Mon 24th Oct: El Bolson to Lago Rividavia-PN Los Alerces

October 24, 2016

Where was I? Oh yes, in El Bolson. It's beginning to seem like a lifetime since I left Salta on the tenth of September. when it's only six weeks passed on Saturday.

Looking at the map of Argentina in the hostel, I've cycled two-thirds the length of the country, with only a third to go I'm coming to the end. But not quite so quickly, as now, I'm coming to the less straightforward part of this tour. For instance today, I will be leaving the easy straight south Route 40 and before long will be riding rough gravel roads most days. Indeed, there may be an offroad track on my itinerary.

The other major change, of course, is climate. Warm weather is now rare, and rain is a constant threat.

I didn't take a photo until about 3pm, where the landscape has transformed from wooded hills to treeless, except for young pine-plantations.

This morning I slept in as it was 8.47 when I looked at the watch first thing.

I had planned on going to the post office to post home notebooks, but that'll have to wait.

I cleared out my room, load my stuff on the bike and paid for the extra night I've been here. Then cycle to La Anomina to buy enough food for three-to-four days. I just put the essentials in my basket. When I put them all out on the check-out belt, the check-out girl that has been watching me, suddenly mentions that this check-out is for 10 or fewer items. So muttering swear words under my breath, I put all back in the basket and join another check-out queue. What a waste of time!

Leaving town, the sky is full of that post-rain wisps of misty clouds caressing the mountain-slopes while I face a steady climb south. The town continuing as a scattering of small wood cabins in woodland plots.

When I've finally crested the hill, the sky has turned completely grey and rain like as I descend into the village of La Hoya, set in another low basin like El Bolson, with rectangular fields enclosed by tall elm tree windbreaks and the valley closed on either side by wooded hillsides rising to snow-capped mountains.

When the road levels out, I see it's a small version of El Bolson with shops selling fruit preserve. And the climb on the other side of town has many second home developments.

Approaching Cholila and passing what was Butch Cassidy's land.

The modest american style log cabin Cassidy built and lived in 1902-1905.

This farm a kilometre on from Cassidy's cabin was built probably in the 1930s and likely replaced a small shack built by the farm's pioneer about Cassidy's time, when there were only a handful of non-indigenes in the area.

The afternoon takes me off Route 40 onto Provincial Route 71, thankfully tarmacked as it has become quite a busy road in summer; taking me to the Cholila valley, which has a kind of timelessness to it. It's a landscape in transition from open steppe to the east, meeting the Andean foothills to the west, with a recently planted young pine-tree plantation along a stretch of road, though, most of the roadside is an overgrown tangle of briars and scrubbery, before dropping into the main valley of pale green pasture dotted with yellow wildflowers of spring.

It is where the ruinous wood cabin of the north American outlaw Butch Cassidy still stands in a grove of willows below dark wooded slope and snow-capped mountains. When he fled here to hide from the authorities in 1902, he was one of the first non-indigenes settlers in the area.

The new road swing left at the field that fronts the old cabin and continues to the village of Cholila, with lots of derelict farmhouses of settlers that come after Cassidy's time, perhaps the 1920s.

In the village the road swing right, directly toward the mountains and three kilometres on from town, the tarmac ends, but with all the recent rain, the earthen road that remains is well consolidated and so the few cars that pass don't shower me with dust in their wake.

A ford over a flood flowing across the road, locally called "Ripio", it's a graded mix of stones and dry soil.

Sorry for the crap post production, but what I'm trying to show is Spring. There's an apple tree in blossom to the side and the sky is deep blue contrasting with lush green of fresh growth.

At dusk looking back on Villa Rividavia, with namesake river to the side flowing into a lake, Lago Rividavia, where I camp.

It takes me until dusk, about a quarter to nine to reach the "Los Alerces" national park entrance, when the person collecting entrance fees has gone home. A little way beyond is a track down to a lakeshore, where there is just enough daylight left to pitch the tent in a good spot with the water lapping on the shore nearby.

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