28th January 2015 – Kay’s Birthday Rio Grande to Rio Gallegos

We started today in Argentina, drove north up Route 3 along the South Atlantic coast to San Sebastian where we crossed into Chile. We then drove approximately 125km on dirt roads (more dust), caught a ferry across the Magellan Straights and crossed back into Argentina. At least now most of the roads that we will be on will be sealed, except for road works. So a total of approximately 365km travelled today, but because of 2 border crossings which took about 1 hour each and waiting for the ferry and a 20 minute ferry crossing it was a slow day.  We are back in windy Patagonia but at least it isn’t as windy today as it was the last time we were here. It’s open plains and not particularly interesting scenery,  we saw more oil & gas fields & also a few more Rhea which we haven’t seen for a while.  Coming into Rio Gallegos Red Car had a problem when he stopped at the service station for gas and wouldn’t start. It turned out that the alternator had stopped working, so Ken, Pete & Michael took off to an auto electrician getting confirmation that the alternator was cactus & then went off to buy a new alternator. A short time later a new Argentinian alternator was purchased and 2 hours later the boys had it fitted. Only 1 problem Ken’s air conditioning now doesn’t work, but the car is back on the road again.  While the boys were working on Red Car we had our usual nightly 6:30pm meeting and we girls had a bottle of brut de brut champagne to celebrate my birthday.  It was an Argentinian champagne from Mendoza & it was very nice indeed.  After Red car was all fixed we all went to The British Club for dinner and yes a few more Luigi Bosca Malbec’s were consumed. The whole restaurant sang Happy Birthday to me as they produced a bowl of ice cream with fruit and a candle in it (see below). Most embarrassing but a most enjoyable birthday with everyone!