Poland to the rescue! Broke down on Route 40.

Local traffic on Route 40

After getting our fair share of fresh air and drinkable river water in El Chalten we decided to move on upwards to start to long trip back up Argentina and Chile. We were sitting on the fence about what route to take back, but read about El Puesto www.elpuesto.cl and a trip they do up on Glaciar Explorades. This seemed like the next best destination so we took the notorious route 40 in Argentina back up from southern Patagonia. Route 40 is known for its barren and bleak dirt road and lack of service stations in addition to the cavos de los manos—caves with prehistoric handprints lining the walls. This road proved to be both barren and bleak, two things we had seen a little too much of driving west to east and back again to get a glimpse of those penguins. At one point we had to drive 70 km out of the way to get gas and Iain noticed the engine temperature slowly rising. As it turned out, the radiator cap was lost somewhere along the bumpy dirt road and we needed some creativity and metal to make it the rest of the way to our fuel up location. We have been so lucky to have had assistance at pretty much every potentially disastrous situation so far, and this event turned out to be no different. This time our help turned out to be a camper full of Polish travelers who happened to be mechanically savvy. With everybody brainstorming, a new radiator cap was created using: a tin can lid, a loonie which was hammered to increase its size, some wire, and of course duct tape. We arrived to the gas station with no problems 30 km later and found a new radiator cap too! After an hour or two back into our drive the new radiator cap stop working properly and we had to modify it accordingly.

Finished product

Rejected from Chile--preparing to varnish

After jumping through that hoop of fire, we made it to Los Antiguos, the last town before crossing into Chile. Feeling really awesome about getting back into Chile and ready to get on that glacier, we stopped at the boarder ready to keep moving. After a tedious wait in line and claiming our fruits and vegetables we went out to get inspected (Chile has relatively strict regulations in this regard and they are much more thorough in their searches compared to Argentina). Turns out, they inspected a little bit more rigorously than we expected, telling us our beloved bed frame needed to bite the dust if we wanted to enter. Apparently our wood was no good because it wasn’t varnished and there was no way they were going to let us through. So back we went to Los Antiguos to spend the afternoon varnishing….

Iain trying a new look

The twisty road to Coyhaique

The following day, they did let us in and we passed through Chile Chico and we went onwards to Coyhaique were we spent a very uneventful New Year’s Eve. Yesterday we backtracked to Tranquilo to and did a 6.5 hour stint up and around the Glaciar Explorades. We thought the experience might be similar to climbing on the moon—rolling mounds of white snow and ice everywhere. Well worth the effort and a little extra driving. 

Glacier Explorades

Tallest peak south of 40 degrees, Monte San Valentin (4080m)

Iain climbing around