The long erratic road.

Experience. You can read about a place, but you have to live it to feel it. Today was dedicated primarily to quite a long drive (600 km.), one that books would describe as spectacular but desolate, and I couldn’t agree more.

Picnic lunch spot. About the best available

The desert became drier, much drier. The temperature cooled. Several minutes go by before you see another vehicle. The mountains get further away. It has its beauty, but after hours go by, it becomes monotonous. Colors become monochromatic.

Towns (and gas-stations) are hundreds of miles apart. Lines at gas stations are 20-vehicle long. Tourists have all but vanished. And the road for the most part was good.

Towns listed on the map are often single family hamlets. The couple of towns we passed with more than a handful of people are windswept and dusty. They seem to be no different than they would have been, say in 1940. Many of the locals are clearly of Chilean origin. Such is South-Central Patagonia. If you choose to drive from the North, you can’t avoid going through it; there is only one road, RN40, and it travels East, before turning back west.

Town of Rio Mayo

Rio Mayo

Town of Costa

And the wind is insane, and incessant. It has been howling for hours. “Pretty normal around here”, they tell me.

We are lodged in a very pleasant, newly constructed A-frame house in the town of Perito Moreno, a town that falls in the same category as the ones I described above, but larger. The wind whistles through any crack it can find.

Center of town

Someone is getting married at 9 PM

There is a town on a lake that has been recommended, about thirty miles from here, Los Antiguos. We had intended to stay there, but there was no availability, even as of three months ago. Perito Moreno is the closest town. Ultimately, the wind was so strong that we decided to forgo visiting Los Antiguos altogether. Few pictures today, but they should render the idea. A domani.