Lots of people hitchhike in Argentina and Chile, I’m sure we’ve seen more hitchhikers in the last 3 weeks than we have seen in our whole lives! They would all love to travel with us in our cool Wicked campervan, but then they would probably all love to travel in anything as long as it gets them where they want to go. Some of the roads we’ve travelled on don’t have much traffic at all, and it could take a long time to be lucky and get a lift. We passed a couple yesterday afternoon at around 7pm on a quiet road and I thought … I hope you guys have a Plan B, ‘cos you’re probably not going to get much further tonight.

Another border crossing back into Argentina, another system to try and navigate. We thought border crossings in Africa were all a bit different, but comparing them with the Chilean and Argentinian ones, they were easy! We were heading to El Calafate, which is in the southern part of Glacier National Park, and west of Routa 40. We had to detour there a couple of weeks ago when we needed petrol. The southern part Glacier National Park is further west of El Calafate and features some truly spectacular glaciers which are easily accessible by road or boat.

But first, there was the small matter of refuelling … which seems to be a constant theme of this trip. El Calafate has 2 service stations, one at either end of the main street. The first one had a huge queue going up the street, over the bridge and around the corner – we couldn’t see where it ended. The second servo charges 10c/litre more, which seems to be a bit of a big deal for price-sensitive travellers (we’ve paid heaps more in outback Australia, and even prices between suburban servos can vary by up to 30c/litre), so we headed there, but …. Oh No! No fuel. The attendant told me that the next tanker would arrive manana in the morning, but it’s that’s fairly loose term which can also mean later, sometime, never. We went to the 2 supermarkets in town to get a few things, sat for a while and had lunch and drove past the more expensive servo about an hour later to find a queue of cars and one petrol bowser working. So we joined the queue, waited a while, refuelled (cash only!) and headed 80kms west to the National Park to see the Perito Moreno Glacier.

Wow, what a sight! It’s about 5kms wide and 14+kms long, and it’s probably the most easily-accessible glacier in the world. Well, I know it’s taken us a couple of days to fly here and a few weeks of driving, but it is possible to just fly to El Calafate, hire a car or hop on a bus, then just walk a few hundred metres down some well-constructed steps and platforms and see it in all its glory, just a couple of hundred metres away. It is absolutely magnificent! We walked the long way around, about 1.5kms of boardwalks and steps, so we started at the shorter end furthest away and made our way to the closer, taller end. It’s a tidewater glacier, running into Largo Argentina, and we listened and watched for pieces breaking off into the water.

The National Park doesn’t allow camping, so we consulted ioverlander.com and found a lovely spot just behind a small hill off the road back to El Calafate. It was windy, but Greg rigged up the shower system and a tarp and we had hot showers, then a hot meal. Perfect!

Los Antiguos – Cochrane 18.2.16

I’m going to jump ahead now before  I forget too much. I’ll re-order some of the posts later.

The night before last we stayed in Los Antiguos, just across the border in Argentina. The municipal campground had been described in our Footprint guide book as ‘outstanding’, which seems a bit over the top, but it did have hot showers and most of the toilets had toilet seats. We found a site with power away from the very crowded tent camping area, and woke up to tents crammed on either side of us. I think we have a different perception of ‘personal space’ to the locals.

And so to, hopefully, our last border crossing ….. back into Chile. I’ve lost count of how many crosings we’ve done, but we’ll get a photo of the van’s customs papers before we give them back with the van. Loads of stamps, signatures, dates. And even though we’ve entered Chile … well, a few times … we had to fill in a piece of paper we’d never seen before!

There’s a huge lake here – called Lago Buenes Aires on the Argentinian side, and Lago General Carrera on the Chilean side. Deep, blue, icy clear water. The road from the border to Routa 7 Carretera Austral The Southern Highway goes along the southern edge of the lake and the scenery is stunning. A postcard around every bend. We could see glaciers on the mountains to the west, fed by the Campo de Hielo San Valentine Saint Valentine Icefield.

We stayed in a backyard campground last night in Cochrane on Routa 7. About 25 people in 3 vehicles & 14 tents sharing 2 bathrooms, huge queue for them this morning. The owner really needs to put in a separate toilet. We’re just waiting for a backpacker to ask us for a lift … I think we’ll need to check the van for stowaways before we leave. We’re heading 200kms south to Villa O’Higgins, which is as far south as we can get on Highway 7. There’s an American guy from Washington State here and he just came from there yesterday and told Greg that the road is good. There are glaciers there fed by the Campo de Hielo Norte Northern Icefield that we’ve seen from the Argentinian side, so we’ll hopefully get to see them from the Chilean side.

We’ve spent the last 3 nights camping in the wild in various places, ranging from a gorgeous spot beside the Rio Mayo to a bit behind a slight rise on an access road for construction trucks building a new road to the east of Tres Lagos. It was sheltered, quiet and not far from the only petrol station for 150kms …. and by then we really, really needed fuel.

So the morning after our access road camp, we headed up the road, through Tres Lagos and up Route 40 to the servo, only to discover that he had no fuel. Shit. He’d run out 3 days earlier and didn’t know when he’d get more in. Shit, shit, shit, please excuse my French. We had less than a quarter of a tank, which wasn’t enough to get us to the nearest servo after that. A guy in a big Winnebago-type camper was there waiting, with his little white dog. I think he’d been camped there for a while. I felt very sorry for the service station owner – we’d read about other people having similar problems there – how was he supposed to make a living if his fuel supply was so erratic? Anyway, we drove back into the village and parked a street back from the main street to have a think about what to do. Well, Greg had a think, I went for a walk along the main street, where I discovered that the only shop was closed for the day, the police were working on their front garden and the 2 hostels both had people staying there. When I got back to the car, Greg had worked out that the van’s fuel tank held 55L, so we just might have had almost 10L, which just might have been enough to at least get us to the turn-off to the next town that had fuel, and he’d decided that we’d go back to the servo to see if we could buy a jerry-can.

Somehow, that was the magic word. The guy at the servo didn’t have a jerry-can to sell us, but he told us about someone back in the village who would sell us some petrol. We just had to go to the police and ask them. They were still gardening when we got there, but very helpfully gave us directions to a guy who was located one street back from the main street …. right next door to the vacant lot we had parked on earlier! He siphoned 10L of fuel from one of his 44gallon drums that Greg had noticed earlier, poured it into our van, we paid him twice the going rate, gave the cops the ‘thumbs-up’ sign as we went past them, and drove slowly and carefully to El Calafate. Phew! We now have a jerry-can with an emergency 10 litres in it, and a full tank of gasolina.

It was one of those days where we just sat back at the end of the day and said ‘well, that was interesting, wasn’t it?’

It’s getting colder now, Greg has dragged out his long pants. And it’s windy, but then, we’re at almost 52 degrees south, and they don’t call the wind at this latitude the ‘Screaming 50s’ for nothing! We’re planning on staying at Rio Grande tonight, and Greg has just booked us an Airbnb place in Ushuaia for a few nights. The Wicked Camper is great – warm at night, sheltered from the wind when we stop during the day. Camping in a tent here would be …. difficult, and very, very windy!