only guests, it being low season. They hug me and then I wonder were Doogee is. He is hiding in the back garden, when they look, leading him out to say goodbye. But there's something about the bike for him, which makes me feel like I've turned into an alien in his eyes when I'm with the bike.
They give me directions out of the city without going downhill and through the city-centre; which, surprize me because they've sent me the wrong way up a one-way street. In any-case, the street is too steep a hill to ride up, so I'm struggling to push the bike up the pavement, not easy, there being sections with steps, up from the hostel door to the first street-corner, where I ignore their directions and go left two street-corners, where I've come to a two-way street and turn right, which, after dipping down into a hollow rears up near vertical, a hard fifteen per-cent gradient to climb over to where, Route 40 south comes into view down the other side.
It is a gentle rise further with dark wooded slopes and grey rock snow capped mountains ahead. The sky cloudless crystalline blue with a south-westerly breeze. Beyond the city limit the tranquillity is spoiled by a landfill rubbish dump with the stench of rotting food wast in the air. But once past, the road on goes into the mountains through a narrow valley with a lake to the right.
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By half twelve I've reached another lake, Lago Mascardi, with petrol station to the left, to the side of which, there's recently cut tree stumps where I sit down to boil water for mate (pronounced mat-tee).
"Hola! Nice place this, isn't it?" Yes, I agree with the young man that has just got out of a hire car clutching a large DSLR camera. How could I not with the view across the road to the lake and the snow-capped mountain's beyond. He walks away out to the roadside, holds the camera up and takes a shot of the lake, then a shot along the road and disappears out of sight for what would be ten minutes, before coming back.
He asks me where I'm from and I say Ireland. "I'm Welsh myself" he says "I love Patagonia. They've the Welsh here too. Hi my name's Darren" he holds out his hand to shake. "I have a bike myself. I wouldn't mine doing some touring".
I tell him there's nothing too it. To begin with a weekend away, then a week and in such a way build up to a longer tour.
Presently, two touring bikes loaded like tanks crawl up the ramp off the road and disappear behind a car by the petrol pumps.
My first tour was a week long, using only a backpack, I tell Darren.
By now one of the touring cyclists seen entering the forecourt a minute or so earlier has strode over and breaks into our conversation. A tall athletic man with permanent tan and hint of grey in a head of dark hair. He speaks Spanish first, then English and then Bas-country to his partner, a slim dark haired woman who has just caught up.
I make a note of their names as not to forget when we introduce ourselves. "Kolda", he spell it letter by letter, a Bas name and the woman's too, sounding something approximately like "Emma".
Darren asks what they work at. Kolda answers, "I'm a P E teacher", and Emma, adds "a social worker". And Kolda keen to talk tells us they are on a one year sabbatical cycling in South America. He remarks on how light my touring outfit is. And tells me today he and Emma will turn off right at the end of the lake and ride into "Cerro Tronador", a big mountain on the limit with Chile. Something which doesn't much appeal to me, because it's fifty kilometres on dusty unpaved road just to see a mountain, then fifty back.
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I have never seen the fascination some have with mountains, wanting to get right up beside them and look up at them and even climb to the top. I like mountains, but from a distance. There's a mountain in Iceland called "Headubreid", whose distinct outline looks mystical up to fifty kilometres away; whereas up close, it loses that symmetrical outline and becomes an ugly hulk of towering broken rock with steep flows of screed. I can't think of anywhere I'd lease want to be on top of, or any other icy mountain top.
The afternoon is a steady ride, with a climb to over a thousand metres followed by a long winding decent to Rio Villagas, with another right turnoff along a dusty unpaved road with a sign "Rio Manso __ km. Limit Con Chile 43 km".
There is a gendarme check-point here and previously, they've always stopped me and asked to see my passport, a bit of an annoyance as it is just at the bottom of the hill and the bottom of a climb ahead; and, I have to dig the passport out from under other stuff. But today a truck with a Chilean number plate ahead of me has passed without slowing, so they're stopping nothing today.
Once over the next climb I drop down to Rio Foyel, a river with a turquoise hue with riverbank a purple, pink and white of lupin and yellow of a shrub much the same as gorse, or whins as they're called in the north of Ireland, down to the rich cocoanut fragrance in the air from their yellow bloom, though without thorns. They continue all along the road, as do the lupin. There is also a bright red blooming small tree of Patagonia, which I see a few of. They are more common further south.
I arrive in El bolson about half seven and call at the supermercado. This evening, I've checked into "Refugio Patagonico" hostel, where I now cook a pasta dinner together with cheese, green olives and red wine, a taste I've been dreaming about all day.
Today's ride: 124 km (77 miles)
Total: 1,998 km (1,241 miles)
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