Mon 3rd Oct: Malargue to Bardas Blancas < 30km (approx)

October 3, 2016

The distance to a place not called by above name, but actually Port Stanley.

Amanda the hostel owner points out the distance chart on the tourist map, with the number of kilometres from Malargue to every town plus smaller place in the Province of Mendoza. What I'm most interested in though are the small places on route 40 south. Also included are important towns beyond provincial boundaries such as Chos Malal, 330km. A town on 40 in the next province south, Neuquen. So it'll take three to four days.

I rode this exact same road ten years ago more or less to the day. Then I'd the company of a Swiss touring cyclist called Oliver.

I'm not sure, I think we rode from Malargue to Chos Malal in three days, something crazy like that. I wonder how Oliver is doing, as I've lost his contact e-mail thanks to Hotmail freezing my account a few years ago.

In any case its a trying road from what I remember so I vouch on four days' ride. I'll have to stock up on food for those days, there being only small places from here to Chos Malal.

And glory be, I manage to stock up on cash having found an ATM that works with my card. Actually there's quite a choice of banks. Malargue being a Winter activity base, with skiing and snow-boarding at the nearby resort Las Lenas.

At the supermercado I'm feeling rich not having to worry about getting more cash for a while.

I stick to the basic ingredients though. Meaning poridge breakfast, bread and cheese lunch, and spagetti in the evening. There's also milk powder, Dulce de Leche, coffee and an assortment of other things I put in the basket. The bill at the check-out comes to 429 pesos, or 21.20 in old money. Not bad for four days.

Route 40 south of Malargue is how I remember it when riding with Oliver.

I wrote in my diary at the time.

Its like the countryside of western films. There's open plain to the left with weard pinicle rock piles rising from hills to the right and ahead.

It felt like the opening scene with the thunder of two horsemen galoping in pursuit, or being pursuited across open country the day we rode south, flat-out, full of energy after a rest day in Malargue.

And so it feels today, the same scene with those same weard hills ahead.

This in reality is the beginning of Patagonia. The sparsely populated wilderness of the south of Mendoza, not south of Rio Colorado, the border between the provinces of Mendoza and Neuquen, the official beginning of Patagonia.

Eventually the road descends to cross a river, nothing more than a small stream in the dry season. The other side the start of a long climb. Ten years ago this marked the end of the tarmac road. But now its all tarmacked.

The climb is well engineered, having at a guest a steady 5% gradient the whole way for about five kilometres, including a dramatic circular switch-back.

On the summit ten years ago, Oliver took a photo of his computer displaying over 2000 metres altitude. The highest altitude of his tour at this stage. Then on the descend left me as he threw causion to the wind on the rough loose stony downhill.

Today its a good tarmac road sweeping down almost all the remaining twenty kilometres to Bardas Blancas.

From a long bridge approaching Bardas Blancas, looking west up the valley where there's a road to Chile.

I reach the small village Bardas Blancas at three o'clock, during siesta. There's not a soul about as I sit in a little green garden lunching, while the wind has picked up, blowing dust along the street.

Thankfully the wind is blowing the right direction, as it fans me along the remainder of the afternoon.

There's roadworks on south, the road being rebuilt. I ride on flesh tarmac unopened road instead of the dusty tempary road to the side. Though have to push up and over barriers of soil at interval. There's also culvert trenches not filled in yet, where I revert to the temparery road.

By six I decide I've done enough for the day and look out for a place to camp, shortly coming to a roadworks depot with a track down toward the river on the left: to where I halt and pitch the tent sheltered from the wind behind a big block shaped boulder.

Hard to believe Oliver and me rode the whole way from Bardas Blancas to Buta Ranquil, a distance of 178km the next day.

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