Sun 30th Oct: Trevelin to near Corcovado

October 30, 2016

Route 17, south to Corcovado, looking back at Trevelin. Welsh pioneers and a few other nationals called "The Riffles" led by a Luis Fontana, the first governor of the province of Chubut, arrived here for the first time in 1888, after a long trek from the east.

Although there's a picnic table, this morning the only place to drink coffee is snug in my sleeping bag, such is the cold nip in the air.

I sit perhaps twenty minutes or more with the tent open, propped up, so I'm ideally positioned for writing.

Eventually, I get the urge to get a move on and just about get all the food I bought yesterday somehow packed into one rear pannier. Then rapidly get everything else packed and on the bike, the tent down and I'm ready to go.

On Sunday morning, the town is deserted as I ride along the main drag. There are only a few people about La Anomina, where I call to buy more coffee, that I somehow forgot yesterday. The supermercado is the last building when leaving town, except for all the new housing development on the opposite side of the street, with a great billboard illustrating a perspective young couple-buyer and their newly finished dream house under the heading "Nueva Gales" or New Wales. There are "Lotes" or Lots, plots of land for housing development all over the place. A far cry from the small Welsh village it once was.

I saw somewhere, an old black and white photo from around 1920 that shows the plaza with open country on all sides.

And on a previous visit, I visited one of the founding pioneers' farmhouse built a few decades before the above date, not far from the plaza in the middle of town. That of John Daniel Evans who came as a child with his parents from Wales to Argentina. He was an innovator who set up a corn mill on his farm, which established a village called Trevelin, a Welsh word meaning village of the mill.

And for much of the twentieth century, Trevelin remained a small place comprising a plaza, a mill and a few shops serving the local farming community. Now however, the place has grown, it appears as a place for second homes because of it's scenic location at the foot of the Andes.

Beyond the end of town, the road veers sharp left and the tarmac ends, the road continuing as ripio. Aptly called so, as it is dry powdery soil and small stones which passing cars rip up leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

The road on crosses a valley about five kilometres wide, dead level with pasture either side and snowcapped mountains to the west, to the valley's southern slope with a road turning off for Corcovado with a long climb out of the valley that takes me almost an hour to conquer.

The final rise crossed, brings me out upon a plateau of dwarf woodland, clumps of native trees with natural pasture in-between as the road meanders south. Though by early afternoon, there is more and more open cattle pastureland and, I pass a few estancias.

Much of the land is cleared for pasture farms.

Further south, the tarmac starts, being newly laid, smooth and black. But it only lasts for 7-8 kilometres before reverting to ripio again.

At about five as I approach Corcovado with a pine plantation to the right, I decide to look for a place to camp, not made easy because of continual fence on both sides. The only way round this is to lift the bike over a gate into the plantation.

As I finish the day writing, it has just gone 9 o'clock and it isn't completely dark yet. Having three-hour's daylight after setting up camp is something I could do with every evening.

I now want to sleep early, to get up and going early in the morning.

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