20th January 2015 – Los Antiguos to Estancia La Angostura on Ruta 40 Sur

We headed south on Argentina’s Route 40 on great sealed roads travelling through the Patagonian desert for approximately 400km. We saw our first wild Lama  or Guanaco and Rhea (little Ostrich) as well as cows & sheep. The scenery was very dramatic with rugged snow-capped mountains of the Andes in the distance contrasting against the open plains if the desert with it’s scrubby grasses and low plants. This area is renowned for it’s wind, however today it’s quite calm & hot. There is an amazing amount of water around for a desert, so there is plenty of scrubby green vegetation about.The last part of our journey was on a very stony rough road & the car had more fuel problems, so after we arrived at the ranch Michael spent a few hours replacing the fuel pump with an SU fuel pump, which has lower pressure than the facet pump that we were using. He did a test drive & it seemed OK, so we’ll see how it performs tomorrow.  The ranch we are staying at is on about 20,000 acres in the middle of the desert & has beef & sheep and out the front is a large wetlands with lots of birdlife and tall reeds. We had a whole sheep for dinner that they cooked in a fire pit during the afternoon, served with beautiful vegetables grown on the ranch. I can also report that the Mendoza Malbec was excellent.