Basail Wildcamp - The thirteenth step ... Six months in South America - CycleBlaze

September 19, 2022

Basail Wildcamp

It was with great dificulty that we dragged ourselves away from our comfortable digs in Resistencia and headed southwards into the wind.  The first few kilometers out of the city was on a freeway very much still under construction and we had a good covering of mud by the time we had cleared the mess.  Then it was into the wind for the next sixty kilometers.    If Windy and Wunderground are to be believed, the wind was touching thirty kilometers and hour and gusting up to fifty. There wasn't a hint of a hill so the only breaks we got was when we stopped and stretched our legs on the side of the road.

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We stopped for a long lunch break after forty kilometers at a bridge that I had earlier identified as a possible place to wildcamp if the wind was too fierce.  But it was only one thirty in the afternoon and the next town, Basail, was only another twenty odd kilometers away.  So we struggled on.  

Just before the town we saw a sign indicating a resting place.  This got us hoping that we might find a nice place to spend the night but it turned out to be nothing more than a muddy patch used by the truck drivers.  The local YPF service station had clean toilets but no place to pitch a tent.  So I stopped in at the local police station to ask them where we could spend the night.

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They pointed out a tumbled down building next to the policestation that was full of motorcycles that looked as if they hadn't been ridden in years.  "Would it be safe ?" I asked needlessly asked.  "Por supuesto!  La policia esta aqui!".

We resturned to the comedor across the road from the YPF and enjoyed a couple of beers and a supper of steak sandwiches while we waited for it to get dark.  One of the few other customers was a cycle tourist from Bariloche, where we hoped to be in about two months time, who was cycling to Cordoba via some convoluted route.

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Then it was back to the police station where we set up the tent under the large eave of the motorcycle shed.

Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 803 km (499 miles)

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