A beautiful morning with the sun shining on the Estancia opens our eyes and permits a farmer's view with all the animals having their breakfast just in front of us. Celeste, the estancia's employee offers us a small tour of the estancia. Isabel accepts gladly and goes along. She will later refer to all those animals from la estancia by their names...
The boys' morning version:
Adventure continues! Miji has a flat tire and needs to fix it - but how? And we have to leave early because it will be another long 500km day. We check the tire and can't find any leak to fix... but the tire is flat, so there is a leak somewhere. It's already 10:30, we decide to just pump it up once again and leave.
The first 150km were a mixture of gravel and dirt road. Dirt road is definitely more comfortable for the Co-Pilot but less fun for the drivers. The Argentinian pampa seems to go on forever: lonely and empty, just guanacos and ñandus. We are heading towards Tres Lagos and Miji's bike keeps loosing air. The slidings become longer and the bike less manageable, but Miji does a great job and saves the moment
several times. Finally we arrive at Tres Lagos where a 'gomeria' gives us hope. Friendly people welcome us and offer generously their help. Accompanied by some delicious homemade empanadas Hadrien and Isabel
watch Miji and the local homeboy at work. They still can't find any leak, so once again, we just pump up the tire and go on with our trip.
Next stop: El Chalten, Fitz Roy in 150km. Along a straight, boring asphalted highway we speed straight towards Fitz Roy, which is impressive all along in the background. In between we see glaciers dipping directly into the lake Viedma and others ending almost on street level. After another quick gas stop, we head back to the boring highway towards our today's final destination El Calafate. Isabel keeps the
pilots awake like only she can do it...
We follow the lake Viedma and then the lake Argentino in which we can see one small shiny blue iceberg. Isabel first thought it was a huge heap of plastic trash all in blue.
On the way to El Calafate, we drive once again some straight line but there is some additional spice to it: a strong lateral wind. It is quite difficult to drive. The wind is blowing in unpredictable directions. So we get blown from one side of the street to the other trying to avoid the cars.
We arrive at a good time in El Calafate, where we rush to fill the tank again and there Hadrien makes his usual daily bike-drop (here Hadrien insists on making a statement: Miji also dropped his bike yesterday **).
Looking for the hotel, Hadrien asks: are we right here? Isabel answers: No, we're just cruising, we want to check how long you can keep the bike from falling...
At 18:00 we arrive at the hotel. No more mechanical problem so far. All perfect!
** but Miji must add: the bike did not touch the ground thanks to German bikers who rushed to help, and even if some claimed that it touched, it was because of Isabel who jumped off the bike like it was a trampoline.***
*** but Isabel must add that she didn't even notice the trampoline and Miji had lost foot on the ground.
So the animals at the estancia (chicken, horses etc.) were not sooo wild after all since they all are called by names!
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