Great Colours in a Grey Landscape
Well left the comfortable hotel room for the camp site for bresakfast. Camp site looks more like a vehicle wreckers yard. Started to rain so did a rapid change of riding gear.
Wilbert let us know the glad tidings that the 9 days to El Calafate will be tough. must have been premonition. there is realy not much between here and there, apart from the pampàs and wind. Off we go in light rain which soon becomes heavier. we immediately start climbing for the next 3 hours fortunately on sealed road. Feet start to get wet even though I have boots on. Local dog follows 2 of our riders for some k´s.
Evening on the biggest inland lake in Chile
We sight a pass ahead and start a long climb. Grey clouds make the scenery invisible. a small downhill and a massive gust of wind from nowhere almost stops me in my tracks. climb again and it the first top in snow. Getting seriously cold as gloves saturated. At 70 k sight the lunch truck. In covered with a blanket and can´t stop shivering. Ride over for me for the day. Transfer to the camping and provision truck squeezed in with all the food.
Finally get to the camp ground with a Pategonian wind blasting through. Change into dry clothes get mine and Annas stent up and start a fire in a smal open sided hut. At least now warm.
Dinner beers and after dinner head into the small town beside the largest lake in Chile Argentina with Alfonse & Monique. Bottle of red and the owner explains the town used to be a centre for shipping wool across the lake.
all saturated clothes and shoes dried off beside the fire.