Scott and Pam on the Road

Futaleufu- super bueno, but don´t get off the boat...

Hi all,

After a late start, we headed out of Trelew for Esquel, clear across the other side of Argentina. One of our biggest travel days yet (because there really isn’t anywhere to stop for over 600 km) and we didn’t find ourselves leaving town until 2 pm. Ah well, we are hard-core dual-sport riders by now. The drive across was extremely interesting compared to the hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres we did up Ruta 3 through the pampa- the flatlands gave away to hills and river, then some spectacular bad-lands-type geography and finally the Andes foothills that we loved so much when we were going south through Chile. We arrived late, but still just in time for a typical Argentine dinner at a steakhouse (aren’t all Argentine restaurants steakhouses??) at 11pm- right during the dinner rush. The next day, we checked out this famous narrow-gauge steam train, La Trochita (http://www.latrochita.org.ar). We happened to stroll into the station just an hour before the next scheduled trip (which runs only 4 days a week), so we took a ride on the “tourist loop”- you don’t go fast, but I think that 3 hours return to go to a whistle stop 20km away is all you need to get the gist of it. Very neat- my dad totally loves trains and he would have loved this and the scenery going by (slowly) was very beautiful to boot. And that evening, we travelled back over the Chilean border to Futaleufu- a town with a renowned river running through it- the Futaleufu. The town is just off of the Carretera Austral that we travelled south on, but when we passed by a month ago, the weather was quite cold and rainy so we put it off, knowing we would likely be back in the area again.

We passed over the Futaleufu in Argentina, just before crossing into Chile, where the Argentinos call it the Rio Grande. It is wide and green and crystal-clear, you can count every rock in the riverbed. A very beautiful river and somewhat endangered at this point in time, both by some proposed hydroelectric dam projects in Chile, but more imminently by a gold mine (that would employ cyanide-leaching) proposed on the other side of the border, in Argentina. Anyways, I had heard this river was great, endangered and one of the worlds best white-water rafting destinations, so we signed up with Futaleufu Explore for the next day and camped by one of the Futa tributaries for the night. As it turned out, we totally lucked out and got in the boat with 4 other semi-athletic people and the head guide, a wild-haired American dude with some 22 yrs experience rafting the Futaleufu. At the end of the regular trip, we all got out for lunch and our guide pulled the people from our boat aside (but not the other boat they had out that day) and asked us if we wanted to continue down the rest of the river after lunch- uh, yeah!! Check out http://www.futaleufuexplore.com/rafting.htm#01. A very awesome trip on a very awesome river. I wonder if I should be more afraid of rivers, given the reason for us heading out on this trip in the first place, but the day was perfect, the river happy and the company we chose had fantastic safety program– a safety kayak and “catamaraft” accompany each rafting boat and we had the Futaleufu´s best guide taking us down to boot. A very great day.

The next day we crossed back into Argentina and were met with some surprise rain and our ride up to Bariloche ended up being was very, very soggy! We had planned to spend some time in El Bolson on the way to Bariloche, but it had been raining cats and dogs there since 5am and the clouds socked the town in and filled the roads around the square with enormous puddles. I think we also missed out on some pretty cool scenery on this stretch of the road, but we really had to get to Bariloche and do laundry! Especially after the soaking.

Bariloche is okay. Very touristy downtown but beautiful views of the lake and mountains surrounding it. We had to sit down this morning and figure out how to best spend the remaining few days we have before we have to get the bikes back to Vina del Mar- we are now down to single digits as the bikes need to be in Vina on the 16th. But we figure we still have a bit of time to take a few more passes over the Andes- these are the best roads and the altitude isn’t enormous in this area so the passes aren’t as monumental as, say, the pass to Cusco was.

Okay, must run, laudromat closes in 15 minutes and we want an early start tomorrow (yeah right).

Cheers all,
Scott and Pam

Posted by scottandpam at February 8, 2005 03:09 PM