Sun 9th Oct: Zapala to NP Laguna Blanca

October 9, 2016

Today's the day I've been looking forward to. A rest day, but with a short thirty kilometres ride this morning.

Cycle-lane between Zapala and the airport with rest area.

A calm sunny morning. Taking down the tent is easier than it was to put up in yesterday's strong wind.

I am on the road shortly after nine, passing the city's Sunday morning quietness, up a hill away from Zapala upon a cycle-lane.

I continue on the road once the cycle-lane ends at the airport, 7km on. There's almost no traffic at all until midmorning, when a few weekenders drive very fast pass me; closely followed by two buses. This is just as I'm approaching a right split-off. Provincial route 46 to the national park "Laguna Blanca". My goal for the day. Where there is a free campsite with picnic tables, that I should reach by lunchtime. But I'm dismayed to see all the traffic that has just passed turn that way too.

It then dawns on me that it being Sunday, I perhaps won't have the place to myself.

The road continues across brown thorn bush plain toward humpy hills with snow streaked mountains beyond. Then climbs up the beforementioned hills through a gap. It isn't far now.

I have fawn memories of riding this way on my first ever tour in Argentina, twelve years ago. It was all very new to me then. Now the road is familar.

Being fairly fresh, having had a short day yesterday, I spin easily uphill. Cresting up upon a plateau where a great hollow opens up ahead, the bottom of which filled by a large lake with black and red volcanic hills, or psuedocrators on it's far shore, and snow streaked mountains beyond.

Descent to Laguna Blanca, 30km south-west from Zapala, on Provincial Road 46.

I descend until the campsite comes into view. To my dismay there's lots of cars parked there. It isn't going to be the quiet peaceful afternoon I was looking forward to. Its time for a plan B.

I didn't think of one but supposedly, I could ride on to the next stream and set up camp there. When I ride the few hundred metres further to the campsite, I ride off in anyway. There's a tent and it turns out that all the people here are anglers, with rods and fishing gear. Its not too bad.

I take up residency at the one remaining free picnic table, pitching the tent in the shelter of a stone wall windbreak. Then sit down to lunch. I'm left to myself as three anglers at the next table by their tent grill sausages by a fire. Nobody comes over to ask me the usual questions about my bike tour, which I had feared. I can relax.

My afternoon walk by the lakeshore. Rest days don't get any better.

I had expected to be shivering cold up here as its a mountaintop plateau with a lake, but this afternoon its almost windless and warm in the sunshine, as it is by the stone wall sheltering the tent. Its also good to have a picnic table to write upon.

What a way to rest. Nothing to do but diary write. While such an array of small birds flitter in and out from bushes nearby.

Now that I've finished I think I'll take a walk down to the lakeshore. This kind of do-nothing relaxation rest doesn't happen when I stop a day in a town. There I would be preoccupied, using the wifi, shopping and whatever.

Later I've just returned from an afternoon of trudging through sand, grit and stones along the lakeshore. I must've walked seven kilometres around to the right, to the bottom of a hill that way. Then back. I estimate it would take a full day to walk the whole way round the lake.

The sand is black, the pebbles and smooth stones varied pastel colours. I imagine the lake was created when a subterrain magna chamber emptied during a huge volcanic eruption, and the cavern that remained caved in on itself over time, leaving a crater that filled with water. We're talking of a time-span of hundreds of thousands of years of coarse.

The sky has clouded over during the afternoon, which is good because a clear sky would mean a frosty night with a cold start in the morning.

Although cloudy, there are enough breaks to allow rays of sun to glem through. Later as the sun sets, the cloud come alive with colour as the western sky looks as though its on fire. The cloud glow like embers. This is how it is this evening.

Now the sun has gone, it isn't fully dark yet as I prepare dinner of instant mash potatoes, I love real mash and the instant is second best...

Well, tomorrow is a usual cycling day. Two more to Junin de Los Andes, and a day of no cycling in a town.

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