We had a quiet night in the abandoned campground at the Penguin Park at Cabo Virgenes. The wind died down overnight and when duty called I found myself wandering with Rusty in a silent world all to ourselves.
Layne and I decided to take one last look at the penguins, just a brief stop at the entrance to their area at the abandoned ranger station.
You lift the chain and in you go.
The entrance to the reserve would have been closed to Rusty but now it’s all wide open.
We drove the border with Chile for a couple of miles with the Straits of Magellan a hint of blue on the horizon. There was no purpose other than to satisfy my curiosity as I love checking out these odd human constructs around borders and ownership and control. Each country has its own fence right alongside each other to mark the line and Chile has its own road on the other side.
Argentina’s lighthouse is set on a hilltop with the Navy base next door …
…part of the complex of drilling installations, government offices, naval outposts and even hospitality facilities in this lovely but lonely spot.
I joked we could tell people we’d been to Cape Horn and no one would know the difference. Konstantin said he has a friend busy visiting every lighthouse in the world and he would. Spoilsports.
The Argentine flag on the roof would be a giveaway but more importantly in front of the Navy base is a sign announcing mile zero, kilometer zero really, of Ruta 40.
You’ve probably never heard of Ruta 40 but it’s famous as the road that spans Argentina top to bottom, 3227 miles long (precisely 5194 kilometers) and it goes from 12,000 feet altitude on the border with Bolivia down to here almost at sea level.
There is some of the same mythology associated with Route 66 in the States. Years ago the highway was mostly dirt and travelers reported horrendous journeys torn by winds struggling with a terrible road surface for thousands of miles.
This is the tip of South America in Argentina, caught on a lovely sunny day with winds not strong enough to blow us over.
The wind was strong enough to play with Rusty’s ears.
He refused to pose with the sign.
But we did. Konstantin and Julia from Seattle, Russian immigrants to the US, and us looking to get coffee and cake to celebrate our arrival.
Cabo Virgenes below and the straits to the right protected from us by a thin strip of Chile.
What a splendid isolation with the Argentine prefecture (Federal government representative) on the distant hill and us with the navy on this hill and the abandoned provincial park’s yellow buildings below in the valley.
We are going to drive some of Ruta 40 on our way north hopefully to Salta near Bolivia and Chile, where there is an intriguing desert with colorful mountains and equally colorful impoverished colonial towns. Happily though the highway is paved nowadays, all except the southernmost stretch which we will by pass after Rio Gallegos…I hate dirt roads.
This picture shows the view from the Faro (lighthouse) at Cabo Virgenes where there happens to be…a tea house. It’s run by the owners of this land, the ranch (estancia) called Monte Dinero (money mountain). They also have a guest house with bunk bed hostel accommodations and more luxurious hotel rooms for $265 a night. We limited ourselves to coffee and cake and the view.
The hotel is inland about forty minutes by slow Promaster on the main road which is where these employees live. The coffee shop has those great views I photographed above out to the cape.
There is also a very strong phone signal all across the cape which was how I posted yesterdays penguin photos as I didn’t need to set up our Starlink. Internet access is pretty weak across much of the plains down here. I was the only one of us who left his phone in the car and only had my Panasonic camera.
We also bought a Ruta 40 passport and a sticker for GANNET2 marking mile zero.
We’re not going to drive every mile but we should get quite a few stamps in our book as we crisscross Argentina.
There was clearly rain our forecast as we service on 65 miles of gravel back to paved Highway 3.
Konstantin and Julia got back to Rio Gallegos in three hours whereas it took us five just to get back to the pavement. I have no desire to wreck GANNET2 recklessly.
And when it started to hail we stopped and I turned around to put the windshield out of the wind as I was worried we might get damaged.
It passed in five minutes but the road was white for a while there. Patagonia has extremely changeable weather. The wind picked up too and by evening we had 50 mph gusts and frankly the gusts seemed pretty continuous to me.
I can’t imagine drilling for oil and gas here in winter but I guess they do it in Alaska…
And do back up our riverside camp outside Rio Gallegos.
