Everyone knows about Route 66 across the US and Europeans love to boast about driving the mythical highway when they visit on vacation. It’s an industry. But Ruta 40?
We did the bottom bit when we went to visit the penguins with Konstantin and Julia from Seattle in their Sprinter.
A delightful 65 miles of rough bumpy gravel to get to a glorious penguin colony and buy an “end of the road” sticker not unlike US One in Key West.
Now we are driving another chunk of this road, perversely going south (there’s a reason) as we explore another piece of vast Argentina. This section is paved, as is most of it except in the uttermost remote areas, but pavement on Ruta 40 (“quarenta”) is a mixed bag.
But at least you do get some warning on the worst bits. “Deteriorated pavement.” You could call it that.
A 9400 pound Promaster bounces and lurches horribly on these feeble patches and rippled asphalt. How we haven’t dented a rim or broken some obscure piece of the suspension I don’t know. Actually it’s probably because I drive slowly and do my best to slalom. It’s stressful and agonizing worrying about GANNET2’s integrity.
And yet this extraordinary highway, the main and only road up the western side of the country, usually within sight of the Andes can be spectacular.
And isolated. This road exemplifies the loneliness of the open road, all 3228 miles of it.
We will undoubtedly drive more of it when we cross back from the beaches of the Atlantic Coast to enjoy Fall among the wineries of the city of Mendoza back near the border with Chile. It’s currently over 100 degrees in wine country so we decided to enjoy the coast in this part of summer hence our slight deviation to the south to reach a highway crossing these vast plains of Patagonia. Red is Highwsy 40 and Black is Highway 25.
We traveled for a while with Florian and Cora whom we first met in Ecuador, a young German couple in a VW Eurovan that gave them lots of problems and ultimately had to be towed to the container shipping it back to Europe.
We took the four day ferry south to Tierra Del Fuego while they, running out of time, turned to Argentina and sent us a message I never quite forgot. They were not fond of Ruta 40 down here.
We laughed at the time and now here we are.
But it’s not all bad pavement and the scenery is what you come to enjoy. So we enjoyed it as we drove on the bumps and patches of sections of this highway.
The steppes of Argentina:
And then we came to Esquel where we had the tires rotated but they couldn’t align the wheels on our huge heavy van and had no time to change the oil so on we went.
Esquel you will be happy to learn is a nuclear free city:
Summer fashion sale, autumn beckons in Patagonia.
Setting up a weekend street fair, glimpsed as we left town Saturday evening.
The tracks of an ancient narrow gauge railway still cross the plains.
Those pesky Falkland Islands still don’t want to join Argentina.
We spent the night in a small municipal campground in Tecka.
Never heard of Tecka? Me neither but I’ve spent a night there now, in Patagonia. I’m not sure it’s as romantic as Route 66, the road they’ve written songs about, but it’s what we’ve got south of the equator.
