22nd January – El Calafate (Argentina) to Torres del Paine National Park (Chile)

Today we continued driving south on Route 40 through the desert of the Argentinian Patagonia area. We had about 300km to drive on a mixture of sealed highway, good dirt roads and very bumpy rocky roads. The scenery was flat open plains with nearly black scrubby bush at the start and It was quite windy. As the day progressed the road became undulating with those lovely bends that MG’s are at home on.At our morning tea stop today we met a French cyclist who is cycling around South America for 6 months on his solar powered bike, and he thought we were mad doing what we’re doing.We crossed from Argentina into Chile again for a couple of days and the border crossing slowed us up as we had 2 tourist buses in front of us. Once in Chile the scenery changed to craggy, snow capped mountains as we entered the National Park. We saw lots of lama’s on the side of the road and a large flock of pink flamingo’s on a lake.   Our hotel for the night is in the national park and the view from our room is a snow capped mountain. As we arrived a herd of horses came past the hotel being mustered by a regal looking Chilean huaso.