Belen

The day started with the usual wake up of hearing Tim getting ready for the day. This usually involves the bathroom, a fair amount of coughing, and the wrestling of putting his gear together. It then moves on to going outside and taking the cover off his bike. This morning was slightly different. He came back into announce that his rear tire was completely flat and that he was going to have to change the innertube. I took the opportunity to stay in bed longer. However, after a while, my conscience got the better of me and I went to give a hand. Changing the tube was quite a task. Because the tires we have have very thick side walls and the inner tube Tim uses is a thick one also. So it took a while and a bit of swearing to get it all done.

We got packed up and set off to find a petrol station that would give us breakfast. After a bit of a circuit around town, we finally found one which served us some nice coffee and Media Lunas. Which is a traditional Argentinian croissant. After this, we headed off on Route 40 continuing north towards Belén.

The road started in its normal long straight roads across wide valleys with the mountains on both side sides of us. And desert conditions either side of the road. After a long while, we descended from a plateau into a green valley and the road became much smaller as it wound its way through small green villages. This eventually came to an end as well as the road turned away from the river. and back towards the desert. It was at this point we reached a waypoint in our journey. Next to the side of the road was a big marker telling us that it was 4000 km from the beginning of this road in the southern part of Patagonia. We had been to this point around six weeks ago and although we had done more than 10,000 km on our journey this seemed a significant waypoint for us.. Ruta 40 is 5000 km from south to North and we are going to continue to do the final thousand. So we stopped and took photos

We continued on the desert road until we reach the town of Belen. We found our hotel, checked in, and went to find a late lunch.

We managed to find a great barbecue served with some beer.

Afterwards, we walked up to the town Square, where the town was preparing for a festival as it is a holiday tomorrow. We sat in the coffee shop and watched the world go by and listened to the music. And watched everybody on motorcycles without helmets and often three up.

We rounded off our day with ice creams, before heading back to the hotel.