On Ruta 40

So, we flew from El Calafate to San Carlos de Bariloche, where the main attraction is functional internet.  It's another ridiculously picturesque area, surrounded by lakes and snowy mountains.  For this reason it's known as the Switzerland of South America.  Well, that and its fondness for money from fleeing Nazis.

Ruta 40 is a national highway that spans the entire country from Rio Gallagos in the south, to La Quiaca in the north. It's in various states of repair from civilised tarmac to gradually more post-apocalyptic as you move south.  

Originally we were going to drive up from El Calafate, but the one-way fees were ruinous. So we decided to pick up a car and drive up and down the middle 1000km chunk of it as part of our ongoing Patagonian adventure.  Accordingly, we rented the local approximation of a Toyota, the Etios, which was made originally for the Indian market. No red flags there then.  The wiki is amusingly less-than-objective:  

(High road noise and vibration) is due to the cost-cutting construction and lack of insulation materials in the cabin, while build quality is edgy and has a low life expectancy in the long term, which could be interpreted as a vehicle built to be "disposable" after a short number of years. In regards of vibrations, there are some reports from users complaining about retinal detachment, as well as sore backs and split buttocks.

There are gaping holes in the front bumper for the optional fog lights that weren't opted for, but also not blanked, so as to remind you that you're driving the loss-leader.  Oh well, there's no point ruining a nice car on these roads anyway.

El Shed.  Come back Donkey, all is forgiven.

The first (and longest) drive was to Los Antiguos.

Apparently they grow a lot of cherries here. 

Basing ourselves there, we used the following day to travel to the Cueva de las manos (The Cave of Hands) where you'll find prehistoric cave finger-paintings.

The road off NR40 is all gravel and rock, which made for some interesting driving.  El Shed's engine sounds like a constant threat of cataclysmic failure, while juddering enough to make every pebble traversed feel like a reluctant favour it was doing me.  I'm unaware of the normal vent filtration configuration in modern cars, but I don't normally find myself shaking dust out of my hair at my destination as with this one.

The caves live down in a valley, where they have been preserved from the elements over the millennia.

The caves were painted by people of yore making paint out of whatever they had to hand, chewing it all up, and spitting a spray around their fingers.  The earliest date back 11,000 years.

3,000 years later they figured out using two colours by using a white background.  That's progress for you.  

They also figured out using the feet of animals - like the ostrich feet in the middle of the this one.

Then they had a bit of an avantgarde movement and started actually drawing things,  which must've been an exciting time.

What a time to be alive

Half the reason for being in Los Antiguos was to get someone to take us across the border to visit the Cavernas de Mármol (Marble Caves). They are a particularly unusual series of caves and monoliths formed from marble which live in General Carrera Lake (or Lake Buenos Aires depending if you're Chilean or Argentine, respectively), but you need someone to drive you around to Puerto Rio Tranquilo, to then take a boat to the caves in order to see them, as we couldn't take El Shed out of the country.

The various guidebooks and websites would suggest that Los Antiguos is lousy with tour providers, all gasping for your peso.  This is evidently not the case and we were reconciling ourselves to not going when our very jolly but very non-English speaking hotel receptionist managed to organise a last-minute deal with a local tour guide.  They picked us up at twat o'clock the following morning and duly took us on our 13 hour round trip.  Apparently we had to get back before 20:00 because that's when the border closed.  I was unaware borders had office hours -  there's always a surly jobsworth available to scrutinise my passport back home.

Our guides were a very friendly husband and wife team with a minibus: him doing the driving; her doing the nattering.  She spoke all of three words of English, but we managed to get the gist. We pulled over quite regularly so that we and the other couple with us could take photos, but also so that lady guide could smoke with ferocious efficiency.

To the caves - they are very pretty and the lake is really, really blue:

They provided us with a sandwich, but we were ravenous by the time we got back, so I indulged at the local parrilla, where they gave me a voluminous selection of roast beast:

Dear Lord

The next day we travelled back up RN40 to Trevelin (Trefelin in Welsh), one of those mythical 'Welsh' places in Patagonia.

To be honest, Patagonia did feel a bit like Brecon - venturing up into the hills was reminiscent of Sennybridge training area, complete with babies' heads and bastard grass.  The main spoilers of the illusion (aside from the Snowdon-eclipsing mountains everywhere), were the occasional glimpses of the local fauna.

Guanacos - Henceforth referred to by Chantelle as 'Guantanamos' because they're orange 

This armadillo is taking the "I can't see him so he can't see me" approach

Family of ostriches in process of buggering off from El Shed's cacophonous protestations

Back to Trevelin -  I think my Welsh might be marginally less bad than my Spanish (Cymraeg GCSE - D grade), but I'm unsold on how much good it would've been anyway.

Some signs were in Welsh and there were dragons aplenty, but I was unconvinced on the town's overall 'Welshness'.  That is until I saw how the weekend's main activity was apparently cruising around the main plaza roundabout in town in THE most fucked hatchbacks I have ever seen.

I could've watched this all day

"Smoothly does it"

Sick vent, bro

Bonnets are for pussies

I saw a 2CV missing most of it's front end. I saw Fiat Unos with suspension so dropped they literally had to take three attempts to clear a speedbump.  All this while blaring techno from grossly overtaxed stereo systems and wearing a studied expression of absolute cool.  Suddenly it felt very Welsh indeed, albeit Connah's Quay in the mid-90s.
I spotted an XR3i at one point: if it were a dog I would've shot it.

As was apparently required, we had tea at a local tea shop. I think my cred with the roundabout cruisers might have taken a hit.

Just like one would find in Flint

Bit iffy this.  The other tourists in the room were obviously Argentinian tourists and had set about pouring sugar onto the pre-buttered bread.  Seemed to be a toss-up between afternoon tea and an Argie breakfast.  The scones were definitely below par though.  Someone call Amnesty.

That night we stayed in a local cabaña, run by the very chilled Paulo, who was the second hairy man to kiss me in greeting - these foreigners with their foreign ways.  The place was very cozy, with several friendly street dogs who had apparently taken up residence. One quite old example of which gave me the most reproachful look as he crawled from a nice bit of shade under our car the following morning, when I had the audacity to load the boot.

We drove back to Bariloche the following day by way of Ruta 71 -which runs through a national park- as we cannot get enough of those lakes and mountains.

This road turns to gravel and rock as soon as you've paid your fee to enter the park and rounded the corner. At least I got my money's worth from the car's 2 year lifespan

Here's a couple of pretty pictures from the park:

Kurzfassung auf Deutsch: Meine Frau und ich haben sich Ruta 40 angesteuert, um einige Sehenswürdigkeiten zu sehen. Vor allem haben wir entdeckt, dass es eine Enklave der Welsh Menschen, die schreckliche europäischen Autos zu fahren.