The road to Santa Fe

This is where our new plan of travel begins.

In our original plans, after Antarctica we would have spent Xmas and NYE in southern Patagonia visiting the Perito Moreno glacier and the Torres del Paine NP, then we would have driven north on the ruta 3, stopped at Punta Tombo and Peninsula Valdes to reach Buenos Ayres around the 15^th of January.

However, after reshuffling things around we find ourselves 2000 kms up north with 2 extra weeks to spare.

As the bike is working fine we have decided to cover an extra 5000 kms, and drive all the way to the Iguazu falls, then enter Brasil and reach Florianopolis and finally drive down to Montevideo in Uruguay, where we can catch a ferry to Buenos Ayres around the 20^th of January.

But first, ahead of us is 2000 kms of “Pampas Argentina” that we need to cover in 2 days to reach our friend Paola and her family in Santa Fe.

When we look at the road on the map what strikes us immediately is the fact that there are sections, as long as 250 kms, with not a single pueblo in sight The problem for us is the usual one: no pueblo, no petrol.

If you draw a line between Bariloche and Santa Fe, half way through you can see a town called Santa Rosa.

We decide that Santa Rosa is going to be the place where we sleep tonight, no matter what!

The first 100 kms, after leaving Bariloche on the Ruta 40 are very pleasant, with gentle bends, a fast road, forests rivers and lakes.

We wish it was all like that.

Then the landscape dries up, the road becomes straight and the heat is kind of unbearable.

We can now understand why there are no pueblos around here and why the lonely planet does not say a word about this area. There is TRULY NOTHING TO REPORT. Just a straight road, 40 degrees and dry bushes at both sides of the road

...........after 4 hrs, straight road, 40 degrees and dry bushes

........finally, wait.......a corner!

Then another 4 hrs, straight road, 40 degrees and dry bushes.

As the sun comes down we finally enter the Santa Rosa region.

After all that desert land this is what we can call “fertile pampa”. The grass is green and cows roam freely.

To be perfectly honest this place is so famous for its meat that we expected to see millions of cows, migrating from one field to another, a bit like the buffaloes in the Serengeti.

Not quite like it. In fairness it was a bit of a disappointment. It was just like being back in the “pianura padana” south of Milan, only 40 times bigger.

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It is day 2 and we still have another 1000 kms to cover.

The lower back is aching a bit due to the effort of the previous day.

We try to hydrate as often as we can.

On a positive note the number of pueblos on the road has increased and therefore it is no longer a concern of ours to fill up the bike.

The road, I am afraid, is still very straight and it is still very hot, just a bit greener dotted with cows.

The news is that there is plenty of dragonflies whizzing around.

We are ever so grateful to them as they feed of mosquitoes.

However I must confess they can hurt a bit when they hit you as bullets while you travel at 120 kms/hr
When we finally get to Rosario we see something that we haven’t seen in a while: road traffic.
This one is the heavy traffic made of lorries stuck in a long line.
The road is quite dangerous as the passage of these lorries have created parallel depressions in the asphalt where the wheels of the bike often get trapped.
When we finally make it to the motorway it’s 8 pm.

We call Paola and agree to meet at 9pm at Santa Fe airport.

As they get off their car, in summer clothes, with hair combed and thoroughly perfumed they approach us to give us a hug.

Initially we feel a bit embarrassed, all sweaty, smelly fully geared in our gore tex clothes completely covered in dead insects.

The embarrassment only lasts few seconds: deep in our hearts we know that we are really going to enjoy 6 days of Argentinean hospitality.