Las Carpitas

After a fairly dreadful night in the backpacker windowless hotel. Both Tim and I were up much earlier than normal and taking our bags down to our bikes. The only problem was we were locked in. And until someone came to open the hotel, we weren’t going anywhere.

We finally got out and loaded our bikes and came to see what was being offered for breakfast. it was some fairly awful coffee and nothing that we thought was very edible. I ended up with a very small piece of apple cake. We made a hasty departure and headed out of town back towards. Trevelin .

We took a detour to the right and headed towards. El Turbio national Park. We paid our entrance fee and then rode the 70 km of Rioeo along the lake side of Lago Puelo through the most fantastic mature forests and bright yellow gorse. Tim stopped often to take pictures, while I carried on at a steady pace. I have been feeling the pain in my shoulder for the last couple of weeks following my accident earlier in the trip. On hard packed Road. It tends to be OK but the constant arm use and vibration on the off-road sections has been causing me a lot of discomfort, so I decided to keep going and let Tim take the pictures for the day.. we came out of the park and headed into the next small town to try to find a coffee. This wasn’t happening so we ended up with the Snickers bar and carried on towards El Balson.

Outside of town we were stopped at a police roadblock and had to produce our passports and motorcycle documents. Having cleared the security check, which was checking not very much, we rode on along the high plateau and slowly wound our way down into the town of Sun. We stopped for fuel and then decided it would be quite a good idea to stop for some lunch down.. Tim befriended the local drunk and we sat with him until we got bored and sent him away. We had a decent hamburger for lunch and then headed off on the remaining 70 km towards.Las Carpitas..

Las Carpitas is a piece of land owned by friends of my ex-girlfriend, with whom I have become friendly also. It seemed ridiculous, not to stop and see them on route, and they had insisted when I contacted them that we stay a couple of nights. They have a camping site with cabanas, and we pulled into their land mid to late afternoon. We were met by their daughter who showed us to our rooms, which were very nice and comfortable.

The campsite was not open for the season until December and we did not know this and therefore there was no food available nor drinks in the fridge. This caused quite some consternation with Tim and myself who were used to drinking at least two beers every night. Tim headed off to the local petrol station to find beer and was very disappointed to find there was none and returned with two packets of crisps for our dinner..

My friends who worked in Bariloche, were not able to join us this night as they were working and informed us they would be down for a barbecue tomorrow afternoon evening. Tim and i ended up having a very early night.