February 6, 2016
Holiday Traffic: North of Tolhuin to north of Rio Grande.
I'm lacking motivation keeping this journal. I find it almost impossible to write when tired in the evening, preferring to wait until the following morning, when I'm in a rush to get on the road. So this is how I start the day, an hour's writing.
Another find morning. Clear sky and no wind. I don't finish until half nine, then break camp and get on the road shortly before ten. The road busy again today with Summer holiday drivers. I think or hope this is the final weekend of the holidays, so they all go away and the roads down here will return to normal quietness.
Today is even worse than yesterday; long queues of ten or more oncoming cars, many unable to wait behind another car and come speeding toward me on the wrong side of the road, brainless idiots that they are. It's scary and I've to remain alert all the time. And of course there's the trucks, that I've to be even more careful of, running shipping containers up from the port in Ushuaia to Rio Grande. When they come along I ride off onto the gravel shoulder.
Oh yes before I go further, there is the big brave man sitting in the passenger seat of a four-by-four, his male ego getting the better of him to impress the other boys in the car when he put his head to the open window and screens abuse on passing. A first time this has happened to me in Argentina. This kind of miss-behaviour is common in Ireland. I tend to avoid eye-contact with the miscreant in this instant, remaining to look at something to the side as I think they're just looking for attention and when you ignore them, its a blow to their overblown male ego.
The country transforms from forest, to dwarf forest, to treeless pampa, swinging close to the coast at a place called Punta Maria, where I pull in to the beach to lunch on a remaining half packet of biscuits. I wish I'd more. Afterwards that familiar afternoon drowsiness comes on and I must've slept a while. Waking there's that hard effort to get up and go further. Not helped by the wind now having risen; the heavy traffic and way on open steppe.
The wind is a direct headwind, strong enough to make it hard going but not to inhibit progress completely. And once over an arroya, those seasonal streams, the road is a gradual climb, almost barely noticeable to the eye but by being forced to turn a low climbing gear, which goes on for ten kilometres. Then ahead is a range of low hills the road climbs up through. All this climbing was barely noticeable riding south.
I have a big feeling of deja vue. Wishing I could be anywhere but here; though its a warm day for a change; warm enough to melt the butter I usually carry in my food bag down here. This I see when stopped in Rio Grande. Also, in a mirror how red-faced I am from getting the sun. My forehead feels like its been rubbed with sandpaper.
There is a long warehouse flanked drive into the city without anyhere to stop for a drink, as I'm parched, until I spot a panaderia (bakery) on the right. I stop and have three facturas and a litre bottle of coke for 59 pesos. Expensive, as the facturas are only half the size of those on offer in La Union in Tolhuin, which were cheaper by a peso each.
Not far on I turn right onto the main avenue San Martin, and stop today at Carrefour, making a nice change from La Anomina. Cheese is cheaper, so I buy a big wedge of Gouda for 38. My favourite breakfast, cornflakes and milk go in the basket. And a three pack of crackers as I'm fed up of biscuits. And two cans of tuna. The cheese and milk I'll need to finish before entering Chilean Terra del Fuego, though. Once done I fill up on water at the YPF petrol station a few blocks along and then find my way out of town upon route 3 north, where there's considerably less traffic.
I was for heading for Rio something, by Estancia Violeta, where I think it should be a good camping spot on the riverbank, the east facing slope down providing good wind shelter; but, ahead of a big natural gas installation there's a headland hill reaching out to the shore on the right and I know there'll be a track assess to the beach here.
When I get as far I'm right. Quite a few cars have driven in the sandy track through the dunes to the beach. But there are no tents so likely they'll all leave at nightfall. I find a choice spot among the waist-high grass not far from a group having a kick about with a football. That thump of the bouncing ball will soon quit and thankfully there's no loud music.
I pitch the tent and cook dinner inside and by the time I'm finished, its gone ten, its getting dark and all the people in their cars have gone.
Today's ride: 114 km (71 miles)
Total: 4,914 km (3,052 miles)
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