Rural Argentina

We have since partly followed Route 3 (a main route) and Route 1 (a more narrow and mostly unpaved road). Particularly the latter offers beautiful rides along the coastline with view to many beaches mainly on dirt roads. For instance, the drive between the beach town of el Condor (south-east of Viedma) and Las Grutas on Route 1 is highly recommended, if you are not afraid of bumpy, sandy, and narrow tracks.

The good thing about Route 1 is that there is always the option of returning to Route 3 when wanting a smoother ride on pavement. We have also followed the advice of Ricardo in Atlántida of always topping of the fuel tank when having the opportunity. And most times, access to diesel has not been a problem.

Heading south, we visited Peninsula Valdez where we observed whales (on 3 hours cruise) and saw penguins at Caleta Valdez.

Another main stop on the southern bound was Punta Tombo which included a visit to one of the world’s biggest Magallan Penguin colonies.

Leaving Punta Tombo, you’re really in no-man’s land and as it was approaching nightfall we ended up free-camping on the steppe at Cabo Raso – at a place which at least offered shelter from the wind, a rough “bucket” toilet and water.   

And for equality between the sexes, Oyvin is cleaning the dishes.

On this leg of our route, we have really seen Argentina as a rural agricultural powerhouse passing huge prairies with cattle and sheep, but also dry steppes with very little population. We have observed agro-industrial plants in Rio Negro, Chubut, and Santa Cruz.

In Santa Cruz we also had the opportunity to visit one of Argentina’s remarkable petrified forests.  In this case, however, we unfortunately recognized too late that there were neither camping opportunities nor other alternative lodging options nearby. We eventually had no choice but to return to Route 3 which implied an additional 80 plus km on heavily corrugated dirt roads. This day we eventually surrendered to raise our “house”, in the nick of time before getting dark, in a well-equipped gas-station in good company of truck drivers and other overlanders.