RUTA40: vanlife, hitchhiking, sleeping in a truck and traveling with bikers
As a complete coincidence, I drove all over Argentina from the northern border with Bolivia all the way south to the Land of Fire.
Argentina's legendary Ruta 40 is the longest route in Argentina and one of the longest in the world. It runs parallel to the Andes Mountains for nearly 5,000 km and is considered one of the world's greatest driving adventures. It passes near glaciers, high peaks, through volcanic lava fields, forests, salt flats, along the foothills of the Andes and the shores of crystal clear lakes, through national parks, vineyards, colourful rock formations and cactus groves. That's why countless travellers are eager to traverse this famous route, whether by caravan, car or bicycle.
And then there's me: I hadn't even planned to go to Argentina, I'd never even heard of the Ruta 40, and yet somehow, I made it all the way. Funny fact is that for the first week I didn't even know I was on some famous road.
Me: hey the road is still the same, I see number 40 all the time
Rafael: oh god, Ellie! he rolls his eyes
Me: What? What have I done?
Rafael: sighs. Nothing, just get used to seeing number 40 for at least another two weeks.
So how did it all start?
Weeks before I even got to Argentina, I met Rafael in Cusco, a guy with a caravan travelling around South America. Well, we found out that we were planning to travel to Patagonia at the exact same time. Only with a slight difference, Rafa had a van and planned everything and I had no idea how to get to Patagonia low cost. It didn't take long before we agreed to drive from La Paz, Bolivia together and share the cost.
From Bolivia to Argentina
We arrive at the border, haven't even begun our journey, and already we're having troubles. This time, it wasn't so much about immigration control as it was about the chaos of the entire system that operates there during the checks. To cut a long story short, we spent nearly 10 hours doing all of those checks. I nearly finished reading one of my books, just because we were most of the time just sitting and waiting. First day on the road and we barely moved 5 kilometers.
On the road
This is kind of my firs time travelling in a van for a longer period. I had no idea it will be so difficult. Always some issues with the car. And when some problems are finally solved, there are more problems coming, quite often much worse. One time we were driving through an area where it rained overnight. There was water everywhere and lots of puddles. Well, what didn't Rafa think of? Why not to go back, and go through that huge puddle again, so we will have a cool video. Well, let's just say within about five minutes we were picking up car parts in that puddle. So back to the automechanic! Luckily the next town is close, but not everywhere you can get the parts you need and not always the mechanics are willing to fix it as quickly as possible.
The good think though it that we don’t have to deal with accommodation at all. Sometimes we sleep wild somewhere on the side of the road. Sometimes, especially when we need a hot shower, we pay for a night at some campsite. Once we found a great campsite even with a pool! Which was a priceless bonus at the time, as northern Argentina is terribly hot. The owher even had some super friendly dogs, which I was okay with until the little stinkers stole my shoe and chewed it all up. Those are my only shoes! I absolutely cannot afford to have them chewed up. Well, luckily, except for the laces, the shoes are usable! I was pretty skeptical the other day when we were camping by the river and five stray dogs joined us. But they ended up being great night guards!
Ruta40 is often, especially in the beginning, quite monotonous and goes for several hundred kilometers just straight through empty wasteland with only a few inhabited areas, which we started to call ghost towns. But sometimes the scenery changes completely out of nowhere and suddenly it feels like I'm driving through the Grand Canyon.
The original plan to buy a sim card with unlimited data and work on my laptop while Rafa drives didn't quite work out. How is that possible? Absolutely no signal here. That's the way it is when you travel across deserts and barren plains, where the most you can see are mini-tornadoes, which I was excited about for the first few days but then got tired of pretty quickly.
Patagonia is coming!
It's the day seventeen since I'm sitting on the passenger seat of the caravan. We are finally entering the northern Patagonia and the town of Bariloche. The town is surrounded by mountains and lakes. During winter time it is a popular ski resort, in summer people are attracted by treks, national parks and lakes.
It is summertime now, so after more than two weeks of doing nothing, I set off with my super heavy backpack for a two day hike. Amazing that it all starts with a ten kilometer hike up a steep hill. My back absolutely loves me for it. I'm sweating like a pig and huffing and puffing like I'm finishing the climb to the Everest. Luckily, there's no one around so I can huff and puff as loud as I want.
I'm camping at a mountain hut where it's blowing terribly, so I don't manage to put up my tent until the fifth time and I've had a lot of work to do to keep it from flying away. With the evening comes a terrible cold. I throw on all the layers of clothes I have and go to watch the sunset. The next morning I eat breakfast in bed (I mean camping mat) because it's cold and windy outside and I don’t want to get out of my sleeping bag. Eventually, though, the sunrise gets me out.
The way back is more or less downhill so I'm literally happily jumping around and singing. The trek ends in the Swiss Colony, which immediately draws me to chocolate and chocolate ice cream. There's nothing better than getting all the calories burned back right away with a big ice cream cone.
From Bariloche, I make one more stop in El Bolsón, where I camp by a crystal clear river. However, this is probably the dustiest place I have ever camped. They say it hasn't rained here in a long time. I’m pretty sure I'm carrying an extra gram of dust in my backpack.
Two days in a truck
Here finally comes the time for hitchhiking. It's the first time I've seen backpackers hitchhiking all over the place at probably every exit from the city. Apparently hitchhiking is pretty common in Patagonia. The plan is to get to the town of El Calafate, that is 1500 kilometers from Bariloche (about 18 hours away according to google). Hitchhiking works way too fast here, sometimes I wanted to take a picture on the side of the road, but sometimes people would stop before I even got my camera out. I can't complain though.
I got really lucky and got pulled over by a big truck. Trucks are the best to travel long distances with, because they go almost all day long and if you have a common direction of travel (which is pretty much a certainty in Patagonia, because there are not many roads) they'll take you pretty far. I end up sleeping in the truck, on the top shelf above the seats to be exact, since we have the same direction of travel the next day as well. We sleep at a gas station and have breakfast with two other truckers in the morning. What you don't get to experience during all that traveling? Two days with the truckers on a road trip. Nice. Plus, no one speaks English, so my Spanish is improving.
Every gas station we pass is covered with stickers of travelers. So I'm pretty surprised and frightened that there are almost no cars on the road (and I'm not even here in the off-season). How am I supposed to hitchhike when there are hardly any cars?
Biking to El Calafate
I say goodbye to the truck at the town of Governador Georges, where I hitch a ride (after perhaps two hours of waiting) with a climber from the USA. In the evening we stop for dinner in a small village in the middle of nowhere. We walk into the only open pub and what am I not hearing again? Czech!
"Hey we saw that chick at the gas station!" . Laughing, I turn around and say, "Oh, you're from the Czech Republic too!" The look on their faces at that moment was priceless. So what happened next? I traveled to El Calafate and the Perito Moreno glacier on a motorbike with four Czech bikers. I am still amazed that my gigantic backpack fit on those bikes.
End of the World
From El Calafate it was not possible to hitchhike anymore, because almost nobody went to the Tierra del Fuego (the Land of Fire). I ended up taking a bus with a guy from Germany all the way to the port of Ushuaia. The bus ride is terribly long because you have to cross the border into Chile and then the border back Argentina after a while. So in about 5 hours we had to go to four different passport controls. We don't get bored on the bus though, we immediately form a great group with backpackers form France, Germany and Israel.
A couple of times the bus almost left without us because we were so obsessed over buying a coffee and the driver just didn't feel like waiting at all. Then in Ushuaia, nicknamed the End of the World, we did some hikes to the mountains, went swimming naked in a mountain lagoon (which I'm especially proud of because it was cold and the water was freezing), then went swimming in another lagoon, this time not naked (because there were too many people around), climbing up to a mountain glacier, and went on a boat trip to see penguins. What's not to experience at the end of the world of the world?
